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IMAGINES is an interdisciplinary project and research group exploring the influence and impact of antiquity on modern cultures. The project addresses the reception of antiquity in film, theatre, dance, opera, sculpture, architecture, painting, graphic novels, design and photography and other forms of visual culture. The project has sought to make its work accessible to the public through a series of exhibitions and talks, while it has also sought to engage members of the creative and cultural industries such as art professionals in the fields of architecture, music, graphic novels, and the theatre.
Public understanding of the classical world has been informed and enhanced through new editions of the prestigious and internationally acclaimed Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD) and its spin-off publications. These key reference items, which have sold in high numbers and been translated into several languages, are available in specialist, university, college and public libraries worldwide, thereby benefitting a wide range of users, including the general public, students, school pupils, and fellow professionals.
Classical Receptions at the OU raises awareness of how Greek and Roman texts, ideas and material culture have been interpreted, used and reworked, particularly in society today. Our research provides cultural and arts practitioners around the world — translators, poets and actors — with the tools to interpret ancient texts in modern contexts. Much of our research is presented in open-access assets — website, journals, seminars, workshops, conferences — thus providing resources both nationally and internationally. Working with the creative industries and beyond, we also help the wider public to gain a fuller understanding of the place of the classical within the contemporary world.
The Cabot Project, led by Dr Evan Jones at the University of Bristol, has raised public awareness of England's contribution to early maritime exploration, in the process challenging perceptions among both the public and schoolchildren about how history is researched and written. The Project's research has generated massive international news coverage, including numerous follow-up stories, written as a result of the positive response to earlier coverage, in both the mainstream press and popular history publications. Attention has focused on both the outcomes of the research and on the process of historical research and publication. Since 2013, the Project's `Schools Group' has used the team's research findings to contest accepted readings of history in local schools. Research conducted by Dr Jones led to his appointment as a trustee and Education Chair for the Matthew of Bristol Trust, which runs a replica ship that serves as an icon for the city and is an important heritage attraction.
The project's initial output was a book and website for the Institute of Historical Research's series `England's Past for Everyone'. The UWE project, alone among the 14 comparable Heritage Lottery Funded projects, focused on ethnicity, pioneering new approaches to researching urban history, providing material accessible to museums, community and minority groups, schools and artists, and helping Bristol's reorientation towards greater ethnic inclusivity. The research informed Bristol's M-Shed Museum, a £24 million HLF/City Council project; inspired community and media projects; informed public history debates in the UK and USA; and encouraged new approaches by historians and community groups (e.g. special edition of Midland History, 2011).
The Penguin Archive Project, funded by a major grant from the AHRC [7], produced an online catalogue of the Penguin Collection at the University of Bristol Library (launched in 2011). Penguin Books transformed the range and greatly extended the availability of books to a general readership in the twentieth century. The Penguin Archive located at the University of Bristol can therefore be conceived of as a record of the democratisation of reading in the UK in the twentieth century. As a result of the Penguin Archive Project impact has been realised in three main areas: improving access to the Penguin Archive and making it easier to use for a variety of non-academic users; raising awareness and understanding of the significance of the archive and the rich cultural heritage of Penguin books through public engagement and media activities including a major international conference in 2010; developing collaborative links with Penguin and contributing to their publishing practice. As a result, researchers, editors, authors, publishers and other users such as the Penguin Collectors Society now have access to this major resource.
Hundreds of school students, their teachers, local heritage groups, audiences at live events and thousands of people engaging in online activities have benefited from a University of Bristol research project called Resurrecting the Past: Virtual Antiquities in the Nineteenth Century. The project uses the medium of a 3D online model of the Pompeian Court of the Crystal Palace to promote awareness of the Palace and provide access to knowledge about it. Just as significantly, the project has explored how history is interpreted and inspired innovative ways of teaching. The research has not only illuminated a particular place and period but also investigated the relationships between 19th-century physical and 21st-century virtual reconstruction. Perhaps most importantly, it has given young people a deeper, transferable understanding of the nature of history and historical `facts'.
Professor Maria Wyke's research on representations of classical antiquity on film has had significant influence on public access to and understanding of antiquity in silent cinema, both nationally and internationally, through a series of public screenings, film festivals and broadcasts. Her research has influenced the curation, restoration and exhibition of such films by national archives (such as the British Film Institute) as part of the cultural heritage of Europe and the USA. It has also led to the development of `antiquity on film' as an established course in universities in the UK, the USA and Australia.
Politicians and diplomats in Britain and Latin America, together with descendants of the 7,000 British and Irish mercenaries who served under Simón Bolívar between 1810 and 1830, have benefited over the past five years from fresh insights into how Britain helped Colombia and Venezuela achieve independence from colonial rule. This more accurate understanding of historical relationships, gained through original research undertaken at the University of Bristol since 2005, has illuminated many personal histories, underpinned national bicentenary commemorations and helped to inform British foreign policy.
There are two ways in which Erle's research on William Blake, Physiognomy and text-image relationships have achieved public impact. First, a display and a Scholar's Morning on "Blake and Physiognomy" at Tate Britain (2010-11) and there were also invitations to give public lectures for "Haus der Romantik", a Literature Museum specialising on Romanticism in Marburg (Germany) and for the Blake Society, a London-based but international organisation of Blake scholars and enthusiasts. Second, an online-exhibition on Lord Alfred Tennyson's copy of Blake's Job for the Tennyson Research Centre (2012-13) and a display on Blake, Tennyson and Anne Gilchrist in Lincoln Public Library.