Summary of the impact

Singing has been integral to the practice of Eastern Orthodox Christianity since antiquity. Its vast medieval repertories of Byzantine and Slavic plainchant gradually developed into native musical traditions spread across a geographic arc from Southern Italy to Alaska. Thanks to emigration and missionary work, forms of Orthodox singing are now also cultivated in diasporic and missionary communities throughout the world. Despite the historical importance of Byzantine chant as a sibling to Gregorian chant, the richness of the historical record and the vibrancy of contemporary Eastern Christian musical practice, these musical traditions remain largely unstudied and poorly known in the geographic and cultural West, in part due to transmission in non-Western languages and forms of musical notation. Dr Alexander Lingas' research undertaken at City University London has nourished the global dissemination, understanding and enjoyment of these music traditions. Building on scholarship that embraces music philology, performance practice and liturgiology, Lingas' research has had a broad international societal impact, achieved largely through his role as Artistic Director of Cappella Romana, an American-based vocal ensemble with an international reputation for promoting Eastern Orthodox music. Through encounters with music that was often previously unknown or inaccessible, listeners from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds have discovered the musical traditions of Eastern Christianity to be as historically significant, artistically rich and spiritually profound as its better-known masterpieces of iconography and architecture. This has in turn helped to broaden the repertories of early and contemporary vocal music in Western Europe and America to include the musical inheritance of Byzantium and its Slavic commonwealth. Through his research Lingas has also supported the creation of new forms of artistic expression and reconstructed older forms of Eastern Orthodox sacred music; influenced attitudes and perceptions of musicians, scholars, viewers, readers and listeners on an international basis; enriched cultural lives and aesthetic experiences in a range of performance and multimedia contexts; enhanced knowledge and understanding among different beneficiaries through the close integration of performance and educational work; and contributed significantly to the preservation, renewal, interpretation and dissemination of Eastern Orthodox Christian musical heritage.

Summary of the impact

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.

Summary of the impact

Alison Rowlands' research on witch-trials in Rothenburg ob der Tauber and its rural hinterland provides the first ever scholarly study of witch-trials in this territory. The findings of this research have challenged the stereotype of the witch as an old woman and have shown the motivations of witch-hunters to have been much more complicated than previously thought. This research has informed Rowlands' public engagement programme `What is a `Witch'?', which has corrected public misconceptions of the history of witchcraft, brought benefits to cultural institutions with which she has collaborated, and contributed to local and national Key Stage 2, 3, and A Level school teaching.

Summary of the impact

Revision of standard views of Sparta towards a less exceptional, more civic-oriented, society has:

• transformed curricula, teaching and student learning on Sparta in HEIs worldwide
• enriched teaching and inspired pupils' educational ambitions in UK schools and FE colleges
• altered the modern Municipality of Sparti's depiction of its ancient legacy and enhanced its cultural heritage policies
• helped a comics author respond to 300 with a more authentic depiction of Spartan-helot relations
• enabled a U.S. gun control activist to counteract Sparta's appropriation by the pro-gun lobby.

Summary of the impact

Using a ground-breaking database of recovered narratives of Latin American women during the Wars of Independence,

• new histories have been created and shared with audiences in Buenos Aires, London and Nottingham through exhibitions, workshops, guided city tours, theatre productions and translation programmes leading to new public knowledge and raised awareness;
• drama and photography workshops have enabled a community of young Latin American migrant women in London to understand their collective heritage and cultural identity more fully, and through this understanding, to develop personal confidence and pride;
• employees of Southwark Council have changed how they work with their growing Latin American community after participating in a cultural and language exchange series contributing to improved community cohesion.

Summary of the impact

The production of hand-knitting is of key economic and cultural importance in Scotland. University of Glasgow research on the history of hand-knitting has: helped to enhance a significant textiles collection at Shetland Museum and Archives (~88,000 visitors each year) and contributed to the growth of public interest in and understanding of this craft activity and its history. Glasgow research has also informed the work of contemporary knitwear designers who have found inspiration in the traditional designs and colour ways and has engaged the wider public, promoting greater appreciation of the cultural significance of hand-knitting and its role in the rural economy of the past and present.

Summary of the impact

Alan Sommerstein's research on the comedies of Aristophanes, published in the form of authoritative translations, together with articles and book chapters on Aristophanes, have

• enabled large numbers of readers (including new audiences with little prior knowledge of ancient drama) to appreciate better both the comic and social/political aspects of the plays
• helped theatre directors and performers to adapt the plays for productions which brought out for audiences how "accessible, funny and relevant" they could be
• assisted the National Theatre to create a rounded presentation of Greek theatre for a wide-ranging online audience
• enabled schools and colleges to teach and study Aristophanes in versions that combine scholarship and approachability
• increasingly informed the content of university courses in Greek comedy and enriched students' learning experience.

Summary of the impact

Italiane. Biografia del Novecento has enhanced public discourse by stimulating widespread and important debates in the Italian media, among politicians and the public about the role of women in twentieth-century Italy. Some of its arguments have been considered controversial, leading many commentators, including the prominent journalist Paolo Mieli in 2012, to call it a `courageous book' (Section 5:3). As the first scholarly but accessible work of synthesis (in any language) ranging over the history of Italian women in the whole twentieth century it is an important milestone for Italian women's history and for discussions about women's role in contemporary Italy. It has also made a significant contribution to history teaching in Italian universities.

Summary of the impact

Professor Karen Sayer's research on the rural, `Nature' and the countryside, farming and the farmed animal in the Modern period, has informed three TV series (Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Wartime Farm) viewed by millions in the UK and worldwide. These extremely popular series have had a major impact within public understandings of not only the history of agriculture and its strategic importance, but also rural social history within British society. Sayer's input ensured a historically accurate representation of the past and, in the case of Wartime Farm, brought the rural experience into the discourse of World War II, which so often focuses on the urban. This impact has been further developed through a partnership with the Yorkshire Museum of Farming where Sayer undertook consultation with museum staff on exhibitions and displays.

Summary of the impact

Professor Bartlett has written and presented two television series on medieval subjects for the BBC: Inside the Medieval Mind (four one-hour episodes, BBC4, 2008) and The Normans (three one-hour episodes, BBC2, 2010). Already one of the world's leading medieval historians, he has taken his work to a much wider audience through these series. Impact in this case is primarily on cultural life, through the exposure of millions of viewers to a historical documentary about the Middle Ages. The BBC's estimate of their value is re-emphasized by the recent completion of a third series, The Plantagenets, to be screened in autumn 2013.