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The University of Oxford is a leading centre for research in opera and music theatre, where the work of musicologists and practitioners intersects to mutual benefit, and outputs have attracted the wide attention of new audiences well beyond the academic community. Oxford Opera encompasses a broad historical range, but shares a set of common aims and objectives: exploring new and historical modes of performance and realisation; challenging received operatic conventions and performance traditions in a scholarly and creative manner; and disseminating research results to new listeners through professional collaborations. Young people, the general public, and other professional practitioners have all been beneficiaries.
Wide-ranging research undertaken by Andrew Bennett from 1994 onwards has had a profound and sustained impact on the teaching of literary theory at higher education institutions (HEIs) across the world. Bennett co-authored the first edition of An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (ILCT) with Nicholas Royle (University of Sussex) in 1995. The reception of the book has been remarkable for its enthusiasm and international reach: ILCT has become a key text in literary theory, literature and language courses in HEIs in the UK and elsewhere (including in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and elsewhere). The book, which has sold c. 73,000 copies, has materially influenced how literary theory is taught, making the subject more accessible to students by presenting key critical concepts in the context of readings of individual literary texts. The success of ILCT has led to the commissioning of a second, more general book directed at beginning undergraduates, Studying Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing, which will be published by Pearson in 2014.
Professor Nicholas Cronk, has in collaboration with others, created an app which is an enhanced edition of Voltaire's Candide, freely available, for use on tablets. Candide is a timeless and universal text with perennial appeal, and this digital edition renders it accessible to a wide variety of new readers. Cronk has been encouraging engagement with Voltaire's texts through more traditional channels but this latest innovation has won new readers for Voltaire, especially among a young generation often more familiar with new media than with traditional books. The app, with its dual level of annotations, illustrations, manuscript images, commentaries, and the Polyadès recording, has been well received by a wide range of readers, and functions in a curatorial capacity to preserve an important work of French classical literary heritage in a new, sustainable format. The Candide app represents a revolutionary tool for both independent learning, and also for classroom teaching.
This research investigating many aspects of the life and works of Ludwig van Beethoven led to the publication of a ground-breaking new edition of his 35 piano sonatas. The research has not only influenced and informed the professional and amateur performance practice of Beethoven's works but has also contributed to a wider public understanding of his music, particularly through the performance of previously unheard Beethoven works. It has also contributed to economic prosperity in the creative and publishing sectors. Professor Cooper has used his research to contribute to numerous programme notes, CD liner notes, lectures and pre-concert talks impacting on a diverse and wide-ranging audience.
Clive Brown's research has had impact worldwide, informing and influencing high-profile professional musicians, those in and delivering education, and for amateurs and listeners. Recognised as a leading expert in the performance of classical and romantic music, he has advised many specialist musicians working in that area, making a far-reaching contribution to pedagogy, and providing performers with fresh insights into repertoire and relevant practice. This has had an important effect on major performing and recording ensembles. The relationship between compositional practice and performance is a central concern, as is the relevance of historically significant editions and performing materials.
The opera Knight Crew by Julian Philips provides a model for how contemporary large-scale opera can excite young people for whom the medium is often perceived as excluding and exclusive.
Knight Crew's impacts were both direct and indirect: direct through the involvement of young people with little or no experience of opera in the development and performance of the work; indirect through the international influence the various studies and evaluations of the opera have had on subsequent initiatives within opera and education.
Editorial and biographical research on the work of Virginia Woolf, carried out primarily by Susan Sellers, fed directly into the composition of Vanessa and Virginia, a novel by Sellers about Woolf's relationship with her sister. In 2008 Vanessa and Virginia was published by a small independent publisher set up in 2006 in the north-west Highlands of Scotland. It became the press's most commercially successful publication and ensured its early economic viability. The novel was subsequently published in North America and translated into more than a dozen languages. It was also turned into a successful, inter-nationally-staged play. This case study therefore claims several types of impact: (1) exporting the cultural heritage of the UK and stimulating international public interest in Woolf; (2) generating economic prosperity for a small entrepreneurial business in a remote part of Scotland, and for the creative industries (theatre and international publishing) more widely; (3) inspiring and facilitating the work of other cultural practitioners; (4) enriching cultural life in the UK and abroad. The users of this research are: the directors of an independent publishing company; translators and international publishing houses; the director, producer and actors of a touring theatre company; the reading and theatre-going public.
Heinrich Böll (1917-1985) was one of post-war Germany's leading writers and public intellectuals. The Edition of Böll's complete works, prepared by a seven-strong international research team which included Finlay, has had significant impact across a number of areas, including commercial publishing (spin-off publications, marketing opportunities); digital humanities (software and platform development for large-scale critical editions, significantly changing working practices); culture and heritage (in particular in the city of Cologne); the media and the public sphere (public debate on the writer's legacy and the Heinrich-Böll foundation's cultural programme in 30 countries).
2011 was the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, one of the most significant documents in the history of the English language. In 2010, Professor Gordon Campbell published a monograph on the history of the KJV and an edition of the 1611 text. These two books played a central role in the process whereby the KJV moved from being the private possession of believers and students of literature and achieved renewed significance as the cultural property of the wider Anglophone world. In England, the KJV became the property of school children when the British government bought 21,144 copies of Campbell's edition of the Bible, and presented a copy to every primary and secondary school in the country. Campbell's books generated income that ran well into six figures, and an extensive series of lectures and discussions have deepened understanding of the KJV throughout the world.
The Oxford World's Classics (OWC), re-founded in 1980 as a paperback series and now also available electronically, includes many new translations from European languages with introduction and notes written for a non-expert reader by scholars drawing on their academic research. Three members of the Oxford Modern Languages Faculty (Cronk, Kahn, Robertson) have been particularly active in translating and/or editing volumes and in advising the Series Commissioning Editor on the basis of their respective research expertise. The impact is partly economic (sales, including export sales), partly cultural in making key works of European literature accessible to an Anglophone public reliant on translations and partly educational as the editions are adopted worldwide on secondary school, undergraduate and graduate reading lists. The OWC editions have made classic European literature available to an international market, reaching out to new audiences.