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Glennis Byron's and Dale Townshend's research on the Gothic, including that undertaken through Stirling's `Global Gothic' project, has had a significant impact on new student audiences, media professionals and curators, broadening and challenging their understanding of the Gothic as a mode of cultural production. The underpinning research focused on expanding and modifying the category of the Gothic as a critical descriptor. During the REF period this work improved the ways in which media professionals, curators and members of the general public have understood and interpreted Gothic forms, and enhanced A-Level students' learning experiences in the UK. The impact has significant reach locally, nationally and globally, with, for example, Stirling's Gothic Imagination website receiving c. 7000 visitors per month, and 290 A-level students across the UK attending Townshend's online seminar.
The Gutzkow project, co-directed by Lauster and Vonhoff of the Department of Modern Languages (German), has transformed public access to the author's work through open-access, on-line publication. The project, which combines specialist scholarship with innovative editing, has considerably enhanced public appreciation of a widened canon of 19th-century German literature (impact 1). User testimonies, the international press, public acknowledgement and public involvement in events in the region reveal a significant renewal of public interest in Gutzkow. The editorial results of the Gutzkow project have been requested by an interdisciplinary linguistic digitization project in Berlin and will be fully integrated in this open access linguistic database (impact 2).
As long-running debates on what it means to be British, English, Scottish or Cornish grow more urgent, researchers at the University of Exeter have engaged different publics in new perspectives on identity and citizenship, encouraging them to reconsider their own identities in the context of regional and national cultural heritage. This research has influenced media narratives, public policy debate, and a diverse range of discussions relating to regional or national identity. Its main impacts have been to:
Professor Henry French's research into the use of landed property and the lives of the English gentry, undertaken since his appointment at Exeter in 2001, has contributed to a Knowledge Transfer Fellowship community engagement project. This project trained volunteer groups to explore the history and archaeology of the estate and gardens of Poltimore House, Exeter. By transforming the capacity of Poltimore House Trust (PHT) to run outreach activities, it significantly enhanced its educational work with young people and schools. By enriching the history of the estate's almost unknown gardens, it gave the PHT a beacon project to publicise and enhance its wider re-development plans. By training community volunteers in historical and archaeological research, it made public involvement central to interpretation of historic landscapes, creating a template of sustainable heritage research that can be applied elsewhere.
The significance of illumination for the development of innovative place-making strategies designed to enhance convivial life in the city, enable better communal heritage preservation and augment urban economic capacity has been acutely underestimated. The research showcased here is interested in discovering new concepts and methodologies for the understanding, utilisation and evaluation of illumination as both a facilitator and intrinsic expression of communal life in both the city and beyond. The research has initiated a vibrant knowledge exchange between academics, professionals and municipal authorities leading to the establishment of an increasingly international network focused on the politics, aesthetics, communal benefits and economic potential of effective urban place-making through strategic illumination. The research has also impacted on the tourism strategies of coastal towns and resorts, and on heritage cultivation through the provision of expert advice. Among both specialist stakeholders and the wider public the research has raised awareness of illumination as a place-making strategy, as well as a matter of class and taste. The research has also rehabilitated aspects of popular culture by reappraising the role of the vernacular in municipal event planning and general policy-making discourse.
The Database of Mid-Victorian Illustration (DMVI, www.dmvi.cardiff.ac.uk) used research and technological innovation to bring illustrations of Victorian culture to multiple users. Before DMVI, illustrations accompanying nineteenth-century literary texts were largely forgotten, and there was no structured way of searching for them as images. Despite their cultural importance, illustrations are rarely reproduced in modern editions, and mass digitisation projects omit them or describe them inadequately for independent retrieval. DMVI's bespoke software tools harnessed literary research in a multifaceted mark-up system, to create a tagged 'image bank'. Its content and searchability have made it the resource of choice for designers, publishers, broadcasters, film-makers, and heritage organisations worldwide when presenting images of nineteenth-century life.
Bangor University's publications on medieval Arthurian literature c. 1350-1550, in particular on French and English medieval romances, have impacted on the local, national and international cultural life and heritage, economic prosperity of local tourist attractions, the enhancement of the theatrical audience experience (the Royal Shakespeare Company) and creative practice (King Arthur's Labyrinth). Dr Radulescu's work was vital to international TV and radio programmes on the Arthurian legend, and in 2011-13 to the development and enhancement of reading materials for the educated general public and developments in creative writing.
Professor Sinclair's project on `Wrongdoing in Spain 1800-1936' explores the difference between cultural representations of wrongdoing and their underlying realities, and includes the digitization and cataloguing of c4500 items of popular Spanish material held at the University Library, Cambridge (UL), and the British Library (BL). This contributes significantly to the conservation, stewardship, and enhanced accessibility of this ephemeral material, increasingly valued and recognized as important in Spain as part of its social history and heritage. Digitization also makes this fragile material available to support teaching. An exhibition of this material and comparable material in English runs at the UL, Cambridge April — December 2013, strongly supported by a virtual exhibition. Public engagement events extend the understanding of the relevance of this material to modern Britain.
Cuairt Mhic'IlleMhìcheil is a BBC radio series tracing the life and works of the major folklore collector Alexander Carmichael, researched, scripted, and presented by Dr Stiùbhart, and recorded on location throughout the Gàidhealtachd. Restoring valuable, newly discovered cultural capital to marginalised communities, making crucial connections between the past and living Gaelic tradition, Cuairt proved a striking success with listeners and the BBC itself. The series enabled Dr Stiùbhart to develop a mutually beneficial relationship with Highland communities, enabling his research to support local cultural activities and to enhance public awareness of, and engagement with, a rich, complex, and endangered heritage.
Research by film specialists in Modern Languages (ML) at the University of Exeter promotes the artistic value, diversity and continuing social, cultural and political relevance of European cinema to a variety of audiences in the UK and abroad. Their research has advanced community cohesion through memories of cinema-going (impact 1), informed the teaching of European cinema in secondary schools and HE (impact 2) and enhanced cultural life, promoting public appreciation of European cinema nationally and internationally (impact 3). This has been achieved through contributing to online archival studies of cinema audiences, participation in film festivals, introductions to film screenings, public lectures and DVD commentaries.