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Impacts: I) Enhanced public engagement with Scotland's cartographic heritage. II) Enhanced cross-sector collaboration around the use and digital delivery of historical maps.
Significance and reach: A major synthesis of Scotland's map history sold >8,000 copies between publication in 2011 and April 2013 and was named `Scottish Research Book of the Year' by the Saltire Society (2012). Three online map collections experienced 2008 — June 2013 access levels >50% higher than those for pre-2008. The newsletter of the Scottish Maps Forum (launched 2008), reached 553 individual subscribers and 117 institutional subscribers (January 2013).
Underpinned by: Research into the mapping of Scotland from the late sixteenth century, undertaken at the University of Edinburgh (1996 onwards).
The Union of 1707 - the constitutional foundation of the modern British state — has been a controversial issue in Scottish history, society and politics for three centuries. With devolution (1999) and the forthcoming referendum (2014) interest in the history of the Union has intensified. The research project was about why Scotland surrendered her independence as a nation state in 1707 and accepted Westminster rule. The main output was Professor Whatley's 424-page monograph, The Scots and the Union (2006, 2007). Largely through public engagement, dissemination of the findings has enhanced public understanding, while study of the work in HEIs and schools has assured significant educational impact. By challenging received wisdom and contributing from an historical perspective to the current debate about Scotland's future, civil society has been better informed.
In 2006 Professor David Walker and his team at the University of St Andrews launched a fully searchable, free, online database that has transformed the ways in which anyone interested in Scottish architecture from 1840 onwards engages with the subject. The Dictionary is widely used by archivists, family historians, house owners, estate agencies, independent conservation campaigners, architects, planners and heritage bodies, schoolchildren and teachers, students and scholars. Its worldwide impact is attested by the organisers of related Canadian and South African websites, as well as by feedback from international users and a current hit rate of more than 3.8 million per year.
Robert Lorimer and his work: the gatehouse at Earlshall, Fife, 1900
Research on ILR undertaken by Professor Fiona Raitt has re-framed the terms of the debate in Scotland concerning participation of rape complainers in the criminal justice system. It has:
UK companies have chosen to retain contact centres in Scotland and International companies have chosen to invest in Scotland's Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector in part as a result of Strathclyde research into Call Centres and offshoring in Scotland, Globalisation and Offshoring. Strathclyde researchers have worked closely with Scottish Development International (SDI) to develop Scotland as an attractive `nearshore' BPO location which has changed government policy and corporate decision making — in one instance the creation of a separate corporate entity, RBS Insurance. Extension of the outsourcing research into the quality of working life, working conditions and job protection have informed labour standards promoted by the International Labour Organisation on `remote working' and trade union policies on work conditions and offshoring.
The collective research of Breitenbach, Delaney, Devine, MacKenzie, and Ugolini at the University of Edinburgh since 2006 has had impact in terms of public understanding, policy and museum practice in relation to the Scottish diaspora. Specifically it has: (i) enabled the transformation of public understanding of the emigration history of the Scots (a central part of the history of the nation) as global in territorial spread rather than simply confined to the settlement colonies and the USA; (ii) shaped the development of new Scottish Government policies of engagement with the global diaspora; and (iii) influenced the intellectual underpinning of new and revised national museum displays in Scotland especially in relation to empire and emigration.
The Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Initiative at Edinburgh Napier University researched the role and safeguarding of `living culture' in Scotland based on the 2003 UNESCO Convention. As a result of this project, ICH in Scotland is now increasingly part of the agenda for organisations from museums to schools, stands high in public consciousness, and will represent a key element of cultural tourism. The team's approach to ICH had a direct impact upon policy-makers, national and international, including UNESCO itself. It has informed initiatives from the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence to the Dutch Government's strategy for ICH upon signing the Convention.
Shifting Impressionist studies to Scotland for the first time, this research (2005-12) stimulated debate about Impressionism and Scottish national identity. Setting the work of neglected Scottish artists in a European context, it experimented with the exhibition of Impressionist art. Reuniting lost collections, it created a precedent for cultural institutions to research, and communicate, the role of the commercial art market in the formation of taste. It enhanced the market value of some Scottish Impressionist art by a factor of us much as 800%, ignited popular interest in the collector Alex Reid, and also in The Glasgow Boys (with a record-breaking 105,000 people visiting one exhibition about their work).
Dr Tanja Bueltmann's research on the Scots in New Zealand has enhanced Scottish ethnic groups' understanding of their own history and heritage as a community in New Zealand. Through public talks and direct research user engagement, Bueltmann has been able to change their perceptions of the role the Scots played in the making of New Zealand society, as well as of their cultural legacies. Secondly, her research has increased awareness in Scotland, among museum curators, heritage sector stakeholders, and policymakers, of the central role of Scottish ethnic associationalism in the diaspora, directly informing, shaping and changing their practice of presenting the diaspora to the Scottish public.
The historically accurate restoration of six Stirling Castle Palace apartments and replication of the Stirling Heads by Sally Rush of the University of Glasgow has transformed academic and curatorial understanding of how the Palace looked and functioned and enhanced popular understanding of life at the royal court. A £12 million restoration has brought to life one of Britain's most architecturally complete Renaissance buildings — Stirling Castle Palace — securing its position as a prime educational and tourist attraction — voted the UK's top heritage attraction in a 2012 Which? survey and in Europe's top 40 `amazing experiences' in the July 2013 Lonely Planet guide. Visitor numbers increased by 17% and annual revenue by £1M in the year after the reopening of the Palace.