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Twenty-first century concepts of faith, community, and division were forged in the early modern period: an age of Reformations, unprecedented cross-cultural encounters (especially between Christianity and Islam), and new understandings of religious, personal and social identity. The research of Ziad Elmarsafy, Kevin Killeen, and Helen Smith, in this field, has impacted upon a wide range of publics, individuals, and institutions, who have gained a new understanding of national and international attitudes to religious life, and a changed perspective on pressing contemporary debates about belief and society. Beneficiaries include school students, interested members of the public, and staff, volunteers, and visitors at Hardwick Hall and York Minster Library. These latter collaborations paved the way for national impact, benefitting the National Trust, and Cathedral Libraries and Archives.
Research at the University of Exeter has raised public awareness of early modern Ottoman history and promoted sustainable equestrian tourism by establishing a UNESCO Cultural Route, the Evliya Çelebi Way. In 2009 Professor Gerald MacLean re-enacted the 1671 horseback journey undertaken by the celebrated Ottoman travel-writer Evliya Çelebi, attracting media coverage and building links with local communities. Maclean has since collaborated in developing the Way to promote cultural heritage and stimulate tourism in Turkey. The main impacts of this research have been to:
Through the establishing of a UNESCO Cultural Route, the Evliya Çelebi Way, Donna Landry's research has influenced cultural policymakers in Turkey, created new opportunities for tourism, promoted awareness of Ottoman and equestrian history internationally, and benefitted cultural providers through collaborations. In 2009 Landry and her research team re-enacted for 40 days the 1671 horseback journey undertaken by the celebrated Ottoman travel-writer Evliya Çelebi en route to Mecca. The team attracted media coverage and built links with local communities. Landry has since collaborated in developing the Way and otherwise promoting Ottoman history and horseback travel as resources capable of delivering economic and heritage benefits to Turkey.
Queen Mary's research in Renaissance Studies has informed curatorial practice at cultural institutions in the UK and abroad, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Cini Foundation in Venice, producing displays that have reflected new conceptual approaches to the Renaissance and that have captured the imagination of large, general audiences. Their success was due, in part, to the close synergies between curators and Queen Mary scholars, including shared PhD student supervision through the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award scheme and through co-curation. Novel research ideas influenced the conceptualisation and approach to exhibits on Renaissance topics, manifested in new ways of presenting images and objects and their accompanying interpretative materials, such as catalogues, wall texts, events, and engagement with the media.
The history of cartography research group at Queen Mary have exploited their research on the cultural history of maps in the early modern period to enhance public understanding of mapmaking and the knowledge that maps create. They have taken their academic research to a wider audience through authored television and radio programmes, research council-funded books, public lectures and reviews across a range of media. In this way, their research has generated significant economic impact, contributing to the economic prosperity of the creative sector, including trade publishing, print media journalism, television, and literary festivals, and improving the quality of evidence, argument and expression in public discourse on contemporary map-making.
The Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) actively promotes cross-sector collaboration and exchange with cultural institutions outside Higher Education. Through these partnerships, MEMS research in material culture and spatial studies by Catherine Richardson and Bernhard Klein has delivered public benefits by changing curatorial practices in the heritage sector and by influencing the content and the form of the education of doctoral students in the Humanities beyond the University of Kent. This research has been used by cultural providers, engaged wide public audiences, significantly enriched the experience of a large number of individuals, and changed the policies of several institutions within and outside the UK.
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.
This case study concerns two forms of impact from the 2012 BBC2 television series, The Crusades, based on the research of Asbridge (www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01b3fpw): on the public understanding of the crusades; and on the creative industries. Asbridge's landmark television series, which he wrote and presented, informed public understanding of the crusades as an historical event with contemporary echoes in international political debate. In this example of one area of the School's historical research, a Queen Mary historian has drawn upon two decade's research on the history of the crusades to mediate his findings for a national and international public audience. Asbridge's series presented his research in an accessible, non-technical form to over two million viewers in the UK and to audiences across the world from Australia to Russia. In achieving a major BBC television commission to produce a series based on his research, Asbridge also made a contribution to the creative industries. The Crusades led to employment and prosperity for a television production company (360 Productions — www.360production.com/) and to the development of BBC television history.
For Professor Marina Warner literature acts as a cultural ambassador to open up dialogue in a globalised world riven by ideological and military conflict. She has used her research, which culminated in her multi-award-winning book Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, to make a historical and cultural contribution to understanding the Middle East from the point of view of literary and artistic inter-relationships. She has used the extraordinary success of the book to raise public awareness through a series of international engagements. In the process she has addressed millions and contributed to cultural capital and debate worldwide. She has also directed the selection strategy of a major New York publisher, the Library of Arabic Literature.
Professor Benjamin Kaplan is a pioneer of what has been called `the new history of toleration', which is of great significance to the public's understanding of the possibilities for peaceful coexistence between people of different faiths in the post-9/11 world. More than any other work in this revisionist school of historical writing, Kaplan's book Divided by Faith has been read and discussed by journalists, human rights organisations, churches and other non-academic audiences in North America, Britain and The Netherlands; it has also widely been used in university teaching. Kaplan's research has thus profoundly influenced public discourse and academic education regarding the history and character of religious toleration.