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Professor David Feldman's research has influenced thinking about antisemitism, racism and multiculturalism among a range of organisations and policy makers. Since becoming first director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism in 2010, he has shaped its development by pursuing a distinctive course of public engagement, with partners such as the All Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, underpinned by the insights of his research over two decades. As a result, he and the Pears Institute are recognised as significant forces shaping public discourse and policy thinking on issues related to antisemitism.
Research by Michael Berkowitz, François Guesnet and John D. Klier has inspired and informed a wide range of public engagement, including exhibitions, popular television shows (such as Who Do You Think You Are? reaching 5.82 million viewers) and lively conversation on internet-based forums. Their work on Jewish life and culture in continental Europe and Britain has shaped and provided vital content to local, national and international communities numbering in the millions. Through non-academic conferences and lectures, stimulated and contributed to international public debate on little-discussed histories, and provided cultural organisations an opportunity to promote and participate in this debate.
Academic work carried out at the University of Southampton's Parkes Institute has greatly raised public awareness and understanding of the Holocaust. The research has challenged audiences to reflect on the individual consequences of discrimination and urges them to recognise and respond to the continuing contemporary dangers of genocide. Through various projects, the research has impacted upon international audiences: with a website averaging 24,000 hits per month; with museum exhibitions, for close to three million visitors; and with research-based study-days for school and adult learners. Throughout, the work emphasises the devastation wrought by the Holocaust on `ordinary' people, and reflects upon the `ordinariness' of genocide in the twentieth century.
Bangor's research on stereotyping of Jews, Jewishness and Judaism in contemporary global media significantly facilitates understanding on the part of the public, media, religious educators and cultural industries of challenges facing Jewish cultures and communities, thus impacting on civil society, cultural life and public discourse. Bangor's work enhances regional, national and international public awareness of contemporary media's representations of Jewishness and stereotyping. Its presentation of Jewish cultural heritage helps to preserve and conserve it while increasing understanding of social and cultural identity and encouraging social inclusion.
Professor Raphael's research into the theological meaning of women's experience during the Holocaust, the Jewishness of Jewish Art and idol-breaking as a key tool in the criticism of contemporary culture has had religious, cultural, political and educational impact outside the Higher Education academy. Her work has helped three constituencies to make theological or spiritual sense of the Holocaust, to understand the political connections between gender and genocide and to appreciate the theological relationship of modern Jewish art to the tradition. These constituencies are:
i. the general public;
ii. Jews and Christians on ordination training courses where religious art and modern Jewish thought are studied;
iii. Sixth-form pupils studying the problem of evil.