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Professor Figes's research on private lives in Soviet Russia has played a significant role in transforming public understanding of Soviet history in the UK and internationally. Two of his books are at the heart of this case study: The Whisperers (2008) and Just Send Me Word (2012) with combined international, multilingual sales of over 170,000. Between them, they have impacts both in cultural life — introducing a new understanding of life in Soviet Russia and new resources for education and research — and, as publishing successes, in economic terms. His research also provided the basis for retrieving archive materials belonging to the Russian NGO, Memorial, from a raid by Russian authorities.
There is enormous public interest in the Russian Revolution and Soviet Communism. Robert Service's biographies of the three early Soviet leaders - Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky - together with his general histories of twentieth-century Russia have reached an international mass public and, in particular, have had a deep influence on the teaching of the subject in secondary schools and universities through the central place they occupy on A-level and degree-level history syllabi. In addition, Service is regularly invited to lecture to parliamentary select committees, the FCO, the Defence Academy and national business organisations.
University of Glasgow research has contributed to the founding and development of two unique research networks, the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNet) and Translating Russian and East European Cultures (TREEC), creating new, innovative forums for dialogue and influence on refugee, asylum and migration policy across Scotland and beyond. By cultivating relationships with policy-makers, practitioners and other stakeholders, Glasgow researchers have enhanced service delivery for marginalised groups such as LGBT asylum seekers, and informed policy debates at local, regional and national level. GRAMNet and TREEC have also fed directly into a series of public engagement events and activities around the translation, performance and memorialisation of different cultures in Scotland.
Previously unexplored aspects of the life and works of Russia's first Nobel Prize winner for literature, Ivan Bunin (1870-1953), were used in supporting new translations of the author's books, Dark Avenues and The Village. Glasgow researcher Andrei Rogatchevski supplied the key supplements to what were the first new translations of Bunin's work in three decades. These volumes, published by Alma Classics, have sold a combined total of 3,433 copies in the UK and overseas, exceeding the publisher's sales target and garnering positive critical acclaim.
An exhibition stimulated reflection on and provided new knowledge and perspectives on migration — historical and contemporary — for audiences in Nottingham and Glasgow. Linked teacher resources enhanced the capacity of local teachers to deliver challenging content on cross-curricula themes such as displacement, migration and asylum.
Physical material and cultural capital (individual and group memory as embodied in audio-visual oral histories) which would otherwise have disappeared have been preserved and transformed into educational material for a local Ukrainian community organisation, adding to its resource base and capacity. A national Polish diasporic community organisation has benefitted from access to research and advice to enhance its capacity to engage new audiences with its work and histories.
In 2012 and 2013 Andy Byford provided expert consultancy at the Department of Educational Psychology, Moscow Pedagogical State University (MPGU), advising its staff, trainees, and a wider network of beneficiaries in Russian educational and child-welfare services. Insights from Byford's research prompted the network to perceive itself as part of a broader scientific and professional movement, and stimulated further collaboration within Russian children's and educational services. The Department expanded its use of the history of Russian child science in the training of educational psychologists, teachers and other specialists in education and child welfare. Byford's research also contributed directly to the Department's teaching and assessment, and was incorporated into a textbook of professional training for educational psychologists, of which he is co-author.
The Los Niños oral history project has added a new voice to the discourse around conflict and migration, and in doing so has brought a forgotten chapter of Spanish Civil War history to the attention of the public and media. The insights gathered have found resonance locally, nationally and internationally, as people across three generations gained greater awareness and understanding of the experience of exile. Outputs have been widely disseminated through a digital archive of life stories, a popular oral history book, a virtual and a touring exhibition, a set of online education resources and two documentary films.
Dr Finnin's research has raised and enriched the profile of Ukraine as a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional cultural space bound together by projects of inter- and intra-national solidarity. His scholarly work has inspired and informed a high-profile public engagement programme, which has centred on an annual film festival launched in 2008, an annual evening of literary readings begun in 2010, and two exhibitions in 2009 and 2010. In Ukraine these outputs have in turn garnered extensive media attention, contributing to the preservation of a beleaguered cultural tradition and to the reconciliation of national communities (Ukrainian, Russian, Crimean Tatar) all with traumatic pasts.
The impact is based on research challenging conventional approaches to state-media relations in multicultural societies, with particular reference to Russia. The body of research has (a) informed the work of policy makers and NGOs by providing them with a more nuanced view of media-state relations in Russia, and of their implications for international affairs, including the rise of new cold war tensions; (b) made these groups aware of the importance of inter-ethnic and interfaith tensions to Russian media practices, and of parallels with media practices elsewhere; (c) contributed to the enhancement of public comprehension of the complexities of the Russian media environment.
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.