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Wilkinson has developed, evaluated and applied techniques, standards and datasets for facial depiction and identification of the dead. The impacts include:
The impact described in this case study is the significant enhancement of the public understanding and appreciation of the work of the French writer Guillaume Apollinaire, notably through greater awareness of the quality of the work resulting from his creative dialogues with Pablo Picasso and other visual artists. This impact has been achieved through Peter Read's collaborations with museum curators (especially at the Centre Pompidou in Metz, France), and through the dissemination of his archival research findings in major exhibition catalogues, illustrated books, magazine and newspaper articles, public lectures, and radio broadcasts. Read's research has also been cited in influential works by other critics, biographers, and historians. As a result, Read's research is now a key point of reference in the public discussion of Apollinaire, Picasso, and other Paris-based writers and artists of the early twentieth century.
Memory Maps is an online archive of writings and images inspired by East Anglia and especially Essex. The project explores people's relationship with place. It seeks to alter public perceptions of the region and to foster ecological awareness of the natural and the made environment. Developed by Essex literature academics in collaboration with The Victoria and Albert Museum, the Memory Maps project has successfully stimulated amateurs and professionals to practise the genre of psycho-geographical writing. The team has also promoted the project to a wide general audience through public symposia, book festivals, and contributions to international media including a feature-length documentary.
The Unforgotten Coat, winner of the 2012 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and German Children's Book Award 2013, has been praised for highlighting the plight of young asylum seekers. It remains a core text for the Reader Organisation (RO) reading groups in the community and in prison. It was launched on World Book Day 2011, distributed to approximately 50,000 disenfranchised children and has been translated into several languages, receiving worldwide acclaim. The subject matter, and creative process underpinning it, fed directly into important learning initiatives and materials for schools in the North West, workshops at Liverpool's Bluecoat Arts Centre and for Merseyside's the Haven Project. The international reach of the book is reflected in its victory in the aforementioned Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis 2013 and a further nomination for the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) for the prestigious 2014 IBBY international Honours List in Mexico 2014, a nomination based on its highlighting of the lives of today's young asylum seekers.
As a result of research by Prof. Sanjoy Bhattacharya since October 2010 at York into the history of disease control, the social determinants of health, and primary healthcare, the Department of History's Centre for Global Health Histories (CGHH) was invited to formalize and develop the WHO's Global Health Histories (GHH) project, including its annual flagship seminar series in Geneva. This research programme has had a major impact on institutional practice within the WHO headquarters and its regional offices: (i) through the promotion of greater transparency and openness toward internal and external stakeholders; (ii) in leading the WHO to use historical research for staff training and development; (iii) by leading the WHO to encourage partner governmental and non-governmental organizations to make greater use of historical research in developing and running health policies. Due to the success of GHH in these areas, historical analysis has now been designated an Office Specific Expected Result for departments within the WHO HQ. It is now an officially required and audited activity for evaluations of major campaigns and for teams planning new projects.
Five historic Blackfoot First Nations hide shirts held in the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) since 1893 were lent to two museums in Alberta, Canada, to promote cross-cultural exchange of knowledge. Under historic assimilation policies (1885-1970), most heritage objects had been removed from Blackfoot communities to museums, contributing to the destabilization of Blackfoot cultural identity and poor mental and physical health typical of indigenous populations. For the first time in a century over 500 Blackfoot people were able to handle objects made before the assimilation era. This provoked the sharing of cultural knowledge within the Blackfoot community, led to improved self-esteem, and intensified interest and pride in cultural identity. In exchange, Blackfoot people shared cultural knowledge about the shirts with museum professionals from all UK museums with significant Blackfoot collections, trained them in new approaches to museology, and co-curated exhibitions sharing Blackfoot perspectives in Alberta and Oxford reaching over 50,000 people.
A popular, influential and highly acclaimed public exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, London, and Wien Museum, `Madness and Modernity: Mental Illness and the Visual Arts in Vienna 1900' (2009), demonstrates the impacts of an interdisciplinary research cluster within Birkbeck's History of Art Department. Working with a number of academic and non-academic partners in Plymouth, London and Vienna, the AHRC-funded project contributed a new understanding of the development and role of the arts in turn-of-the-century Vienna. By engaging participants in new experiences and knowledge, it generated considerable media interest and public discourse that particularly benefited the non-academic partners.
Making Histories Visible produces visual art projects with internationally recognised museums and galleries, in which new artworks and installations activate institutional and curatorial policies to re-examine collections and collecting. By investigating the historic through the contemporary, using the mechanisms of display and interventions, youth centred workshops, symposia, web-sites and publications; we help museums find new relevance within contemporary society.
Thin Black Line(s) Tate Britain (2011/12), Cotton Global Threads Whitworth and Manchester Galleries (2011/2012), Jelly Mould Pavilions NML (2010), reflect collaborations and sustainable relationships with a wide, influential range of museum curators, directors and community leaders.
Recent calls from indigenous peoples for information about and access to historic artefacts crucial to their well-being have led to a re-evaluation of both private and museum-held collections. These collections are now being used in innovative ways to revitalise cultural knowledge and to record marginalised historical perspectives. This case study documents one such project. The funding for the Material Histories project (2005-07), which came from AHRC, included specific provision for public outreach work. This comprised a temporary exhibition held at the Marischal Museum, University of Aberdeen (4 February to 11 May 2008), an educational website and public talks. Most recently the project has stimulated the development of cultural awareness training in Northern Manitoba, Canada.
Investigating how artistic reputation is constructed and sustained, Meyrick considers the professional and institutional forces that shape our artistic heritage. Sourcing, documenting, interpreting and displaying difficult-to-access artworks and archival materials, his research raises awareness of once influential now forgotten 20th-century British artists and collectors. Recovering `lost' cultural capital, Meyrick engages the public through touring exhibitions, publications and public appearances. His research outcomes enrich our cultural life as well as public understanding and appreciation of British print history and Welsh visual culture. They are the principal sources of reference for a wide range of beneficiaries, from curators and dealers to broadcasters and general audiences.