IMPACT

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History at Northumbria has longstanding partnerships with arts and heritage organisations in our region, and we have co-designed research projects with national and international partners, from the Cooperative Group and the Environment Agency to the Union of International Associations. 

We are submitting four impact case studies to REF 2021, as follows:

• Enabling Protestant working-class engagement with literary culture and creating new space for reconciliation in Northern Ireland
• Reimagining Co-operation: Supporting the principles and practice of co-operative organisations in a time of crisis 
• Martin Luther King in Newcastle: Improved Understanding and Engagement with the Commemoration of Regional Diversity, BAME History and Social Justice Traditions 
• Creating a 21st Century Diasporic Association: Transforming the EU Citizens Campaign Group ‘the3Million’

Find out more about these case studies below. They are drawn from across our research groups, coming from Conflict and Society, Histories of Activism, American Studies, and Global and Transnational History.

To read all impact case studies in full, please click here.

All members of the History team engage with partners outside the academy: current beneficiaries of our research include businesses, libraries and museums, government agencies and community groups. In this REF cycle we have led community engagement projects focusing on the First World War: for example the Dominion Geordies project, which mobilised citizen historians to research the lives of North East men and women who served in the Dominion armies; and British Ex-Service Students and the Rebuilding of Europe, which explored the war generation’s entry into higher education.

Our growing expertise in Environmental Humanities has led to fruitful partnerships focusing on the rural and urban environment: from research on historic flood mitigation measures in partnership with the Environment Agency, United Utilities and Northumbria Water, to mapping the history of radical activism in Tyneside’s built environment. We have worked with museums, archives and other organisations to maximise the benefits of the collections they hold (for example through the Trading Places project which helped facilitate a reconsideration of Scottish diaspora history in the National Museum of Scotland’s collections). We have businesses and organisations – from the Coop to the National Union of Students – to examine how their past informs present and future activity.