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- A Socio-Economic Study of Cork City Northwest Quarter Regeneration (CNWQR)
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- The Augustinian Friars in Late Medieval Ireland
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- Architectural Space and the Imagination: Houses in Literature and Art from Classical to Contemporary
- Dr. Marie Kelly (School of Film, Music & Theatre) co-edits : Scene 8 Volumes 1 and 2 (2021) – Special Issue: ‘Performance and Ireland’ (Intellect)
- The significance of humanities scholarship in challenging times
- Dr Sarah Foley, a Lecturer in the School of Applied Psychology, was awarded an NUI Grant for Early Career Academics in 2020
- NUI Awards Grant for #DouglassWeek: 8th-14th February, 2021
- Humanities for the Anthropocene
- Forgotten Lord Mayor: Donal Óg O’Callaghan, 1920-1924
- Dr Siobhan O’Sullivan - Agency and ageing in place in rural Ireland
- Launch of new research cluster on 'Life Writing'
- What keeps us going?
- Through the lens of the secret police: Images from the religious underground in Eastern Europe
- Dr. Amanullah De Sondy - The Pocket Facts Guide for Jewish, Christian and Muslim People 2020
- Issue 19 of Alphaville published by The Department of Film and Screen Media
- Digital Edgeworth Network
- Make Film History: Opening up the Archives to Young Filmmakers
- Establishment of monthly online reading group on Abolition and Decarceration
- Dr Anne Marie Devlin (Applied Linguistics) published a special issue on Study abroad and the Erasmus+ programme in Europe
- Dr. Barbara Siller (Department of German), has co-published an edition on literary multilingualism.
- Postgraduate Researchers from MA in Medieval History produce Mapping Cork online exhibition
- Adaptation Considered as a Collaborative Art: Process and Practice, (Eds.: Bernadette Cronin, Rachel MagShamhráin and Nikolai Preuschoff
- (Non)Spectacular Infrastructure: Enacting Resource Circulation in Stages, Studios and Communities
- Dr. Clíona O’Carroll (Department of Folklore) has received an IRC New Foundations grant
- Dr Catherine Forde from the School of Applied Social Studies has been awarded an IRC New Foundations grant
- Elderly (non)migrants’ narratives of home: A comparative study of place-making in Ireland and Slovakia (EMNaH)
- Dr. Ken Ó Donnchú, lecturer in the Department of Modern Irish, has received an IRC New Foundations Award
- Decolonizing Irish Public Heritage
- EMBRACE - Exploring Mobility: Borders Refugees and Challenging Exclusion
- Dr. Marica Cassarino (School of Applied Psychology) awarded Royal Irish Academy and British Academy Knowledge Frontiers Network Funding
- CACSSS Postdoc wins Charlemont Grant
- Childhood, Religion and School Injustice by Karl Kitching
- New Collaboration between UCC, RTÉ and the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht
- Cork Movie Memories - Dan O’Connell and Gwenda Young (Department of Film and Screen Media
- Chronicles of COVID-19/Cuntais COVID-19’ initiative: testimony collection by Cork Folklore Project
- Dr. Rachel MagShamhrain (Head of Department of German) has published a co-edited collection on Adaptation
- Professor Caitríona Ní Dhúill (Department of German) has published a new monograph
- Two School Postdoctoral Fellows Awarded Royal Irish Academy and British Academy Funding
- Funding Success for Dr Joanna Hofer-Robinson
- New Collaboration between UCC, RTÉ and the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht
- CACSSS Postdoc wins Charlemont Grant
- Applied Social Studies team win ESWRA Outstanding Publication Award 2020
- CACSSS postdoc is awarded Maurice J. Bric Medal of Excellence at IRC’s Researcher of the Year Awards 2019.
- Past postdoctoral researchers in the College
- Dr Mastoureh Fathi
- Dr Michalis Poupazis
- Dr Richard Mason
- Dr Martin Wall
- Dr Rebekah Brennan
- Dr Tatiana Vagramenko
- Dr Anca Maria Șincan
- Dr Agnes Hesz
- Dr Gabriela Nicolescu
- Dr Kinga Povedák
- Dr Declan Taggart
- Dr Anne-Julie Lafaye
- Dr Ken Keating
- Dr Laura Maye
- Dr Martina Piperno
- Dr Brandon Yen
- Dr Annie Cummins
- Dr Rebecca Boyd
- Dr Sean Hewitt
- University Staff Recognition Awards
- CACSSS Welcome new MSCA Funded Fellows
- College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences opens a research facility on Wandesford Quay
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- Workshop Series Capturing and Recording Impact May 2019
- Designing and Delivering Impact in Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences - 13-03-17
- Introduction and Welcome Dr Helena Buffery (Vice Head Research, CACSSS) & Prof Patrick O'Donovan (Head of College, CACSSS)
- Johan Robberecht (Universite libre de Bruxelles)
- Dr Esther Oliver (University of Barcelona)
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- Upcoming Events
- 13 April - Poetry Lectures in Cork: The un:heard, un:seemly un:heard-of writing more cultures
- 14 April - Attacks against Women: From the Web to the Physical World
- 14 April - From Old English to Old English Online: Creating an Open-Source Platform for Learning Historical Languages
- 15 April - 'Competing communities; Irish colleges, clergy and students in Paris, 1660-1685
- 16 April - CACSSS Scholarship Awards 2021
- 22 April - Reading Gender as Power and Process in Modern Irish History
- 22 April - The formal lament in accentual poetry
- 21 September - ‘we didn’t necessarily need a typewriter’: Feminist Publishing in the Kilbarrack Women’s Writing Group, 1980-1992
- 2020 Archive
- 21 February - Ruth Matilda Anderson in Galicia (1923-26): An American View on a Vanishing World
- 31 January - 'EU Never Know': UCC talks Brexit
- 26 February - Turning Uncertainty into Risk: Humans’ Killer App
- 28 January - From Baudelaire through Picasso to Sartre: Scenes from the lives of the demonic avant-guarde
- 30 January - What a Country the State’s in – Reflection on the development of the Irish Welfare State
- 27 February - Exploring Mens Sheds in South Kerry: spaces of social inclusion, wellbeing, and masculinities
- 22 January -That corpse you planted last year in your garden’: T. S. Eliot and Golden Age Detective Fiction
- 9 December - The Special Rapporteur for Child Protection in Ireland: stories from the field
- 17 November - Sacred Space and Sacred Symbol, East and West: Maximus the Confessor, Eriugena and Abbot Suger on Liturgical Space and Function
- 4 March - The Exonerative Deterministic: Uses of Neo-Naturalism in Twenty-First Century American Culture
- 28 January - Mind the Gap: Helena Augusta and the Women of the Tetrachy
- 10 December - Monks and medicine in medieval Ireland
- 19 November - Teen hackers, Hollywood, and the roots of American cyber insecurity'
- 17 December - Infectious Extremism: How the Chinese government normalises its campaign of internment in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
- 7 / 10 / 11 February - Seminar and events with Helena Tornero
- 26 November - US Foreign Policy after the 2020 Election
- 17 December - Book Launch - "The Reception of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Britain; East Comes West"
- 24 November - Migration, Race and Ethnicity Department of Sociology and Criminology
- 26 November - Danielle McLaughlin: Public Presentation
- 13 February - 14 March - Cork Cinemas exhibition
- 15 December - Interrogating violent extremism in Kenya from a feminist perspective using body mapping
- 30 January - ‘Other' Voices: Children and Music within Asylum Seeker Accommodation
- 27 November - Birthing alone: the movement to revise current maternity care restrictions
- 7 October - Ports, Past and Present: Cultural Research, Community Engagement and Impact
- 22 December - Alan Gilsenan: Public Presentation
- 26 November - History paper: 'Poles in University College Cork after World War Two
- 8 October - Curatorial Conversations: Bruno Leitão
- 17 December - An indulgence to the natives? William Beddell's translation of the Bible into Irish
- 14 October - Webinar on cultural activism in Latin America SPLAS
- 9 October - Through the Lens of the Secret Police: Images of the Religious Underground in Eastern Europe
- 15 October - Constructing a Framework for Human Security - Values, Goals and Leadership
- 15October - UCC’s Violence, Conflict and Gender cluster presents talk on Representing GBV followed by virtual flashmob performance
- 26 February - Cultural Collaboration and the Digital Repository
- 25 February - Reading the Inscriptions on the York group of Anglo-Saxon Gold Shillings (c. AD 630)
- 26 February - Domestic Abuse, Pregnancy and Early-stage Parenting: Developing feminist-informed interventions to support mothers and babies
- 5 March - Hostile Terrain 94 Exhibition Launch and Panel Discussion
- 9 March - Looking and seeing: developing creative visual methodologies in social science research
- 20 October The Performance of Magic in Medieval Irish Narrative
- 9 November - Research as participatory process: participative and reflective methods
- 22 October - What keeps us going? The significance of humanities scholarship in challenging times
- 5 November - Launch of new research cluster on 'Life Writing' Centre for Advanced Study in Languages and Cultures (CASiLaC)
- 10 November - Remaining Critical about Mental Health Matters in Pandemic Crises - 12th Annual Critical Perspectives in Mental Health Conference
- 4 November - [Serious/Speculative/Science] Fiction: Towards a Reader-Oriented Theory of a Genre’
- 12 November - What keeps us going? The significance of humanities scholarship in challenging times
- 12 November - The example of "Valiant Little Ireland"; The Irish revolution in Algerian nationalist thought
- December 3 - Starvation as natural disaster? The role of environment in the Soviet post-war famine in European and global context
- 2021 Archive
- 5 - 28 January 2021 - Exploring Space and Place – Siobhán Ní Dhuinnín
- 28 January - Siobhán Ní Dhuinnín: Public Presentation
- 28 January - 'The Absentee Duchess; Female slave-ownership in the aristocratic world'
- 1 February - Murder most Foreign: Crime Fiction in Translation
- 4 March - Franco-Irish relations and the question of Algeria at the United Nations, 1955-1962
- 2 February - Split Screens: Starving for Connections
- 5 March - Special Screening of 'To the Moon'
- 25 February - Difficulties determining early Irish regional territories: some possible locations for the Leinster Lagán and the Donegal Lagán
- 24 March - Brexit, Northern Ireland and the Protocol
- 9 February - Research Seminar: “The Essayistic Portrait and the Limits of Representation”
- 18 March - 'Sound out' and 'dig in' to the UCC Folklore and Ethnology Archive (UCCFEA)
- 8 Feb - 1 March - UCC Dante Public Lecture Series 2021
- 3 February - A Name They had Made Noble’: Reclaiming Speranza and William Wilde
- 30 March - The case for including the early Irish legal tract Bretha Forloisctheo ‘Judgements on Arson’ in the Senchas Már
- 24 March - Subjective Beliefs and Economic Preferences During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Preliminary Analysis of Experimental Data from a US Sample
- 3 March - Queer Muslim Diasporas in Contemporary Literature and Film
- 24 February - Building Bridges: Building Agency
- 4 February - Ireland’s UN Security Council term 2021-2022
- 4 February - A controversial Churchill bust recalls a forgotten relationship: John Quinn and Jacob Epstein, 1910-24
- 26 February - UCC Applied Linguistics Seminar Series 2021 Postgraduate Research (PhD)
- 23 March - Evaluating the National Carers Strategy - Future Directions
- 24 March - From Creative Performativity to Irish Art
- 31 March - “A Howling Forum": Ted Solotaroff and the New American Review
- 25 February - 'The Sunniva legend and the Cistercian authorship of the earliest Norwegian hagiography
- 28 March - Revisiting Development Theories
- 11 March - Posthuman Ethics
- 24 February - Naming Pibloktoq: Visual Sovereignty in the Archives
- 23 February - Writing a Letter in the Age of Bede
- 18 March - An awful lot so quietly; Owen McCann, son of Ireland, South Africa's first Prince of the Church
- 11 - February 'Contending Internationalisms; British, American and French ....
- 25 February - The Freedom of the Seas versus the Constraints of the Land – Delivering Maritime Security on the Fault-Line in Between
- 16 March - Decolonising Methodologies and/as Enfleshed Reason
- 4 March - Annual Peter Dempsey Lecture 2021 - "Online sexual violence – psychological strategies to disrupt and deter
- 18 February - Deploying a Gender Lens: Snapshots from Current Research
- 11 March - Economic Theology & Governmentality
- 3 March - The Time of the Tans - Memory and the Irish War of Independence
- Archive
- 4 February - Léacht Chaoimhín Uí Dhanachair / The Kevin Danahare Lecture
- 10 March - On the new socioeconomics of trust: Labour market precarity and generalised trust in a multi-national context
- 5 February - Charlotte Smith’s Solitaries and her “Strange Shells” of Poetry'
- 11 March - Inclusion on stage? - Shakespearean productions and racism, sexism, and ableism
- 6 February - The Great Conversation; Citizens and peace-making after the Great War
- 18 March - Women and Domestic Textual Production, 1550-1700
- 25 March - The Hannah Lynch Project and the Irish Women’s Writing Network (1880-1920
- 11 February - Migration Pedagogy (Lecture and Workshop)
- 18 February - Queer Visibility, Media Industries and Production Cultures: An Irish Case Study
- 23 April - Migration Pedagogy (Lecture and Workshop)
- 28 February - Reinterpreting Ireland's past? History, identity and Sir James Ware (1594-1666)
- 4 March - Peruvian Film Week
- 4 March - Reading Series presents acclaimed poets August Kleinzahler and Thomas McCarthy.
- 5 March - Masterclass with Robert Byrne
- 7 March - RTÉ Radio 1 Céilí House Recording
- 20 February - Music, Sound, and Power in Contemporary Places of Detention
- 8 March - Research Seminar with Eva Cabrejas and Rhys Davies
- 8 March - Heroines, Theories, Translations a Festschrift and conference for Dr Angela Ryan.
- 11 March - Trust and Decision Making in eHealth
- 12 March - Of Relays and Networks: Mapping Disorder and Affiliation in Contemporary Film Narration
- 12 March - Citizens’ Dialogues on the Future of Europe: Why they are flawed and how they can be improved.
- 13 March - PERFORUM SPRING 2019 Theatre of the Image
- 13 March - Domestic Disruptions: Women, Conflict and Literature, 1914-1923
- 14 March - Flood and cataclysm in Roman epic
- 14 March - Understanding & Predicting Species Distributions and Phenological Shifts: A GIScience approach
- 14 March - Bosch’s bug: Monstrosity, devilry, and anti-Judaism on the St John on Patmos panel by Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516)
- 19 March - Theatres of the Dead Performance, Anatomy and Archaeology
- 20 March - An Evening with Arts Council/UCC Film Artist, Pat Murphy
- 21 March - Ireland’s Aid to Post-War Europe, 1945-1950: the case of Italy
- 21 March - Writing Letters on the Stage: Immigration and Transnational Identity in Recent Francophone Drama from Quebec
- 22 March - ‘Electric News in Colonial Algeria’
- 25 March - Film screening of Donna Haraway's 'Story telling for earthly survival'
- 25 March - Timing, Tempo and Processes of Puberty: Effects on Adolescent Biology, Health and Behaviour
- 26 March - Assessing Municipal Districts in Irish Local Government using Cork and Kildare County Council as specific case studies
- 27 March - Stories for Our Times? Retelling the Norse Myths
- 27 March - UCC Jean Monnet Lecture: 'Picking up the Pieces: Restoring Relationships after Brexit'
- 28 March - “Fiction and Remembrance” Masterclass Programme
- April and May 2019 - Exhibition: 'Ireland and the English Lake Poets'
- 1 April - An occupational perspective on time use and wellbeing
- 2 April - Rethinking public participatory spaces, institutional design in nascent democracies: A Nigerian case study
- 2 April - Vsing Extractivism: Environmental Colonialism and the Right to Look Otherwise in the Americas
- 3 April - East meets West: shifting the perspective from one to oneness
- 3 April - Varieties of Affective Scaffolds
- 5 April - Oral Histories of Health, Illness and Medical Care
- 5 April - Exploring Cinema-going past and present
- 5 and 6 April - DNA by Denis Kelly
- 9 April - ISS21 Children & Young People Cluster Research Showcase
- 9 April - Colombia's Cerrejón Mine: Impacts on Women and Indigenous Communities
- 9 April - THE MAYOR NECESSITIES: Can directly elected mayors transform local government in Ireland?
- 10 April - Dark Italy: a Journey through Italian Crime fiction
- 10 April - Challenges in Current Ageing Research
- 10 April - A Memory Morning (part of the Cork Lifelong Learning Festival)
- 11 April -Fairy Lore and Landscapes Exhibition, Curated by Dr Jenny Butler
- 11 April - Dr Silke Arnold-de Simine Reader in Memory, Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck, University of London
- 12 April - Maritime Spaces, Shows, and the Nineteenth-Century City
- 12 and 13 April - Irish Women's History in International Contexts
- 26 April - Seminar and poetry reading with Carmen Camacho and Keith Payne
- 1 May - Italy is Out – a talk by Italian photographer Mario Badagliacca
- 8 May - Educational inequality and health inequality: a European analysis
- 13 May - Children’s Literature Lunchtime Seminar
- 16 May - Precarious Work and Gender Inequality in Higher Education: Researching for Change
- 17 May - SEA CHANGE, COMMUNITY ARTS ENCOUNTERS “Socially Engaged Arts on the island of Ireland - A Blueprint for Change”
- 17 May - Interview Skills Workshop
- 21 May - How are Latin American Emerging Markets Economies politically constructing and leveraging their investment policies?
- 24 May - On the 80th aniversary of the end of the spanish civil war
- 28 May - Words for the Wise: Poetry and politics in Medieval Islamic Iran
- 29 May - Literature and Urgency in Brazil
- 7th June - The Future of EU-China Business Relations
- 26 June- The Online Catalogue of the Cork Folklore Project, and present on ‘Accelerating Change: Oral History, Innovation, and Impact’.
- 5 September - Women in Contemporary Irish Film – Symposium
- 14 September - Ireland Wildlife Film Festival
- 18 September - Post-pastoral readings of nature and gender in literature
- 20 September - Critical Welfare State Studies Conference 2019: Critical perspectives on stigma, shame and the Irish welfare imaginary.
- 20 September - UCC Irish-language Culture Night Events at UCC's Music Department
- 24 September - Insular Church Metalwork from Viking-Age Scandinavia
- 25 September - The Dangerous Invisibility: Shamanism, Christianity and Natural Disasters among the Chepang of Nepal
- 25 September - The invention of the New Zealand economy and the geography of statistics
- 26 September - Growing Pains: Childcare markets in neoliberal times
- 27 September - Border Narratives and Hispaniola : Cultural Perspectives and Human Rights in Dialogue
- 2 October - Poems about Women from Eighteenth-Century Ireland
- 7 October - Research Workshops on the Preparation of ERC Applications
- 7 October - How to retire if you are a Roman Emperor!
- 7 October - Launch of CARL report on Workplace Violence in the Disability Sector
- 7 October - Embedded Systems: Music, Buzz and … Applied Psychology
- 8 October - UCC’s School of English Reading Series
- 8 October - ISLAND - towards an ethics of seeing
- 9 October - The Relationship between War, Monarchism and Republicanism in Ireland's Revolutionary Decade, 1912-1923
- 10 October - Cybercrime Kingpins. The Changing Division of Criminal Labour within the Modern Cybercrime Ecosystem
- 10 October - Rivalry and ritual revenge: singers, patrons and honour culture in mid-17th-century Rome
- 11 October - Research Workshops on the Preparation of ERC Applications-Dr. Graziano Ceddia (Universität Bern)
- 15 October - Occlusion and Backlighting
- 15 October - Home, Art and Memory: Refugee Women’s Narratives of Displacement in Turkey
- 16 October - The Literary Childhood of Lady Rachel Fane (1613-1680)
- 16 October -Museums do it with the lights on: collaborative practice and embodied learning in the university art gallery
- 24 October - Special UCC Jean Monnet Lecture: 'Brexit - A Belfast Perspective'
- 24 October - Pluralism, Sound, and Belonging: Cameroonian-Irish Voices and Ireland's Immigration Realities
- 25 October - Book Launch Carlos Garrido Castellano Beyond Representation in Contemporary Caribbean Art
- 30 October - The Politics and Aesthetics of the Individual Character of the Letter
- 5 November - Tableau Information Visualisation Workshop
- 5 - 7 November - Dancing for Architecture
- 7 November - Translation for Peace
- 8 November - Sketch That Story and Make It Popular: Using Graphic Narratives in Feminist Activism against Gender Violence
- 13 November - Middlebrow Modernism: Irish Writers and The New Yorker in the Mid-20th Century
- 13 November Book launch: Inside Out
- 14 November - FUAIM Lecture: "Secret Codes of Sounds: the multi-sensorial listening flutist."
- 14 November - “New light on the Irish Revolution: from the papers of Diarmaid Fawsitt (1884-1967)”
- 15 November - Reflections on Institutionalising Gender Equality
- 19 November - The Power of Chant
- 21 November - Postcards from Buenos Aires - An Irishman in Argentina, 1907-10
- 21 November - The challenges and opportunities of preservation and of digital technology; and of the importance of preserving film heritage.
- 22 November - What is Cinema Memory
- 22 November - Mining Memories: New Explorations in Cinema, Memory and the Past
- 27 November - Ulysses, the Cattle Economy and the Unwritten Agrarian Code
- 28 November - Humour, Humours, Negotiations: the Secret Languages of Somerville and Ross
- 28 November - Translation and the making of world crime fiction: The Catalan case
- 30 November - Seimineár Taighde ar na Scéalta Rómánsaíochta Research Seminar on the Irish Romantic Tales
- 4 December - Reflections on Colombia 200 years post-independence: A Conversation with Ricardo Urdaneta
- 5 March - Assassination in Washington: Fascism v. Human Rights in Latin America
The World-Tree Project

The Challenge
The Viking Age was a period of unprecedented cultural impact and exchange with raiding, settlement and trade stretching from Greenland to the Middle East. Scholarship on the Vikings is thus inherently international in perspective. Yet, engagement with Viking heritage is generally local and community-specific. The World-Tree Project set out to map and interpret this shared Norse heritage through crowdsourcing at an international level, seeking to connect the local and the global and to tackle misconceptions about the period through dialogue. Applying community collection methodologies to a field as international and interdisciplinary as Viking studies brought about new challenges. How can researchers engage a diverse public, with very different reasons for their interest in the Vikings? What are the most effective methods for translating and exhibiting digital artefacts? Can the barriers of language, culture and access be overcome to create interdisciplinary resources that reflect the diversity of the Viking Age? Ultimately, the research team investigated how digital technologies and crowdsourcing might facilitate knowledge exchange and revolutionise the study of the Viking past. These were the challenges that the World-Tree Project set out to address in the creation of the world’s first internationally crowdsourced collection on the Vikings.
The Research
Distinct phases of the World-Tree Project platform included development of collection strategies, solicitation and curation of digital artefacts, and the launch of a major educational platform. The team involved heritage organisations, museums, tourist boards, educational institutions and members of the public in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Norway, who informed all phases of the Project. Engagement ranged from crowdsourcing user-submitted content, to the identification and translation of submitted materials, as well as ongoing collaboration in the design of the collection interface, in addition to attendance and participation at events, and, ultimately, through feedback and online discussions on showcased materials. Curation resulted in artefact descriptors, translations, metadata, and source permissions. Interactive exhibits were formed to offer pathways through the collection and resources were created for students, ranging from primary school to undergraduate levels, and for special interest groups such as performers, tour guides, historians and teachers. Ultimately, the World-Tree Project’s open access repository and its refinement of community collection methodologies advances knowledge on crowdsourcing at an international level and its viability for engaged research projects.
The Impact
New Knowledge Produced and Exchanged: The World-Tree Project collection consists of over 5,000 items submitted by more than 500 individuals and organisations from across Europe, which were collated, described and curated using the open-source and extensible Omeka platform to create an interactive, searchable repository of exhibits that are free to access and use for educational purposes. The reach has been significant: the collection has been accessed more than 54,000 times since its launch by users from around the world, its public-domain images shared by thousands on social media platforms, and its multi-lingual exhibits have been put to use by instructors in schools and universities. Through integrated social media campaigns, including Facebook and Twitter, the Project has reached a global audience and tapped into a network of Viking interest groups that are often overlooked in the academic discourse or unaware of each other’s activities. Posts regularly reached audiences of several thousand, and provided focal points for discussing how the Vikings are received and interpreted in different parts of the world today.
The Project culminated with a livestreamed conference, Rediscovering the Vikings, which reached a global audience when the Project’s hashtag, #RediscoveringVikings, trended on Twitter. Thirty-four speakers from 12 countries presented at the conference, which was attended by 100 delegates, and featured interactive workshops, craft displays, a reading from renowned children’s author, Kevin Crossley-Holland, and a demonstration by guest artist Mirosław Kuźma. The conference proceedings are being published as a collection, Reimagining the Vikings, for the Northern Medieval World series of The University Press at Kalamazoo. Additional publications are in preparation for Digital Medievalist and in press for a special edition of Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching.
New Collaborations through Broad Stakeholder Involvement: Researchers engaged stakeholders at every level of the Project’s development, putting communities in contact with one another, facilitating dialogue through social media, and encouraging a unique group of Norse scholars, heritage experts and enthusiasts to rediscover the Vikings together. An active programme of engagement ensured that the Project was responding to the needs of instructors in the field of Old Norse Viking Studies, and that dialogue was fostered between communities. Over the course of the Project, researchers engaged colleagues and members of the public through an active programme which included presentations and a travelling exhibit in Ireland, Wales, the United Kingdom, Spain and the United States, which offered international exposure and played a major role in recruiting collaborators to the online collection. The Project tested the most effective methods for tapping the expertise, enthusiasm and knowledge that exists among the wider public and pioneered strategies for remote crowdsourcing at a European level, building on the Oxford model for engaged community collection.
The World-Tree Project aimed to connect the local with the international, and the Project team engaged Irish partners at many levels, from collaborations with Munster museums and schools, to presentations and meetings with heritage organisations. Members of Waterford’s Déise Medieval summed up the benefits of this open-ended dialogue after attending the World-Tree Conference: “The academic community are doing wonderful work and making it accessible to us .... what can and should we do in return?” This spirit of collaboration and the trust fostered will have an important legacy, not only through constant refinement of the Project’s online educational platform, but in the ways this established network promotes Ireland’s Norse heritage, within and beyond academia.
Extensive print and broadcast media celebrated the Project and its launch, including ADDCRC Radio; The Irish Times; The Irish Sun; The Irish Examiner; The Irish World; The Irish Post; The Evening Echo; Idea Connection (Canada); Irish Central; West Cork People; The Southern Star; and a feature on ABC's ‘Nightlife’ with Sarah MacDonald for Australian Public Radio. This engagement resulted in material being added to the archive from local and international contributors, and gave researchers the opportunity to share current research on the Vikings with a wider public, gaining valuable knowledge in return. The Irish Research Council chose the Project as one of the spotlight questions to mark Science Week 2017, asking, “Can crowdsourcing help us discover more about our Viking past?” in an outdoor light display at Dublin City Council.
“To understand the many ways in which the Viking past continues to impact on our shared culture, we need different communities to have a meaningful role in gathering data, analysing it and informing how it’s used and shared. This Project taught researchers how to engage a diverse public and sustain a research community that reaches across sectors.” – Dr Tom Birkett, Principal Investigator |
Ongoing Use of the Open Access Repository and Free Educational Resources: The challenge of effectively translating and exhibiting resources for such a diverse audience was met by tailoring exhibits for unique communities and educational settings and presenting multiple pathways through the collection. The major output – the World-Tree Project archive and its educational exhibitions – will continue to be used extensively in teaching and research, both in Ireland and internationally, and have already been integrated into taught courses at University College Cork and adopted by instructors worldwide. The development of new strategies for international collection and the testing of different avenues for online engagement are the World-Tree Project’s main contributions to knowledge, and will form the basis of future publications analysing the collected data and methodologies. Ultimately, the World-Tree Project tested a model for community involvement that has the potential to revolutionise the way we research, develop resources for the study of the medieval past and investigate the widespread influence of the Vikings on our shared culture today.
Career Progression and Continuing Transdisciplinary Investigations Fostered: Participation in this Project has had a significant and demonstrable impact on the careers of the Project team, including early career researchers. Dr Roderick Dale gained invaluable experience in community engagement and digital heritage database management and, as a direct result, was asked to join the successful AHRC funding bid for the 'Bringing Vikings back to the East Midlands' project. He is now Cultural Engagement Fellow at the University of Nottingham, developing a regional engagement strategy and supporting the 'Viking: Rediscover the Legend' exhibition, a Yorkshire Museum and British Museum partnership. A successful application for a second post-doctoral research position in the field of Old Norse-Viking Studies at University College Cork was made by a colleague from Uppsala, Sweden, which demonstrates increased capacity to attract international research talent to Ireland due to the World-Tree Project. Dr Sarah Baccianti, whose part-time lecturership was funded by the project, was successful in her application for a full-time lecturership at Queen’s University in Belfast, and has since been awarded a British Academy Newton International Fellowship.
A final major outcome has been the attention, at national and international levels, on the significance of research at University College Cork on the Vikings and their legacy within Europe, establishing the School of English and the University at the centre of international discourse. For example, the Honorary Consul for the Danish Embassy attended the conference, and the Norwegian ambassador, Else Berit Eikeland, has held a series of meetings with the Project team to discuss future promotion of the Vikings and Norse heritage in Ireland and its implications on tourism. Today, University College Cork is a recognised center for both the study of the Viking Age and for large-scale digital humanities projects.
For More Information
This World-Tree Project was funded by an Irish Research Council New Horizons Award and led by Dr Tom Birkett, School of English, University College Cork. See: www.worldtreeproject.org/.