Impact case study database

Mombauer’s research has had significant impact on public understanding and learning, primarily in Germany and the UK. Specifically, it has shaped public debates with targeted interventions, informed public understanding via media engagements and through publicly accessible publications, and influenced and informed school curricula and teachers’ practice.

Impact on public debate

The 2014 centenary saw a revival of the long debate about the causes of the First World War in Germany. In terms of intensity and public engagement, it matched the so-called Fischer controversy of the 1960s when Fritz Fischer’s thesis that Germany was more to blame for the outbreak of the war than other nations led to a heated national and international debate. Initiated by Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers, the centenary saw the revival of a revisionist interpretation which largely absolved Germany from responsibility for the outbreak of the war.

Crucially, this was not just a debate among historians, but of great public interest. In a 2014 poll by the German Forsa Institute, 69% of respondents expressed an interest in the topic, rising to 77% among 14-29-year-old respondents ( Financial Times, 17 January 2014). The new interpretation proved popular and many Germans, especially on the political right, expressed relief that German ‘war guilt’ had allegedly been expunged.

In several publications, particularly her 2014 book Die Julikrise [O3], Mombauer provides a sustained, research-based counter argument to these revisionist interpretations. Her account is one of very few interventions which advances a different point of view. The book was widely discussed in the German press as a credible alternative interpretation to the new revisionist views [C2].

Die Julikrise was selected as ‘personal recommendation’ in April 2014 by a panel from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Buchjournal, Börsenblatt and Telepolis. It sold over 3,000 copies in 2014 alone and 6337 to date. A Danish translation was published in 2014, the rights for a Turkish translation were sold in 2020 [C2]. It was discussed and reviewed in several German national newspapers [C5].

Following its publication, Mombauer was interviewed in German newspapers and online portals, including the national daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung [C5] (daily print run c.400,000 in 2014). In 2017, this interview was directly quoted in a Bundestag motion when members of ‘Die Linke Partei’ in the German Bundestag advocated the government should reject new apologetic views in favour of the interpretation put forward in Mombauer’s 2014 interview [C3]. Other interviews in Germany included the research blog of the German Gerda Henkel Foundation (2,798 downloads), and national and regional newspapers including Die Welt, Frankfurter Zeitung, Rhein-Ruhr Zeitung and Die Tageszeitung. International interviews included the Los Angeles Times, Folha de S.Paulo (Brazil) and Politika (Serbia) [C5].

Impact on public understanding

Die Julikrise was favourably received by members of the public convinced by Mombauer’s rejection of the new consensus. Readers commented: “ Her account is for me simply convincing” and “ An analysis which removes the foundations of the historical revision of ‘The Sleepwalkers’’ [C2]. In 2019, a reader’s letter in the Frankfurter Rundschau (written in response to current debates about the Hohenzollern family’s links to the Nazis) referred back to Mombauer’s research and thanked her “ for interpreting […] sources from an external point of view and thus allowing us a different point of view on the unleashing of both world wars” [C5].

Following the publication of Die Julikrise, Mombauer was commissioned by the editor of the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Federal Agency for Civic Education) to contribute an article for a special issue on the First World War of the journal Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte. This free bi-monthly publication is distributed to schools, libraries and subscribers throughout Germany and is intended to provide political education for the German public [C1].

In this article Mombauer evaluates the debate on the origins of the war and advances her own interpretation. The print run was 76,000 hard copies; additional PDF and e-book versions are freely available on the Bundeszentrale website, bpb.de. In the first two months after publication alone, the ebook was downloaded more than 1,000 times. A further ebook edition was published in conjunction with the national public radio station Deutschlandfunk. Titled 100 Jahre Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs, it was downloaded more than 8,400 times in July/August 2014 alone. The editor describes the issue as one of his “ favourites” and explains that the Bundeszentrale bought the rights to republish Die Julikrise because it was “ without doubt useful”’ for “ political education”. 3,000 additional copies were printed, of which only 98 remained unsold in March 2019 [C1].

Mombauer’s research has influenced public understanding, learning and participation through its reach. She has written courses and articles based on her research for OpenLearn, the OU’s unique platform for free online learning. These have attracted 277,774 unique page views in 176 countries.

In Britain, she was the academic advisor for the Open University/BBC1’s co-produced television series ‘Britain’s Great War’ (2014) presented by Jeremy Paxman (16.4 million views); she was expert interviewee for BBC2 ‘WWI: The Final Hours’ (2018) (audience 1.05 million, plus iPlayer viewings). She was interviewed in Max Hastings’ BBC programme ‘The Necessary War’ (2014) and took part in the Radio 5 Live debate that accompanied Niall Fergusson’s TV programme ‘The Pity of War’ (June 2014).

She was an expert panel member and discussant on the BBC World Service radio programme 'The War that Changed the World', recorded in front of a live audience in Dresden, Germany (June 2014). She was the consultant and historical expert interviewed for the BBC World Service 'History Hour' to mark the centenary of the end of the war in November 2018. Both programmes reached global audiences of millions. To mark the 100^th anniversary of the outbreak of war, she was interviewed on BBC2’s Newsnight (July 2014). On all these occasions, she advanced her own interpretation of the origins of the First World War.

In Germany, her views were sought in radio interviews including Deutschlandfunk Kultur in a three-hour live broadcast to commemorate the outbreak of the war [C8] and a live interview with Radio Bremen (July 2014). Her research garnered significant international media attention, e.g. in the US, Brazil and Serbia. In Turkey she was an expert interviewee on a special First World War edition of ‘The Newsmaker’, a series on the official Turkish government online channel TRT World (90,600 subscribers) [C8].

Impact on education

Mombauer has made research accessible to schoolteachers in her commissioned article for Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, an academic journal which communicates the latest historical research to secondary school teachers [O5]. This research-based article bridges the gap between university research and school teaching, enabling teachers to deliver up-to-date curriculum in the classroom. At her suggestion it includes an appendix of primary sources from her 2013 document edition [O2] to supplement classroom teaching and learning.

Several German schoolbook publishers have included excerpts of Mombauer’s book Die Julikrise in textbooks for secondary schools, including Horizonte - Geschichte Qualifikationsphase (Westermann 2015); Buchners Geschichte (Buchner 2015) and Geschichte Entdecken (Buchner 2021). [Text removed for publication] an expert in the didactics of history at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, explains why: “ The ‘war guilt question’ is still a standard subject in history lessons, so that newer and older accounts […] are popular for use in history lessons” [C4]. [Text removed for publication] comments that Mombauer’s text “ is used in upper secondary schools to demonstrate the different positions on the war guilt debate and thus to sensitise for controversy and to introduce how to argue historically” [C4].

Two articles in Geschichte Lernen (a didactic journal aimed at history teachers) use Mombauer’s research to develop case studies on how to teach pupils about interpretations and controversies in history. ‘When Historians Argue’ (2018) was written by Mierwald and Mainzer and uses Mombauer’s work as a case study for teaching text analysis [C4]. A web portal designed for German Abiturienten (A-Level students) and their teachers also includes excerpts of Mombauer’s work. The relevant page received c.2,300 visitors from October 2019-October 2020 [C4] and the website creator recorded an interview with Mombauer for the site.

Excerpts of Mombauer’s English publications also appear in standard history textbooks in the UK, including revision texts for AQA, Edexcel, OCR & WJEC Level [C9]. To extend this reach, Mombauer wrote a teaching unit based on her research for a new Continuous Professional Development (CPD) course for UK teachers produced by the OU. The course was delayed by Covid-19, but a pilot involving 50 teachers was conducted in November 2020. Teachers were asked for feedback and were able to have input into the teaching materials. A teacher commented: “ I spent quite a lot of time thinking about the Origins of the First World War section - […]. I think it's the more challenging part of a course of this nature in terms of complexity and how to teach it in schools. I thought it is brilliant how rival interpretations of causation were showcased and scrutinised. The exercises in evaluating the primary source material are so helpful” (O.M., secondary school teacher, feedback 22/12/20) [C7].

Mombauer has made her research freely available to large numbers of adult learners in FutureLearn MOOCs. ‘WW1: Trauma and Memory’ was presented three times in 2014/2015 and attracted 8,225 active learners. It has been one of the OU’s most successful MOOCs to date in terms of user engagement, generating over 34,000 individual discussion posts between 2014 and 2015. She later turned this into a free course on the OU’s open access learning platform OpenLearn. The course had attracted 9356 unique visitors from 97 countries by end of 2019 [C6].

In 2020, she expanded the MOOC with an additional week’s material based on her research into the origins of the war. The new course, ‘WW1: Trauma, Memory, Controversy’, was first presented in July 2020 and has had over 26,000 people enrolled to date [C6]. Feedback included, for example: “ Apart from its very high academic value this course is an eye opener and should be on the list to do for our political leaders” (10/08/20); “ I have always been confused about the reasons for the start of the war. This course has made it all much clearer” (1/9/20); “ This has been a very thought-provoking course causing one to dig deep into aspects of WWI that encourage further reading and research” (4/9/20); “ I have learnt so much” (1/9/20); “ Thank you for an eye-opening course” (3/08/20) [C6].

Impact on policy makers

The 2014 Home Office (HO) Improvement Plan identified ‘learning from experience’ as one of eight actions to transform the HO [C7]. In 2015, the HO invited Williams to join its Learning from Experience Reference Group, in which he advised (based on **[O5, O6]**) on how to incorporate historical knowledge into contemporary policy formation. Work with the HO and Cabinet Office was augmented by the OU History Department’s long-standing collaboration with, and financial support of, the think tank History & Policy (H&P). This organisation connects historians with policy makers and has been part-funded by the OU since 2016. In 2015, H&P invited Williams to convene a seminar series at the HO, designed to provide historical perspectives on contemporary concerns for policy makers. Simon Szreter, co-founder of H&P, comments: “ *[ Williams’s] major research project on the history of police command and control systems, published in 2014, demonstrated that he had an understanding of the ways that the Home Office had made major policy decisions in the past, and of a broad spread of issues related to criminal justice in the UK which made him an ideal convenor for the ongoing seminar*” [C6].

Williams ensured that the series would provide continued professional development for HO staff. He identified and invited speakers on topics such as counter-terrorism and the police national computer system. Williams arranged 31 seminars, including contributions from OU historians and four based on his own research, such as a document exercise on the HO’s historical response to threatened cuts. Each talk was attended by an audience of approximately 20 to 40, including a significant number with responsibility for policymaking.

The majority of 227 attendees attending seven seminars in 2016-17 answered affirmatively when asked: “ *Did you learn anything that might be useful in your work?*” Attendees’ feedback was positive about the link between historical knowledge and policy making, for example: “ *Overall, I really love that these seminars take place - it's so important to learn from the past to inform the future and we should do more with experts/academics!*” [C8].

In March 2020, during lockdown, the HO asked Williams to continue the series remotely as a monthly blog. Williams has commissioned five blogs to date; readers included the incoming Permanent Secretary. During the Windrush inquiry the HO was challenged to “ implement a learning plan on UK history”. In response the HO referred to in-house “ talks with groups of staff explaining the history of the department and its place within the wider history of the UK” and, building on this, that they would start “ a departmental UK history training programme for all Home Office staff” from June 2021 [C9].

The success and impact of the seminar series with the Home Office has led to further involvements with, and impacts on, Whitehall officials:

1. In June 2018 Williams was the only historian invited to participate in a Cabinet Office workshop in which academics and policy makers discussed the organisational and ethical issues of police adopting new technologies such as ‘big data’ and other advanced IT techniques (a topic discussed in **[O4]**);

2. Williams participated in a workshop with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office exploring opportunities for historical perspectives in its work, including reviving the FCO official history series (stopped in 2010 because of austerity cuts) and recruiting official historians into Departments. One outcome was the HO’s appointment of an official historian in July 2020;

3. In April 2020, the Cabinet Office Innovation Unit invited Williams to advise on historians with specialism relevant to the COVID-19 recovery period, and on ways to apply relevant historical perspectives within Whitehall. In response, Williams compiled a government database of relevant academic expertise.

Andrew Blick, Director of H&P, confirms that Williams “ advised History and Policy on setting up similar series elsewhere in Whitehall, including making a presentation about this with the Dept for Business Enterprise Industry and Science (BEIS) in September 2016, advising on the selection of a convenor for a series at the Department of Transport, and making initial contact with a representative of the Department for Education”. He also “ worked on behalf of History and Policy in the spring of 2020 to collect names of historians with relevant experience on advising on pandemic response, which were passed on to the Cabinet Office Innovation Unit” [C6].

Crone’s research on prison education also impacted on policy makers via her work with the Prisoners’ Education Trust (PET) ( https://www.prisonerseducation.org.uk/), the UK’s leading prison education charity, supporting over 40,000 people in prison since 1989. The Ministry of Justice found that prisoners funded by PET are, a year after release, 25% less likely to reoffend and 26% more likely to be in employment. Crone began working with PET after Nina Champion, then PET Head of Policy, read her research [O1] and realised its potential for the promotion of education within contemporary prisons [C1].

PET CEO Rod Clark regularly refers to Crone’s research when promoting the value of prison education to policy makers and practitioners. If nineteenth-century legislators recognised the benefits of prison education this strengthens the case for its continued importance today, argues Clark, based on Crone’s research. He also points to the public impact of her research: “ It is important that the public have awareness of the importance and value of prison education and Dr Crone's work has helped engage people through a historical lens. I have found myself drawing on her material in presenting to other general audiences” [C1].

Impact on education for prisoners, former prisoners and practitioners

In collaboration with PET and funded by AHRC Follow-on Funding [G2], Crone worked closely with former prisoners and prison staff to translate her research findings [O1, O2, O3] into an Open Educational Resource (OER) on the history of prison education in the UK.

Explorations in the History of Prison Education is a free course which uses Crone’s research to inform learners in secure environments about the history of prison education. It can generate credits towards an OU degree and serve as a first step towards formal education. Uniquely, Crone employed former prisoners as consultants for the design and production of the course. While OU modules are often studied by students in secure environments, this is the first time that an OU module draws on funded research and the experience of former prisoners to create course materials which will teach prisoners for years to come.

The production process itself has impacted on the former prisoners involved as consultants. One comments that “ the work with the OU […] persuaded me to consider how my lived experience could be used to good effect” and he is now seeking employment “ avenues in the field of prison education”. Another comments: “ I have learned a great deal from the materials that I was asked to review. Doctor Crone has encouraged my further research into the history of local Lock-Ups and prison history as a whole. […] I have been able to enhance some of the material that we use in our videos [for] prison viewers, and as such further engaged prisoners with ongoing learning and development. For me, this is the most important aspect of imprisonment” [C5].

The OER was to be piloted in April 2020. The pandemic forced a postponement as prisoners were confined to their cells and unable to access education. The OER will be piloted as soon as circumstances allow and will then be freely available in prisons and to the public via the OU’s free learning platform OpenLearn. The long-term impacts on learners in secure environments will not come into effect until the end of the lockdown (see Covid statement).

Impact on public understanding of history and genealogy

Crone’s database ‘19th Century Prisons’ includes lists of surviving archives for 847 prisons, including prison registers and records for prisoners and prison staff. Unlike other historical records such as censuses, these sources contain an exceptional level of detail about individuals, e.g. birthplace, residences, religion, education, occupation and physical appearance (height, eye colour and distinguishing marks), making the database a powerful and attractive tool for genealogists and members of the public interested in family history.

‘Prison History’ received approximately 18,000 visits between July and December 2019. In 2020, of 55,661 visits approximately 20% were from outside the UK [C2]. Visitors identified as professional historians (28%), local historians (18%) and family historians (32%), in addition to students, ex-prisoners and journalists. Visitors said they would use what they had learnt in articles, museum tours, training sessions, academic teaching and research. 40% intended to contribute to the site; members of the public have so far added more than 300 local lock-ups to the database and updated information on hundreds more. Since April 2019, 25 local historians, museum curators and a prison officer have contributed 27 articles on local prisons [C2]. This has brought local history alive and created an online community. It has had profound impacts on individuals, including a former prisoner who contributed to the site: “ *Reflection, especially self-reflection helps you to grow. I felt that by reflecting on my environment I would speed up that growth, I was right. It worked.*” He added that he was “ extremely proud” of his article on the history of Bridewell prison [C2].

The significance of ‘Prison History’ is also evident in the extent of its public participation. Hundreds of users have contacted Crone to explain the personal impact of the information it contains. For example: “ Thanks to your database [...] I can now introduce information about Lincolnshire gaols and houses of correction, when working as a volunteer at the castle prison. Before I found your website all I could say to visitors was that Lincolnshire had 2 or more other gaols and houses of correction but could not answer any questions about them!” (Volunteer Guide at Lincoln Castle Prison, February 2020) [C2].

The producers of BBC1’s Who Do You Think You Are? (each programme attracts 6 million viewers) used ‘Prison History’ to reveal that actor Kate Winslet’s great-great-great grandfather was one of the first prison wardens at Dartmoor Prison. Crone appeared as an expert on the show (August 2019). [Text removed for publication] researcher for the programme, confirms that the resource “ was incredibly useful for me in tracking down [...] additional prison records [...] and cross-referencing where I had drawn a blank” [C3].

Crone was invited to write two articles, including a 'Document Masterclass' on prison registers for Who Do You Think You Are? magazine (readership: 17,500 in print, 33,000 online). ‘Prison History’ also featured in two further articles in the magazine which introduced the resource to family historians [C4].