Impact case study database

1. Transforming modern languages into a global curriculum for a multicultural university

As part of its OWRI legacy objectives, the AHRC challenged researchers to promote Modern Languages curriculum change by broadening the Europe-centric outlook and by promoting the social, political and cultural power of language. Unlike other OWRI projects, the university consortium that comprised Language Acts and Worldmaking situated its language research within a specific, yet broad and diverse, geo-cultural terrain: the Iberian world and its contact zones, spanning Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, from the Middle Ages to the present. Within our consortium, King’s-led research showed that this Iberian terrain can be understood only by adopting a polycentric approach that avoids centre/periphery models and diffusionist narratives of global expansion still dominant in English and other Modern Languages fields. By interweaving Hispanic and Lusophone histories and cultures, by highlighting the present legacies of Iberia’s Jewish and Muslim pasts (Weiss, Vakil), by foregrounding Latin-American diasporic and transatlantic identities (Boyle), we incorporated previously marginalised minority voices and helped undergraduates understand the dynamics of cultural exchange, historical and contemporary. We did this by restructuring our undergraduate programmes, previously organised by independent period and regional pathways, into a more interlinked approach to the Iberianate world. We created an innovative first-year core module, Global Iberias, taken by up to 90 students each year in all programmes with a Spanish/Portuguese element. Spanning the multiple languages, geographies, ethnicities, races and religions of the historical Iberian worlds, it changed the agenda for research-led teaching of Modern Languages, as well as other disciplines, within King’s and beyond. “It has been a huge inspiration for the work of King’s Decolonizing Working Group. By challenging the assumptions of a monolingual Anglophone curriculum and by emphasising the global inter-connectedness of European development, cultures and languages, Global Iberias has inspired the student-led revision of modules in the department of European and International Studies” (Lucia Pradella, Department of European and International Studies, King’s [A.1]). Within the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy, it also “inspired inter-departmental work on the making of the world economy” (Pradella). The influence has also reached beyond King’s. Via local, national and international staff/student workshops, it has impacted curricular debates in Portugal and Lusophone Africa. In 2017, we hosted the first of two international workshops on Global Iberias: a textbook workshop, attended by 27 scholars from different disciplines within King’s, Warwick, University College London, Queen Mary University of London, Bristol, Southampton, New York University, Lisbon and Coimbra. Our discussions of curricular change and pedagogic practice supported the new educational agendas of the University of Lisbon. Sérgio Campos Matos, from Lisbon’s History Department, was impressed by the “stimulating and innovative” nature of our project, particularly its “diversity of integrated perspectives”, breaking down nationalist disciplinary frontiers [A.2]. In 2018, in partnership with University DeveIopment and Innovation-Africa, we hosted Global Iberias, Lusophone African Perspectives, and Partnerships in Teaching, Curriculum Development & Knowledge Exchange. This two-day workshop included researchers from 10 universities in the UK, Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau and led to a new Lusophone African research network to share ideas about ways to incorporate into their curriculum Lusophone African cultures as a challenge to narratives and understandings of language and history. Nicolás Manuel (Department of English and Literature, Agostinho Neto University, Luanda) reported how Global Iberias provided an exemplary model for curricular change at his institution, integrating “both indigenous and western epistemologies”, and fostering interdisciplinary and international collaboration [A.3].

2. Expanding networks and repertoires of knowledge

Our research into the work that language does in the world has extended the reach of our networks by putting scholars, cultural practitioners, community groups and policymakers into creative dialogue. Translation Acts research on Latin American theatre [1, 2] had a transformative effect on two community theatres. Their members drew inspiration from the key insight into the interdependence between performance and translation, conceived as inseparable elements in a collaborative creative process that helps participants find a voice that is at once local and ‘theirs’ and also ‘authored’ by broader cultural experiences that flow into and from the wider world. Research into the situatedness of translation/performance brought a deeper understanding of the manifold nature of ‘belonging’, which was complemented by our enrichment of community repertoires. Our financial support, networking opportunities, ideas and practice-based research inspired Global Voices Theatre to organise two festivals that allowed Global Arab Female Voices and Global Queer Voices to be heard. Across both events, Global Voices Theatre engaged with 11 new texts by international writers from 11 different countries, working with 10 directors, 18 performers and reached 112 audience members. Global Voices Theatre now forms a three-fold partnership between Language Acts and the Roundhouse Theatre. According to their artistic director, Lora Krasteva, our research and financial support gave them “courage and confidence” to develop their very first Arts Council application and “provided us with new connections and networks” [B.1]. Translation Acts also inspired the Untold Collectiv, a new collective of Latin American theatre practitioners who learned from our Barrio project at the Southwark Playhouse (2019). Barrio narrated the stories of the traders in the Elephant & Castle as it undergoes demolition, and the telling of this Latinx project in public influenced the Untold Collectiv’s curation of the Latin American season at The Actors Centre (January 2020), the UK’s leading organisation supporting actors throughout their professional careers [B.2]. Boyle’s feminist research agenda also impacted the Sin Fronteras Youth Group, which supports educational opportunities for Latin American women aged 14–21, as Translation Acts developed the Empowering Young Latin American Women project. This new partnership links our performance-based research with pedagogic practice, and, according to the coordinator Tamya Bustamante, it “offered LAYWAG the opportunity to access academic resources, knowledge and university experience which they seldom have the opportunity to experience due to structural barriers” [B.3]. Our lectures enabled the young women “to deconstruct the Eurocentric focused mainstream curriculum and explore the stories of female Latin American current and historical figures leading social and political change” and to examine history in ways that were new to them and inspired their confidence and creativity.

Boyle’s research into translation for the stage [1, 2] was deemed “invaluable” by the partners of the new dramaturgy network Poor Connection / Conexión Inestable, a collaboration between Language Acts, the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), running since 2019 [B.4]. This ongoing collaborative project draws on our practice-based research into translation in performance. It led to one international drama festival (2020) and the design for a diploma in theatre translation at UBA. The online festival entailed writing and producing 30 new plays, translating 10 (from Spanish to English), and mentoring 30 emerging translators from over six different countries. It reached an international audience of over 500 and expanded the repertoire of performance translations. M. L. Ramos (Argentinian lead) states that the innovative methodology of Out of the Wings [1], which puts academics, translators, playwrights, actors and directors into creative dialogue, constituted a “new conceptual model, enriching her perspective” on dramaturgy across languages [B.4]. For J. R. Torillo (UNAM), Boyle’s methods of turning translation research into dramatic practice was transformative: her model of collaborative and reflective creativity changed her understanding of the process whereby words, written in one language, time and place, are translated into performed speech, uttered in another language, here and now. The focus on the present utterance enabled the original Covid-cancelled festival to be rethought as it moved online to become about the experience and representability of the crisis itself.

Translation Acts demonstrated how ‘performed language’ is vital to the survival and self-representation of minority language communities. Similarly, Weiss’s research on Sephardic diasporic identity and Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) formed part of the public workshop Language Station: Transhistorical Translations (King’s, June 2019, [C.1]). This collaboration with the international writer/performer Caroline Bergvall featured poets, writers, academics and the Ladino singer Monica Acosta. This was the first time Bergvall had incorporated Judeo-Spanish into her work: she reports how Weiss helped to “add new insights into the broader historical significance and contemporary value of Ladino in her creative work on Europe’s minority languages” [C.1]. His research also helped singer Monica Acosta contextualise her own performances “and her long-buried familial connection” to Ladino culture. The live Facebook recording had over 1,100 views.

Ladino was also the grounds of our partnership with US scholars we funded in December 2019 – Saved by Digital: Ladino Communities of the XXIc (Senate House, University of London, [C.2]). The event assembled academics, Ladino speakers, and the commercial language app-maker uTalk to discuss how digital media could preserve the shrinking global community of Ladino speakers. C. Yebra López, the organiser, reports that he was inspired by our research on Sephardic and Islamic legacies showcased at the international conference Al-Andalus in Motion (co-organised by Travelling Concepts and the Scientific Studies Association, Istanbul 2018). We “had a vast positive reach, significance and impact on my own research about Jewish and Muslim communities in (contemporary) Spain”, because it “enriched” his understanding of diasporic identities, enabling him to place his community-based Ladino project in a broader historical context. The academic and public reach of his project is demonstrated by reports in the Journal of Romance Studies, the Jewish Telegraph, Radio Sefarad and uTalk’s webpage. The audiovisual material recorded in London received more than 5,000 visits on his social media platforms.

3. Shaping public perception and informing policy: Islamophobia

Vakil’s public interventions mobilised his research on Islamophobia [5, 6] to benefit schools, the broader public and government policymakers. Via his collaboration with social scientist S. Sayyid (University of Leeds), Vakil forged new links between Modern Languages research and Critical Muslim Studies, breaking down disciplinary barriers and entrenched hierarchies between the west and non-west. Besides academic fora his research was used in student summer schools (e.g. the Granada Critical Muslim Studies Summer School, 2018), and disseminated in public events such as Understanding Islamophobia: A People’s Definition (Palestine Expo, Olympia, London, 2019). The public reach of their research was extended by their podcast on the tenth anniversary of their book, Thinking Through Islamophobia [5], in light of current opposition to advancing public understanding of Islamophobia as a form of racism that targets Muslims. His co-authored appraisal of the Runnymede Trust’s ‘Reports of Islamophobia 1997-2017’ appeared in ReOrient (Critical Muslim Studies) and on the website of UC Berkeley’s Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project (29/11/2017; D.2), where it received over 5,000 hits. The broad reach of his research on Islamophobia is further evidenced by his contribution to the Runnymede Trust’s Islamophobia A Challenge for Us All: 20 Year Anniversary Reflections, organised at The Carriageworks, Leeds (09/11/2017) in collaboration with the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and others).

Of particular note are Vakil’s insights into the distinction between Islamophobic and anti-Islamic discourse. The distinction shaped his intervention in policy debates. In 2018, Vakil and Sayyid formally submitted a proposed definition of Islamophobia to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims (Definition of Islamophobia, APPG on British Muslims closed Meeting of Experts, 23.10.2018, D.1). The aim was to adopt “a working definition of Islamophobia that can be widely accepted by Muslim communities, political parties, and the Government”. Their proposal made a material contribution to the definition eventually adopted. In their letter of thanks, Anna Soubry MP and Wes Streeting MP wrote: “Your contribution has been instrumental to the depth and scope of our deliberations. We have been aided in our examination of the many manifestations of Islamophobia and the various academic disciplines across which its study falls thanks to the rigorous quality of your research. We have been better informed about the state of current scholarship on the subject, in large part due to your valuable contribution to the inquiry. The final report of the APPG has cited your submission, and the primary research on which it is based, in numerous places.”

The global dominance of moving image cultures confronts screen studies scholars with a responsibility to contribute to public debate on the societal and cultural impact of audio-visual media. UK German screen studies has however struggled to find such a public voice. Issues facing the subdiscipline included throughout the early 2000s the absence of a national research platform from which to launch co-ordinated public engagement; “substantial ongoing declines” in the teaching of German at school and higher education level (Teresa Tinsley (2019). Language Trends 2019. London: British Council); and exceptionally low awareness of German-language film among UK publics: thus 2014–19 BFI statistics show European film market share diminishing from 4.9% to 1.1%, while German-language titles comprised only 0.1% of 2015 foreign-language market share, and had disappeared entirely as a distinct statistical category by 2019.

In 2013, Carter and Brady founded the GSSN as a means to address these multiple deficits. Impact has since been achieved in four areas grounded in King’s research.

1. Building sustainable infrastructure

The network has effected change in UK film culture by establishing sustainable infrastructure for engagement between academic and non-academic audiences across Anglo-German divides. Pilot collaborations in 2014–16 with the British Museum and Goethe-Institut ( Germany: Memories of a Nation), the German Embassy and Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) (Katja Riemann) and BFI Flare/London Cinema Museum ( Mädchen in Uniform) functioned as proof-of-concept initiatives demonstrating the network’s potential to embody Carter’s conception of the film-cultural contact zone [A.2]. The network has since established a robust multipolar infrastructure with multiple nodes of Anglo-German film-cultural engagement. The GSSN’s hub-and-spoke organisational model involves a core academic management team, a 13-strong steering committee, project advisory groups, and GSSN subgroups within relevant subject associations and networks (British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies, Association for German Studies, the German Embassy-supported Think German network [A.6]). Carter and Brady have also fashioned a substantial UK and international partnership portfolio, with partners and collaborators including the Goethe-Institut (15 collaborations); BFI (14); Austrian Cultural Forum (ACF) (8); Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) (8); Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) (6); Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin (5); HOME Manchester (3); German Embassy (2); and, as emerging partners, the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (1); Nigerian Film Corporation (1); and Sudan Film Factory (1).

Connecting participant organisations to stakeholders and audiences is a digital infrastructure including a website developed in 2016 by King’s Digital Lab, curated by Carter, and hosted jointly by KCL and the Free University of Berlin [A.1]. The website promotes events while disseminating in-house research, including via a GSSN Vimeo channel and carefully targeted social media feeds [E]. Communication across these and other platforms – DVD editions (BFI, Arrow Films, Arsenal); TV (Discovery Channel); YouTube, SoundCloud, etc. (Tate Modern, BIMI, Ciné Lumière, Albertinum Dresden); news media and film journalism ( Sight and Sound, The Guardian, Senses of Cinema, EuropeNow: [A.4]) – has cemented for the GSSN a reputation for excellence and a public identity that is centrally indebted to King’s research.

Over a seven-year period, 77% of GSSN events involved Carter and/or Brady as lead or co-organisers, moderators, lecturers and/or panel speakers. Reaching an estimated total live audience of c5,700 with 75 public events, including two three-day symposia, an invitation-only UK government event (FCO) and core contributions to seven retrospectives or mini-series, the GSSN programme has been shaped around King’s research themes including women’s and queer cinema (15 events); auteur film (16); modernist and political cinema (11); early film (9); German and German-Jewish history and memory (5); colonial and Black film (8); migration and exile (3); and contemporary film (5 events and 3 symposia). Curators, programmers, archivists and educators keen to “take the outcomes of … research beyond the university campus and to stir a wider discussion around German film culture” (Hobein [B.2]) have sought out Carter and Brady for their “world-class expertise” (Baranowska [B.3]) and “wide-ranging, in-depth knowledge” (Deriaz [B.1]). Both have attracted audience and partner accolades for their “brilliant” and “interesting and informed presentation(s)” (curator [C.2,2]; audience member, Cinema Museum [C.3,1]), “excellent” Q&As (distributor [C.2,3]) and “enrich(ing)” presence (Nigeria Film Corporation executive [C.2,2]). Repeat invitations from core partners have lent durability to the network, and deepened research impact by sustaining dialogue among “a group of people that comes and continues to come … I’ve been following things in London for ten years now and I haven’t seen this happen many times” (Straub–Huillet curator [C.4]).

2. Co-creating knowledge and understanding

Event feedback (see [C.1] for quotes unless otherwise indicated) highlights as a second key impact the co-creation of knowledge and understanding – a process fostered both in the moment of the live event, and in the educational or film-cultural practice it later prompts. GSSN social media feeds – “a model of how to use social media effectively to share news and research to academic and non-aca audiences” (Silent London [C.2,2]) – afford insight into the GSSN audience mix, with Twitter followers comprising 33% academics and students alongside a 41% proportion of writers, journalists, film practitioners and non-higher education language professionals [E.2]. Live audience composition fluctuates according to venue – so while events at Tate Liverpool, HOME Manchester or the Halifax Square Chapel Arts Centre draw regional audiences, national film musuems including the BFI, Cinema Museum or German Film Museum (Frankfurt) attract specialist groups with early cinema interests, or international participants seeking new collaborations (“… good things are going to come out of our conversation about the … colonial film archives of Nigeria”: archivist, National Film, Video and Sound Archive, Nigeria [C.2,2]).

Partner programmers have stressed the role of GSSN talks in attracting an “important … young demographic” (Clarke, [D.1]; also Deriaz [B.1]); audiences meanwhile declare themselves “curious” or “fascinat(ed)”; they seek the “unusual” or “rare” film, the “quality” conversation, the chance to “get inspired”. Audience members bring prior interests in German cinema, language, culture and history; contemporary politics (Brexit, antisemitism); social, cultural or family (often German-Jewish) history; and arthouse or counter-cinema (“a rare opportunity for both the films and the discussion”). They find space for new thinking in the “excellent mix … of panels, lectures, presentations and screenings”; they consolidate existing competences (“keeping my German alive”), strengthen understanding (“broadened my horizon”) and acquire new insight (“completely changed my attitude towards archives”; “took observers from zero to a position of knowledge”). Impacts multiply when participants are moved to change future practice by planning “to shoot a 16mm film”, engage in future learning (“prompted me to look up more of their films and read, e.g. Kafka and Barthes”), or change curricula and reshape cultural programmes (“may include some of the films in my programme”; “hoping to pass on ideas to A-level students”, “now planning a further honours module”; or, from a prominent film actor [C.2,3]: “we could talk [with students] about scripts, what was the initial idea, how was it realised”).

3. Creating cross-cultural community

GSSN events are further shown by participant feedback [C.1] to ignite new senses of cross-cultural community grounded in shared enjoyment, experience and memory. Comments stress as a core benefit of Carter and Brady’s “fantastically curated/organised and managed” events, the expansion of access they afford to otherwise invisible or neglected films as well as to German-language and cultural knowledge. “Thought-provoking introductions” and other contextualising material are a means “to keep interest in German alive in UK educational establishments”; GSSN events cultivate a “relaxed … open atmosphere” which is “inviting for beginners and experts”; they address desires to connect to the “broader German community” , and meet that desire through networking opportunities (“I had the chance to show my film and get into an exchange … with filmmakers … academics, professionals, archivists”). Events have drawn on King’s research [1,4,5,6] to reactivate shared memory: presentations on German-Jewish film culture recall family histories – “my father’s family were German Jewish refugees”; “with family coming from Austria/Vienna [Stadt ohne Juden] has given me some insights in my family” – or stimulate dialogue in intimate contexts (“[Die Geträumten] may well impact on friendship with Austrian old friends, as discussion point”).

Multi-site collaborations, finally, consolidate community across regions and institutional sites. A 2018 Independent Cinema Office Margarethe von Trotta retrospective, launched with Carter’s “excellent” Barbican Q&A (distributor [C.2,3]) and extended through her advisory role recruiting GSSN speakers for regional events, cemented a GSSN regional partnership with HOME Manchester [D], and enhanced public visibility for Carter’s research with a von Trotta interview and Sight and Sound magazine article available online via the Independent Cinema Office website [A.4]. A further exemplary initiative was Brady’s contribution to the Goethe-Institut’s 2019 three-month retrospective of the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, staged in London across diverse institutional nodes of independent and dissident European audio-visual practice and discourse: BFI Southbank, the ICA, Institut Français, Close-Up Film Centre, KCL, BIMI and the Whitechapel Gallery. Attracting a total audience of 1,224 at the BFI alone, the retrospective significantly expanded access to this famously difficult work. It provided multiple platforms for engagement with Brady’s research via programme consultancy, a keynote introductory lecture, several workshops and film talks; it involved the GSSN in assembling community by gathering across diverse institutional sites varying configurations of academics and cultural practitioners as well as cinephile audiences; and it drew on the network as part of the scaffolding for multi-site curatorial models that brought “venues together, so there was something … interesting happening in terms of the way the programme circulated” (Straub–Huillet curator [C.4.]).

4. Fostering participatory intercultural learning

Since joining the German Studies national outreach programme, the Think German network, the GSSN has developed Carter’s concept of the contact zone to include new learner communities. Akin to the network’s public film screenings, its educational events – school lessons, workshops and study days, a CPD teacher day, widening participation events, school student film clubs, a BFI adult learner short course, an undergraduate translation skills workshop and postgraduate research skills training – are valued for the experience they deliver of participatory learning with practitioners and subject specialists. Partners have included the Independent Schools Modern Languages Association (ISMLA) [F.1], the Brilliant Club and Seren access networks, higher education partners (Queen Mary University of London, Hull, University College London), the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) and the BFI.

Participants value the programme’s links between film culture and modern language education, and express desires for sustained contact captured by one 2017 BFI Fassbinder short course participant: “there was some talk of the group possibly reuniting … It really was one of the finest cultural programmes I’ve been to and I hope there may be more like this to come” [C.3,1]. In a further schools workshop with a prominent Austrian filmmaker, the visitor praised the “stimulating afternoon and evening” and requested an invitation in the event of a repeat [C.2,3]. Teacher testimonials on these and other events, including CPD sessions with Carter, noted similarly how the events extended access, supported student learning with insights on approaches and relevant material for assessed work [F.2], and built resources to “fight the decline of German in schools” [F.1]. A pilot video link lesson series on a film of Jewish exile in colonial Africa also mediated to school audiences Carter’s critiques of nation-centred film narratives, as did further well-received widening participation initiatives using refugee-themed films: “The issues of multiculturalism, integration and the refugee crisis are so … important for our pupils … You kindly offered to deliver another such lecture again … which I would love to take you up on” [C.2,4].

The migration of the network to a new organisational centre in St Andrews and Aberdeen when Carter steps down as Chair in 2021, as well as the planned launch of a Vimeo series of contextualising film talks freely available to educators and learners, will enable consolidation of these educational initiatives, embedding the GSSN’s cultural activities more firmly in modern languages education, and demonstrating conclusively the network’s durability as a future-proofed entity with a future beyond REF2021.

1. Widening availability and awareness of holdings in national collections

Collaboration between KCL and two major research libraries, Cambridge University Library (CUL) and the British Library (BL), directly resulting from MFLCOF and TVOF, improved the accessibility of holdings and raised public awareness of the movement of texts across linguistic and cultural boundaries. First, an exhibition in January – April 2014, The Moving Word, was curated by MFLCOF in CUL’s public-facing Milstein Exhibition Centre. It featured c60 French-language manuscripts from Cambridge libraries which had not previously been accessible or displayed together. A virtual exhibition is still available online. Secondly, in 2018–19, and in the context of ongoing collaboration between King’s and the BL, KCL postgraduate research students working on TVOF curated a case in the BL’s Treasures Gallery (a free public exhibition space). This involved producing text for panels for two manuscripts edited and/or digitised by TVOF (BL Royal MS 20 D I and BL Add. MS 15268). These manuscripts, made in Naples and the Holy Land, were displayed together for the first time, highlighting geo-cultural diversity in the production of French-language manuscripts.

The Moving Word [see B1, E.2, E.3] attracted 14,005 visitors, its monthly average exceeding those for the previous decade (3,181). March 2014 saw 4,020 visitors. Visitors’ book comments (165 comments, of which 41 (24.8%) were made in languages other than English) indicated the geographic reach (13 countries) of the exhibition’s public. These data demonstrate the reach and the positive impact of the exhibition on individuals from across the UK, Europe and further afield – and the virtual exhibition is still regularly consulted, receiving 12,502 page views between February 2017 and October 2020. The reach of the exhibition case in the BL is harder to gauge, as the gallery offers several cases simultaneously. However, there were c353,000 visitors in the 14 months the manuscripts were on display: if only 10% looked at our case, c35,000 people from all over the world saw the manuscripts and read about our research.

The visitors’ book for The Moving Word [E.3] provided feedback from a sample of a mere 165 out of a total of 14,005 visitors, but its qualitative comments in a range of languages showed how the exhibition positively affected individual visitors from around the world. The display was described as “very interesting and well-selected” by a German visitor [E.3 p.5], a sentiment echoed in Dutch and Spanish [E.3 p.13]. A specific aim of the exhibition was to offer information about medieval book production and this aspect resulted in inspiration and pleasure for bookbinders (“Thank you. As an amateur hand-bookbinder I find this fascinating” [E.3 p.15]; “Wonderful – can’t wait to get back with my binding! An inspiration!” [E.3 p.4]) who were driven to reflect on their craft (“I particularly liked the section on binding and dyes” [E.3 p.18]). Other comments elaborated on how the display introduced visitors to little-known and unusual objects (Chilean visitor [E.3 p.4]; comment in French [E.3 p.6]). The emotional and intellectual value of the surprise provided by the content of the exhibition is logged in enthusiastic comments calling it a “moment inattendu” [E.3 p.6: an unexpected moment], or describing it as “Unbelievable! Awesome!” [E.3 p.4].

Transformation of understanding was acknowledged explicitly when visitors not only registered their increased cultural capital – “A glimpse of something I know nothing about!” [E.3 p.17], “An excellent exhibition, we both enjoyed learning something new” [E.3 p.5] – but also suggested that this new knowledge may lead to active use: “I would never even have thought of looking at French medieval manuscripts, but it turns out they are exactly what I need to know about” [E.3 p.16]. Media coverage in the UK, France and Canada [A1-A.4 made explicit analogies between the fluidity of French in medieval and contemporary settings, citing the examples of Quebec and the adoption of French by non-native speakers [A.2 in particular, but see also E.3].

2. Changing curatorial practices, leading to exhibitions and outreach events that would not otherwise have taken place

The Moving Word exhibition “stimulated inter-institutional co-operation” by demonstrating to CUL and Cambridge college libraries “the sometimes overlooked richness of the Cambridge College collections” [B.1]. As [B.1] states, it also helped pioneer the use of digital platforms to create global audiences for local exhibitions and the involvement of early career researchers in the curation process as part of their training. Both approaches were subsequently adopted as good practice, while “the scholarly methodology promulgated by the project enabled the staff of the Department of Manuscripts … to find new ways of appraising the Library’s collections” [B.1]. A similar impact resulted from the collaboration with the BL. The BL is not just a research library, but a public-facing national institution, deeply invested in engagement, outreach and impact. Extensive collaborations for over a decade between the BL and KCL on medieval French have influenced the library’s curation of its collections and its public-facing activities. As stated in [B.2], our collaboration focused curators’ attention on parts of the collection that had hitherto been neglected and was the catalyst for successful new outreach activities.

Specifically, eight BL manuscripts, made in Italy or the Holy Land, have been digitised as a direct result of collaborations with KCL [C.1 discusses this]. Up to 31 October 2019, these eight digitisations account for 2,452 pageviews, with an average of 1.5 minutes’ viewing time. The second-most-visited of these manuscripts (BL Add. MS 15268) is connected to the BL’s Treasures Gallery exhibit curated by KCL researchers (see section 1 above) and featured in one of the blogs written by them for the BL (1,056 unique page views). This suggests these public-facing activities generated a significant number of visitors to this digitisation. The MFLCOF/TVOF teams have authored nine blogs for the BL aimed at members of the public which received a total of 2,541 unique page views with an average of 6.1 minutes per page view. [B.2] also suggests that collaboration with TVOF led to increased uptake on other BL digital platforms.

With both the CUL and BL, a range of outreach activities took place around the exhibitions that were curated in collaboration with KCL which sought to raise awareness of medieval French as an aspect of British heritage, particularly among younger people. For example, two private views and manuscript-making workshops were arranged for prospective undergraduates at The Moving Word exhibition, each attended by 15 pupils in Years 12 and 13 and their teachers. A workshop led by postgraduate students with practical activities was attended by c60 Year 6 pupils from Ipswich. A teacher wrote: “A fantastic day … our children are still talking about it.”

In London, TVOF organised a conference to coincide with the Treasures Gallery exhibition, which included a public lecture at the BL in June 2019, ‘The Languages of Medieval History’, by Professor Robert Bartlett. This lecture was attended by over 280 people of whom c220 were members of the general public, some attending a BL lecture for the first time. The response to the lecture was overwhelmingly positive [E.1]: 100% of the 90+ respondents to a questionnaire (excluding conference delegates) agreed (18%) or strongly agreed (82%) that the event was informative; 97% of respondents agreed (21%) or strongly agreed (76%) that the event had challenged or otherwise affected their understanding of the topic. Almost half of all feedback included qualitative comments with adjectives like “entertaining”, “humorous”, “witty” and “engaging”. Seventeen respondents (19%) singled out the lecture’s accessibility for a non-specialist audience as praiseworthy. A key dimension of that accessibility was, in line with the intellectual agenda of KCL research, to highlight the similarities between medieval and contemporary multilingualism. Bartlett said: “We live now in one of the greatest ages of human migration there has ever been. One consequence is that it brings people who speak one language in contact with people who speak other languages. So you find countries that traditionally for a long time, like England, have not been very multilingual, are now very multilingual. And so it is an issue to decide, how are we going to respond to this? What is the proper way to live in a multilingual society? People have to make decisions about schooling, what is a language that is allowed publicly and officially … all these important issues seem to me to be raised exactly the same in the Middle Ages and today” [interview in C.3]. Feedback from the public highlighting the lecture’s accessibility should be read alongside the fact that 12 respondents (13% total; 16% qualitative responses) stated explicitly that the lecture gave them a desire to find out more about the topic as a positive response to Bartlett’s comparison with contemporary society.

3. Reaching new audiences through digital Media

MFLCOF and TVOF are digital projects in the field of Old French. Their work has reached new audiences for this field well beyond academic users. The field of Old French has c100–200 specialists worldwide. A broader pool of c1,500–2,000 medievalists worldwide (faculty and graduate students) is potentially interested in scholarly content on this subject. A central element of this impact case study is that our activities, work undertaken and collaborative partnerships have resulted in a reach that far exceeds the numbers of researchers and students working in the field or cognate areas, demonstrating the significance of the research is recognised beyond the academy. Thus, traffic on both websites significantly exceeds the numbers of researchers working in the field or cognate areas:

• As of 30 November 2020, www.medievalfrancophone.ac.uk (launched 2015) records a total of 9,840 users, 15,692 sessions, 49,692 page views, with an average of 3.16 views per session and a bounce rate of 58.52% [D.2]. Although traffic on the site peaked in November 2015, the site is still visited by an average of 249 viewers per month. The site records users from over 100 countries, with most in the UK (2,263 = 23%), US (1,718 = 17.5%), Italy (1,121 = 11.39%) and France (718 = 7.3%). 31.63% of users consult the site directly, with others navigating to the site via search engines (52.13%), social media (2.16%) or referral from other sites (21.2%).

• Launched in February 2016, www.tvof.ac.uk records 12,122 users up to 31 November 2020 [D.1], who consulted the site in 27,714 sessions, making 70,831 page views, with an average of 2.56 page views per session and a bounce rate of 54.91%. TVOF has made sustained use of social media and blogs to highlight contemporary relevance. 45.2% of sessions result from direct navigation to the site, remaining sessions are initiated via search engines (30.1%) or via social media (18.4%). Single page visits are highest for the blog. While just over 29.4% of site users are in the UK, other users are in the US, Italy, France, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, Germany, Belgium and Russia. Since the website’s first full year in existence, the number of users has increased by 942% and the launch of a French-language version in 2019 produced a jump in users from France of 31.8%.

A number of conclusions may be drawn:

• Although it is not possible to calibrate this precisely, the two websites have a significant audience of non-academic users, suggesting reach due to an interest in the topic.

• Google analytics suggest a bounce rate of 26–40% is excellent for all sites, with 41–55% average, 56–69% higher than average, and over 70% poor. Bounce rates of 58.52% and 54.91% for academic sites are exceptionally good: 50% of users are navigating around the sites.

• The volume of returning users who are necessarily not specialists suggests the site is impacting upon their views and general cultural awareness, even if this is difficult to calibrate: it is likely that the BL blogs, attention in the French media, and retweets and re-postings draw non-specialist readers to our blogs. Blogs on the TVOF website highlight contemporary topics and points of contact or possible dialogue between the medieval and modern periods, such as Europe, gender, race relations, religious conflict and language politics. Our most popular blog (on Europe) received 860 page views, the average time spent on the page being 5 minutes 12 seconds; most of our blogs are read by 300+ people.

• The international reach of the websites is also very good.

• Sustainability: the MFLCOF website will be maintained and remain fully functional until 2024; the TVOF website and database until 2030, thus creating a platform for the sustainability of the impact. From July 2020, all XML files underpinning the TVOF website were made available in open access, meaning the technological developments of the project are transferable with potential impact in other disciplines and other sectors (see also section 4 below).

4) Impacts upon pedagogy and dictionaries

MFLCOF and TVOF projects have supported impacts upon pedagogy beyond KCL, and on dictionaries, changing pedagogical methodologies and widening understanding:

• Bristol University reports setting c100 undergraduates tasks using the MFLCOF and TVOF websites. The University of Liège, University of Neuchâtel, New York University, Paris-Sorbonne University and University of Zurich report using both sites for training graduate students (again c100 students) as the structured nature of the data is a better platform for pedagogy than other resources.

• Data from the TVOF database has been imported into open-access international etymological dictionaries (such as the Dictionnaire étymologique de l’ancien français based in Heidelberg), using bespoke software developed by King’s that in due course we hope will be used in other contexts. The software is also available in open access via Figshare and as of 1 December 2020 in the two months the files had been available there had already been 63 downloads.

King’s research has responded practically to the challenges of translating from cultural extremity in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world, resulting in three key impacts:

i. Transforming artistic practices and stimulating new forms of artistic expression (see particularly 2.1 above): this innovative, research-driven collaborative approach to performance translation engages with the cultural knowledge and experience of local artists, practitioners and audiences in both source and target cultures.

ii. Making the work of Spanish and Portuguese artists more accessible to UK audiences through new theatre repertoires and publishing initiatives (see 2.2 and 2.3 above): workshops and experimental public readings and performances provided the practical framework for eliciting and integrating collaborators’ collective feedback into the evolving translation process.

iii. Enhanced audience understanding and experience (see 2.2 and 2.3 above) of how, in performance, the translated language of drama or song is embodied in the artists’ voices, gestures and narratives and the affinities and resonances its performance has with contemporary local or international contexts.

Two King’s projects supported these impacts, both on a broad scale and at a more specialised level: (i) The Out of the Wings Collective (OOTW) entails a translator network, extensive publication initiatives, public readings and workshops building on the work of the AHRC-funded database resource Out of the Wings (2008–12 www.outofthewings.org\). Founded by Boyle, OOTW has c300 international members comprising researchers, translators, actors, directors and producers. OOTW has developed a wide range of activity and impact since January 2015. (ii) The São Paulo Tapes: Brazilian Resistance Songs** (TSPT) involves artistic and audience collaborations centred on a single repertoire, that of London-based vocalist, songwriter and journalist Mônica Vasconcelos. Funded by Arts Council England and King’s, Treece’s collaboration with her produced English commentaries and translations for The São Paulo Tapes (2017), a CD of selected ‘resistance songs’ from the 1964–85 dictatorship period, leading to workshops (totalling 85 participants, two-thirds British with a smaller number of Brazilians and other nationalities, comprising family museum-goers, jazz aficionados, students, arts audiences and tourists), creative rehearsals (involving six musicians) and collaboration with spoken-word poet Francesca Beard to develop new material inspired by the repertoire.

Transforming artistic practices and stimulating new forms of artistic expression

OOTW created a pioneering infrastructure of international networks for developing and sharing methodologies for theatre translation. As one commentator says: “I’ve been incredibly grateful to be part of the collective and it really is a collective. They are translators and directors and actors all working towards the same goal of making the best translation possible […] so that it is equivalent to the performance that it would have if it was in its native language” [A.1, Lanna Joffrey]. Since January 2015, monthly readings of new translations by established and emerging translators have brought together participants from c20 countries. The model for this network has been shared with practitioners in other languages, including German, French and Chinese, fulfilling the initial goal of OOTW to create an exportable model for theatre translation. Translations by established and emerging translators from the UK, US, Europe, Spain, Portugal and 10 Latin American countries read at the monthly table-read (60 in total) often go on to full readings in the annual Festival, where workshops and rehearsals train translators, directors and actors in dealing with a translated text in performance. This has led to full productions (see below) and to new practices engaging with different forms of expression.

Specific examples of the impact of Boyle’s research on translating extremity on practice include the creation in 2011 of the Head For Heights Theatre Company. Funded by Arts Council England (2017, 2019, 2020) and by the British Council (2018, 2020), the company has developed a translation process for full professional productions through workshops with professional and non-professional actors, movement training and directed dramatic readings of translated texts. Changes to artistic method are confirmed by a workshop participant who reported that Head For Heights “introduced me to new ways of looking at a text and has shown me a new way of directing” [A.2]. The specific role of translation was highlighted when another commented on how workshops “introduced me to the ‘art’ of translating plays”. The impact of workshops that foregrounded translation in performance on professional development was described: “I have learned a tremendous amount by their example and my network of theatre translators has grown exponentially from zero to a large number of people all around the world who I can call on for feedback and advice and that’s just priceless. It has taken what was a little-known fact about me – that I’m bilingual – and turned it into a selling point. It has brought me more work both as a translator and as an actor” [A.6, Gigi Guizado]. Testimony to direct impact on directorial practice came from Laurie Steven, with whom Boyle collaborated in London and Ottawa on a production of Jacinto Benavente’s Los intereses creados/The Bonds of Interest. Steven highlighted Boyle’s approach to the complexities of source and target cultures, languages and text, which meant she was able to “appreciate and accommodate Odyssey’s [Steven’s theatre company] style of mask and movement work, the impact of performing in open-air spaces, our approach to Commedia dell’Arte, our need to reach a contemporary North American audience accustomed to masked performance, and my directorial vision”. Steven noted the impact of this approach on her own practice: “As the director […] I was so much further ahead walking into rehearsals with a deep grasp of the play, a grasp that was the result of our work together” [A.4].

At the level of individual artistic practice, Mônica Vasconcelos (TSPT) benefited from Treece’s intervention as a researcher/song-translator both in the rehearsal room and in mediating her engagement with local UK audiences (“I now consider the contribution of the translator as indispensable to my work as a Brazilian artist in London”). Vasconcelos comments revealingly that this new way of thinking about translation transformed how she works with her multilingual, cross-cultural team of Brazilian and British musicians, together with performance poet Beard: “Being able to rely on expert English translations of my Portuguese lyrics has been hugely beneficial to myself and the non-Portuguese speakers in the team. They have a profound impact, bringing us closer together, deepening our communication and cohesion as a band” [A.3].

The resilience and creativity of the infrastructure of OOTW and its methodology of translating for performance is evidenced by the development of online productions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Two examples are: the collaboration with Head For Heights for the online readings of two new Chilean plays, Painecur by La Familia Teatro (June 2020) and Mistral G. (1945) by Andrés Kalawski (July 2020). Both Painecur and Mistral G. (1945) built on workshops with authors, Chilean and UK actors, and the Head For Heights team to develop the translations (December 2019) and were rehearsed and produced via Zoom. Another project, Ceremonias pandémicas (October 2020), grew from a play by Cuban Abilio Estévez and brought together practitioners from seven countries to provide an online experience of theatre in translation. One further key impact of these initiatives was that they provided work opportunities for actors, translators and producers during the pandemic. In a more abstract yet equally profound sense, the impact of the collaborative approach to performance translation in these circumstances is vividly noted by a collaborator: “theatre and performance have the power to cross-over beyond screens, travelling impossible distances, arriving like a blow to our hearts and minds” [A.5, Alfonso Santistevan].

Making Spanish and Portuguese-language artworks more accessible to UK and international audiences through new repertoires, productions and publishing initiatives

Creative rehearsals involving Vasconcelos with the TSPT band, Treece as translator and poet Francesca Beard led to 13 new pieces of music/poetry and 5 studio audio recordings (2017) to create resistance music and poetry for our time. Treece appeared on a radio interview (‘Cerys on 6’, BBC Radio 6 Music, 5/11/2017, average audience 600,000) to talk about the new repertoire. With additional translations by Treece, new arrangements of TSPT songs by Harvey Brough for the Vox Holloway choir also resulted in three collaborative productions in 2018/19 [B.1,B.2].

OOTW monthly table-reads have produced c60 new translations since January 2015 by a group of established and emerging international translators. Since 2016, an annual Festival has showcased 20 new plays from Spain, Portugal and Latin America (https://ootwfestival.com/\). Workshopping translations in OOTW and showcasing work in the Festivals has led to 20 productions, predominantly in the UK, but with some international reach: the translation of Colombian Rafael Guizado’s The Rooftop (OOTW Festival 2017 & 2019) was continued by Gigi Guizado in Las Vegas for The Lab LV (2020) [B.3]. Director Kate O’Connor, says of Cuzco, by Víctor Sánchez Rodríguez (Spain), translated by William Gregory (Theatre503 London, 2019): “without OOTW I wouldn’t have found this text at all” [B.5].

Omnibus Theatre, with its mission to ‘give voice to the underrepresented and challenge perceptions’, and more explicitly the Cervantes Theatre, which ‘aims to bring the best Spanish and Latin American culture to London and to British audiences’, have turned to OOTW for their programming in order to support their missions, allowing them to offer “rare chance[s]” to see “affecting and still relevant work” [B.4, review of Mad Man Sad Woman by Juan Radrigán (Chile), translated by Boyle at The Space, London (2017)]. Translation is key to the work of the Cervantes Theatre, which performs both in Spanish and in English, and which in 2019 produced The Eyes of the Night by Paloma Pedrero (Spain), translated by Boyle. Reviews of the performance acknowledged the significance of productions with translation at their core: “having it performed on different nights in two different languages, that in itself, opens up a perspective that is powerful”. The playwright is quoted in this review as saying: “all productions should do this” [C.1]. Foreign Affairs Theatre also situates translation at the centre of their work, ‘looking beyond the English language’ to share stories from ‘around the globe’ with ‘local audiences’. Their production of Cláudia Barral’s The Blind One & the Mad One (Brazil), translated by Almiro Andrade, appeared in the Untold Collectiv Latin American Season at the Actors Centre, London (2020).

New translations of plays have led to significant publications. Some are in academic or specialist journals, like The Mercurian (2020), which published Sophie Stevens’ translation of Her Open Eyes, by Raquel Diana (Uruguay, OOTW Festival 2019) or Asymptote, which approached OOTW for new drama and in 2020 published Fernando and his Grandmother by Armando Nascimento (Portugal), translated by Susannah Finzi (OOTW Festival 2019). The target audience of other publications is more general. For instance, The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Plays (Oberon Books, 2018) features The Sickness of Stone (OOTW Festival 2016) and Cuzco (OOTW Festival 2017) translated by William Gregory, a finalist in the 2019 Premio Valle-Inclán award for literary translation from Spanish. Oberon Books (now Bloomsbury) commissioned OOTW to oversee Nelson Rodrigues: Selected Plays (Oberon Books, 2019), the first major anthology of works by the Brazilian dramatist, in new translations. The launch at the Brazilian Embassy in June 2019 received a Focus Brasil Award. The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Argentinian Plays (Oberon Books, 2019), which introduces new Argentine playwrights to the Anglophone world, was commissioned by the Instituto Nacional de Teatro via the Argentine Embassy. Edited by Boyle, it won a Programa SUR translation award and all eight translations are by OOTW members. The launch took place in collaboration with the Roundhouse Theatre. OOTW is currently working on publication (in February 2021) of five plays from its Festivals.

Enhancing audience understanding and experience

Experiencing a play in two languages led a reviewer to say of The Eyes of the Night by Paloma Pedrero, translated by Boyle: “this is an interesting production that stirs many emotions and begs many questions”. Foregrounding the process of translation and its embodiment in performance, she noted “perspectives of the text are similar in intention and yet surprisingly different in how the emotions are conveyed according to the language spoken” [C.1]. The power of presenting source and target language in performance is also described by Harvey Brough, arranger and director of The São Paulo Tapes for his Vox Holloway choir in 2018/19: “One particularly wonderful song, ‘Angelica’, worked fantastically, in that Mônica sang it in Portuguese throughout (naturally), the choir shadowing her in English. This was incredibly powerful, and David’s translation was a huge part of that” [C.4].

Translation workshops for TSPT enhanced participant experience and understanding of Brazilian song repertoires and their contribution to cultural resistance under Brazil’s 1964–85 dictatorship. Workshops targeted a diversity of audiences by selecting venues across community, music and educational settings (Horniman Museum, Vortex Jazz Club and King’s). Feedback showed how the methodology of the workshop, incorporating live performance, participant responses and translator-led discussion, stimulated insights into the complex thematic and lyrical dimensions of compositions otherwise only apprehended musically by non-speakers of Portuguese: “It’s fantastic to have a discussion about the words as well as the sounds. When she was saying ê andá pacatárandá, that to me sounds like people marching, the sound of their feet beating on the ground” [C.3, workshop film, B.1,2]. With average ratings for participants’ understanding of the repertoire rising from 3.8/10 to 8.3/10 over the course of the workshop, feedback detailed their effectiveness in challenging/changing views about the songs (rated 8.4/10). Among the key takeaway ideas reported, the highest number related to: (a) understanding of the songs’ ‘stories’ and historical/political context; (b) resistance and artistic creativity under conditions of political oppression and censorship; (c) the role of the music/musicians in realising the songs’ communicative power in performance; and (d) the importance of the lyrics, and the lyrical/musical interaction, in appreciating and interpreting the songs and their contemporary and international resonances in relation to human rights violations, threats to democracy and racism [C.2].