Impact in research and beyond

The School is dedicated to making its research accessible beyond a specialist audience. Members of staff are involved in numerous impact-focused research projects engaging with varied groups, including museums, theatre companies, the MOD, tourist organisations, and schools.

Landscape and environment: past and present, Jason König

Jason's impact work has two strands. The first builds on his work on the history of mountains in classical antiquity, especially his book The Folds of Olympus, published in 2022. It involves developing a ‘Mountain humanities’ network of researchers and practitioners to explore ways in which arts and humanities can make a distinctive contribution to mountain studies. It also involves further work on mountain heritage, especially in Greece, but also in the wider Mediterranean and beyond: for example aiming to bring a new dimension to the experience of mountain tourism by making historical, mythical and archaeological material more accessible. The second strand, which is closely linked with the work of others within the School’s Centre for Ancient Environmental Studies explores ways of using the history and representation of human-environment relations in antiquity as a resource for responses to the environmental crises we face in present, (view one recent event). Both strands include plans for podcast series.

Mount Olympus on a sunny day

Visualising war and peace, Alice König

Visualising War and Peace is an interdisciplinary research project that analyses habits of imagining, representing and approaching conflict and its aftermath, from antiquity to the present day. It looks particularly at the world-building nature of narratives, in many different media, and the ongoing ‘feedback loop’ between narrative and reality; i.e. the tendency of war- and peace-storytelling not only to reflect reality but also to shape it, by influencing how we think, feel and behave. Drawing on this research, Alice König has developed a range of impact projects that engage with multiple stakeholders, including British armed forces, visual artists, photojournalists, theatre-makers and museum curators. The Visualising War and Peace podcast has listeners in over 85 countries, and the project’s virtual Museum of Peace is used in peace education in a range of contexts. With funding from Imperial War Museums, Alice commissioned a new art exhibition by Diana Forster – entitled ‘Somewhere to Stay’ – to explore habits of visualising forced displacement, as one legacy of conflict; and she has also collaborated with award-winning photographer Hugh Kinsella Cunningham to curate a virtual and in-person exhibition called ‘Picturing Peace in the DRC’. Most recently, Alice has been collaborating with the NGO Never Such Innocence to research the barriers to and develop arts-based mechanisms for better including children and young people in conversations on conflict.

sketch of historical figures

Ancient environmental studies, sustainability, and pedagogy, Andrea Brock

Andrea is leading an impact project on the application of environmental history in response to the climate emergency. The project is fundamentally cross-disciplinary and collaborative, involving contributions from students and scholars associated with the Centre for Ancient Environmental Studies. Among other things, the team is working to produce a suite of environmental history curriculum and learning resources for the Gala platform, particularly geared towards sustainability classrooms in secondary and higher education. Currently in development is an open-access, multi-media Library of Environmental History Case Studies. We welcome inquiries from teachers of sustainability as well as students and scholars of paleoenvironmental studies, who are interested to be involved and/or contribute a case study.”

artist's impression of life on the banks of a river

Contact

School of Classics
Phone: +44 (0)1334 46 2600
Email: classics.impact@st-andrews.ac.uk