Ruth First: Crossing Disciplinary from Academic History Supporting Excellent Digitising a Boundaries to Historical Fiction Research Revolutionary Life Title Contents
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Annual Review 2012 Colin Blakemore: Novel approaches: Lynne Brindley: Ruth First: crossing disciplinary from academic history supporting excellent digitising a boundaries to historical fiction research revolutionary life Title Contents Foreword ...............................................................................................2 School of Advanced Study ..............................................................3 The School of Advanced Study Institutes .................................4 News review .........................................................................................6 People ................................................................................................... 10 Of Gods and Myths and digitisation ........................................ 13 Supporting excellent research ....................................................... 16 Novel approaches: from academic history to historical fiction ............................................................................ 18 Protecting refugees in the Commonwealth ............................. 20 Expanding research training in modern languages ............... 21 The Virtual Museum of Writing ................................................. 22 Crossing disciplinary boundaries ................................................ 24 Ruth First: digitising a revolutionary life ................................. 26 Olympic Games ancient and modern ....................................... 28 Empires of design ............................................................................. 30 Atlantic Archive: UK–US Relations in an Age of Global War 1939–45 ......................................................... 32 Amicus Curiae in SAS Open Journals system ......................... 33 Going for gold? Routes to open access ..................................... 34 The Queen and the Commonwealth: a Diamond Jubilee seminar series ............................................... 36 Bringing the new music community together ....................... 37 An oral history of the modern Commonwealth .................... 39 Selection of publications produced in 2011–12 .................... 40 Financial summary ............................................................................ 42 Statistics ................................................................................................ 43 Last word ............................................................................................. 44 Foreword elcome to this overview of 2011–12 from the School of Advanced WStudy. I hope that this brochure will offer you an insight into the wide-ranging activities undertaken by the School and its member institutes and show you how the School’s activities in the humanities and social sciences complement the needs of the academic community through its unique approach to promoting and supporting the health of these disciplines. I hope the feature articles will give you a taste of the events we run and the services we make available to fulfil our mission to support world-class research in the humanities and social sciences. During this year work on digitisation has been particularly high on our agenda. For example, the project to digitise the Warburg Institute’s Photographic Collection (pages 13–15), the acquisition of the Virtual Museum of Writing (pages 22–3) and the Ruth First Project (pages 26–7) will provide online resources for many researchers in the UK and abroad. During 2011–12 we have been subject to our quinquennial review by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the result of that review is currently awaited. I am looking forward to a positive outcome from the review and my role in steering the School into a new chapter in its development. I am delighted that the financial sustainability that we were able to demonstrate to HEFCE has continued during this year as can be seen from our financial results on page 42. Professor Roger Kain CBE FBA Dean and Chief Executive 2 School of Advanced Study The School of Advanced Study, University of London is a unique institution in UK higher education. Located in the Bloomsbury precinct of the University, the School unites ten prestigious institutes to form the UK’s national centre for the support of researchers and the promotion of research in the humanities and social sciences. The School receives special funding for its mission from the Higher Education Council for England and Wales. The School achieves its national mission by: ■ Providing a research base for an international community of scholars ■ Inspiring, developing, supporting and creating the conditions for research initiatives and networks ■ Enhancing the dissemination of the research of others, and related activities, beyond what they or their institutions could achieve alone ■ Providing specialist research training at Master’s, doctoral and postdoctoral levels, locally, nationally and internationally ■ Adding value to the work of researchers in the humanities and social sciences throughout the UK The School’s research support and promotion activities fall into seven broad categories: events, research training, fellowships, networks and collaborations, digital resources, publications services and library resources. Underpinning the School’s national role is the research and scholarship undertaken by its academic staff. The process of undertaking challenging research in order to extend the boundaries of knowledge across disciplines, and in collaboration with researchers from around the world, is critical to the School’s function as an innovative space for advanced study and its commitment to the highest standards of scholarship. 3 The School of Advanced Study Institutes Advanced Legal Studies English Studies The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, founded Founded in 1999, the Institute of English Studies in 1947, is a national academic institution serving facilitates advanced study and research in all universities and the profession through its English studies for the benefit of the national and national legal research library. It promotes, facilitates international academic community. Its Centre for and disseminates the results of advanced study and Manuscript and Print Studies covers such fields research in the discipline of law for the benefit of of study as palaeography, history of printing, persons and institutions in the UK and internationally. manuscript and print relations, history of publishing Its areas of speciality include arbitration and and the book trade, textual criticism, and theory dispute settlement, company law, comparative law, and the electronic book. economic crime, financial services law, legislative studies, law reform, the legal profession, and Germanic & Romance Studies delivery of legal services. The Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies was established in 2004 with the merger of the Institutes Classical Studies of Germanic Studies and Romance Studies, The Institute of Classical Studies is a national and founded in 1950 and 1989 respectively. It promotes international research centre for the study of the and facilitates the study of the cultures of regions languages, literature, history, art, archaeology speaking the Germanic and Romance languages and philosophy of the ancient Greek and across a range of disciplines and interdisciplinary Roman worlds. Founded in 1953, it provides an fields in the humanities. internationally renowned research library available to scholars from universities throughout the Historical Research world, in association with the Hellenic and Roman Founded in 1921, the Institute of Historical Research Societies. It also serves as the meeting place of the is at the centre of the study of academic history. main Classics organisations in the UK. It provides a stimulating research environment supported by its two research centres: the Centre Commonwealth Studies for Metropolitan History and Victoria County History. The only postgraduate academic institution in the It is also home to an outstanding open access UK devoted to the study of the Commonwealth, the library, hosts events and seminars and has a Institute of Commonwealth Studies was founded dedicated programme of research training. in 1949. Its purpose is to promote interdisciplinary and interregional research on the Commonwealth Musical Research and its member nations in the fields of history, Established in 2006, the Institute of Musical Research politics and other social sciences. Its areas of is a national resource committed to fostering musical specialism include international development, research in all its diversity. It offers a unique meeting governance, human rights, north-south relations point for researchers and postgraduate students and conflict and security. It is also home to the across the UK and acts as a hub for collaborative longest-running interdisciplinary and practice- work on a national and international scale. oriented human rights MA programme in the UK. 4 Philosophy The Warburg Institute The Institute of Philosophy, founded in 2005, Incorporated in the University in 1944, the Warburg promotes and supports high quality research Institute exists principally to further the study of the in philosophy, making it available to the widest classical tradition – those elements of European possible audience both inside and outside the UK’s thought, literature, art and institutions which derive academic community. It is home to three active from the ancient world. The classical tradition is research centres: the