News from the Universities The University of Exeter Initiatives in local, regional and community history The University of Exeter now operates on two separate campuses, Streatham Campus in Exeter and, since 2005, Tremough Campus near Falmouth, Cornwall. History at Exeter has expanded considerably in the last decade, partly as a result of the opening of the Tremough campus. There are now 27 full-time staff based at Streatham and another 10 in Tremough, with research interests extending from early Medieval Britain to post- Communist Eastern Europe. In the last five years there has also been a considerable intensification of activity in local and regional history, as History has sought to forge links with local community groups, institutions and other charitable and business organisations. In many respects staff at Tremough have taken the lead in developing these connections. A strong civic dimension has been developed within the History cluster at Tremough, with significant engagement with the Cornish community at a variety of levels. This was based initially on the long-standing work of the Institute of Cornish Studies, part of the University of Exeter but part-funded by Cornwall Council, and located in Cornwall well before the establishment of the Cornwall Campus. Since the early 1990s, the Institute has focused on issues of identity in modern Cornwall, which it has explored through a variety of methods—for example, biography, demography and oral history—and which has led among other things to the establishment of strong links with the overseas Cornish diaspora and to the publication of the annual volume Cornish Studies (University of Exeter Press). A significant aspect of the Institute’s outreach work in the community has been its Cornish Audio Visual Archive initiative, which has attracted significant Heritage Lottery and European funding. As well as presenting a range of external lectures to Old Cornwall Societies, and local and family history groups, the Institute has also assisted Cornwall Council in several key areas of policy development—not least in the formulation and subsequent management of the successful bid to UNESCO for World Heritage Site status for Cornwall’s mining landscapes, and in the development and articulation of the Council’s Cornish Language Strategy. The Institute was likewise instrumental in the revitalisation of the Victoria County History (Cornwall) project, leading to several important publications under the aegis of the VCH at the Institute of Historical Research (University of London). Similarly, in maintaining its close links with Royal Cornwall Museum, the Institute of Cornish Studies led a successful bid to the Arts and Humanities 97 Henry French and Philip Payton Research Council (AHRC) for a Knowledge Transfer Project to support the redisplay and reinterpretation of the Museum’s exhibits. More recently, the Institute has developed a knowledge transfer partnership with Fowey Harbour Commissioners, with the assistance of a Knowledge Fellowship grant from the European Regional Development Fund. Since the establishment of History at Cornwall Campus, and the increasing integration of the Institute within its teaching, research and civic strategies, this community engagement has multiplied significantly. For example, History at Tremough has become a powerhouse of Knowledge Transfer activity, winning major grants from the AHRC to support initiatives at Penlee House and Gallery Museum at Penzance and the Truro Historical Project. The former was to assist Penlee Museum, through the training of an especially recruited volunteer team, to interpret existing displays within the light of new scholarship. The latter was an oral history project based on the life of one suburban community within the city of Truro, Cornwall’s capital. Additionally, a Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) Knowledge Transfer grant was obtained to build a collaborative project between History and the Geevor Tin Mining Museum, drawing upon existing expertise in Cornish mining history within History. To this was added a major grant under the AHRC Museum & Galleries scheme for an extensive collaborative project—entitled ‘Connecting Cornwall’—between History and the internationally significant Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, near Penzance. The latter led, among other things, to a comprehensive redisplay, opened officially in 2010 by The Princess Royal. The establishment of undergraduate teaching at Cornwall Campus has led to the introduction of Public History modules, which in turn has spawned a series of collaborative activities within Cornwall. Teams of undergraduate students have worked on public history projects with an array of Cornish museums, libraries and archives, leading to tangible outcomes that have ranged from new leaflet guides to help with artefact redisplays. Sponsors from these various institutions have also attended project presentations by these student teams at Cornwall Campus, further cementing symbiotic links with History. Among the institutions hosting collaborative projects have been the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, Geevor Tin Mining Museum, the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry Museum at Bodmin, the Wheal Martryn China Clay Museum, Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, Penlee House and Gallery Museum, local museums at St Ives, Helston and Fowey, as well as archives at the Courtney Library in the Royal Cornwall Museum, the Cornwall Record Office, and the Cornwall Centre in Redruth. Staff in History and English at Tremough have recently obtained AHRC funding for a series of interdisciplinary workshops on the theme of ‘Environment and Sustainability’ in early modern England. One event has taken place in Exeter, a two-day workshop on ‘Sustainable Futures: Crisis Management and the Uses of the Past’ was held at the Institute of Historical Research on 27 and 28 April 2011, a public workshop on ‘Past Environments and Sustainable Futures in Cornwall in Redruth on 2 July, and a conference on ‘Environment and Identity’ at Pendennis Castle, supported by English Heritage on 20–21 98 The University of Exeter July. In this way, the community visibility of History has been raised significantly, while undergraduate students have made important contributions to the lives and work of the various organisations in the community in Cornwall. Similar initiatives have been developed at the Streatham Campus. In association with Archaeology at Exeter, staff at Streatham obtained another AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellowship in May 2010 to engage in a community history project undertaken by local volunteers on Poltimore House, with the backing of the Poltimore House Trust. Built in the sixteenth century and remodelled in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Poltimore was home to the Bampfylde family until 1921, before it followed the familiar path of transition to a private school, a private hospital, a National Health Service hospital, disposal and eventual dereliction in the 1990s. In 2004, the house was a runner-up in the BBC2 ‘Restoration’ series, and the Knowledge Transfer Fellowship has been designed firstly to re- engage local people with the history of a landmark, secondly to present the findings and the research process on a publicly available website (http://elac.ex.ac.uk/poltimore- landscapes/) and thirdly, by researching the estate gardens, to provide the Poltimore House Trust with visitor attractions that will raise awareness and engagement with this historic site. The Centre for Maritime Historical Studies at Streatham has been established for 20 years, and has a long track record of organising conferences and events that focus on the relationship between the south west and the maritime economy and society. It has recently completed The Exeter Local Maritime Archives Project (ELMAP), which has created a searchable online database of references to records with maritime and naval significance that are held in local record offices and other archives across England and Wales. The database is fully searchable on keywords or dates and provides the user with a brief description and the reference number and details of the archive in which the material is held. At present the database comprises material received and held by local archives up to 1997 (http://centres.exeter.ac.uk/cmhs/ELMAP/). There are currently over 12,000 entries and new material is being added on a regular basis. The database is the product of a substantial grant from the Leverhulme Trust to meet the widely felt need for a guide to the very considerable sources for maritime history in the local archives of the United Kingdom. It was originally assembled over three years by the Leverhulme Research Fellow, Dr Todd Gray, with the generous cooperation of the Association of County Archivists which provided both financial assistance and the support of an advisory panel of County Archivists: Margery Rowe (Devon), Christine North (Cornwall) and Bryn Parry (Gwynnedd). It was advanced to its present state by the enthusiastic efforts of Dr Helen Doe, supported by postgraduates of the Centre, and with the editorial assistance of Karen Toulalan. More generally, Exeter’s Wellcome Centre for Medical History will be contributing to the Cultural Olympiad in 2012 with a project on the history of sexuality planned by Kate Fisher with staff in Classics. Young participants will work with historians, artists and 99 Henry French and Philip Payton healthcare professionals to explore the meaning and social importance of artefacts from the Wellcome Collection, ranging