Impact and Engagement
“What do you want your research to do?”
This is a question that continues to engage, drive, and inspire members of the School of English. Our researchers produce high-quality, world-leading literature-, language-, and practice-based research that benefits a diverse range of real-world contexts and communities and has a tangible value that reaches far beyond academia. Through developing long-standing relationships and collaborations with partners in a variety of different sectors—including education, heritage, and the creative industry—our research has had a transformative effect on the local, national, and international community.
Our researchers have a strong record of receiving external funding from the AHRC, Leverhulme Trust, Heritage Lottery Fund, and Wellcome Trust to support world-leading research projects involving extended collaborations with partners and beneficiaries from around the globe.
“Research impact is the provable effects (benefits) of research in the ‘real world.’” (Julie Bayley)
The wide-ranging real-world impact achieved through the School’s innovative and creative research was recognised in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, and was one of the reasons that we were ranked fourth nationally in the exercise.
Our current research impact is organised under five interconnected themes:
.Education
Our academics produce research in collaboration with teachers and education facilitators—both nationally and internationally—to transform classroom practice, teacher education, government policy, and public perceptions about language, heritage, and community health.
Heritage and Archives
Research conducted with local communities, archives, and repositories continues to bring benefits to partners in the heritage sector and charitable organisations through ground-breaking scholarly work and innovative knowledge-sharing activities.
Medical Humanities
Working at the cutting-edge of scholarship at the intersection of culture, medicine, and technology, our researchers uncover the often hidden experiences of health and illness, shaping how these are understood and informing decision-making in healthcare research and provision.
Practice Research
Producing innovative work at the intersection of creative and critical practice, researchers and practitioners are transforming literary practice at the national and international level, enabling future generations of writers through the Leeds Poetry Centre and National Poetry Centre, and changing public perceptions of major issues including illness and well-being, biodiversity loss and climate change. Research-informed creative writing workshops have raised awareness about coercive control and generated significant benefits for survivors of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence.
Environment
Researchers working in the environmental humanities examine the relationships between human creativity, social life, and the non-human world, and have helped to change public perceptions of nature writing, eco-tourism, and the global environmental crisis.
Image credits: LivingBodiesObjects team (Medical Humanities); Jess Richards (Practice Research), Unsplash