Periodic Reporting for period 4 - TIDE (Travel, Transculturality and Identity in England, c.1550 – 1700)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-04-01 al 2022-05-31
The central research question for this project is: how did mobility in the great age of travel and discovery (c.1550–1700) shape English perceptions of human identity based on cultural identification and difference, and how did literature facilitate and resist such categorisations? The role of those marked by transcultural mobility was central to this period. Human movements across borders increased under the combined impact of multiple political, economic, religious, and social factors, and as individuals migrated, the ways in which they thought about differences between countries and races developed rapidly as well, and began to take recognisable shapes and forms. Trade, diplomacy and politics, religious schisms and ethnographic debates, and shifts in systems of law and governance all attempted to control and formalise the identity of those who moved across borders and boundaries. Our current world is all too familiar with the concepts that surfaced or evolved as a result: foreigners, strangers, aliens, converts, exiles, or even translators, ambassadors and go-betweens.
There is an urgent need to consolidate our fragmented understanding of this crucial issue, which continues to shape current debates. TIDE offered a direct and timely response to this challenge, combining established methodologies with a set of ambitious and innovative approaches. By bringing together four discrete yet interconnected discourses that tackled the fraught question of human identity in this era (trade and diplomacy, law and governance, religion and ethnography, and literature), it opened up a new perspective on cross-cultural encounters. It put pressure on our understanding of cultural difference, transculturality and identity, and generated a new understanding of key terms, concepts, and debates in both scientific and public domains. Its published outputs are already widely used within scientific communities and in higher education. It has also broken fresh ground through the combination of academic research with new creative writing, with policy making in secondary education around issues of race and identity, and with heritage industries through collaboration and consultancy with museums and archives.
There is an urgent need to consolidate our fragmented understanding of this crucial issue, which continues to shape current debates. TIDE offered a direct and timely response to this challenge, combining established methodologies with a set of ambitious and innovative approaches. By bringing together four discrete yet interconnected discourses that tackled the fraught question of human identity in this era (trade and diplomacy, law and governance, religion and ethnography, and literature), it opened up a new perspective on cross-cultural encounters. It put pressure on our understanding of cultural difference, transculturality and identity, and generated a new understanding of key terms, concepts, and debates in both scientific and public domains. Its published outputs are already widely used within scientific communities and in higher education. It has also broken fresh ground through the combination of academic research with new creative writing, with policy making in secondary education around issues of race and identity, and with heritage industries through collaboration and consultancy with museums and archives.
All the undertakings indicated in the Grant Agreement Annex 1 (DoA) have proceeded as planned, along with substantial additional activities. The work performed by the project throughout its 5-year duration can be divided into three sections: publications, public engagement and education, and new writing.
Publications
The team has actively published a range of materials in a variety of formats over the project’s duration, including numerous individual and collaborative blogposts, teaching resources, reflection pieces, and television and radio programmes with national broadcasters. The peer reviewed publications that have emerged from project research include 2 collaborative essay collections (and 1 further forthcoming), 4 monographs (inc. 1 forthcoming), 2 PhD theses (one from doctoral researcher on project and second from researcher supported by additional leveraged funding from the host institution), 6 articles, and 5 book chapters.
Public Engagement
The questions posed by the project possess a unique urgency in the present climate, where debates about the rights and identities of displaced peoples, nations, and groups rage not only in Europe but across the world. TIDE's public engagement strategy worked with both local and national institutions, archival collections, and groups to impact the way transculturality and identity is taught and understood. It operated in three key areas:
• Education and Policy: We have worked with schoolteachers, researchers, and policy makers to influence the UK national curriculum and collaborate with think tanks on their reports and publications.
• Literature and Culture: This involved exciting new writing initiatives; collaborative theatrical workshops; local outreach through museum workshops and temporary exhibits; and larger networks of collaboration with national and international museums.
• Community and Society: TIDE liaised with local trusts, higher education widening participation schemes, and community groups and programmes to confront ongoing issues around transculturality and belonging.
• Academic Outreach: Alongside the project’s numerous publications, the team have fostered intellectual exchange by organising conferences, seminars, symposiums, invited talks, and workshops, and disseminated their research at events across Europe and North America.
New Writing
TIDE’s Visiting Writer programme was developed to provide an invaluable insight into how literature acts as a bridge across multiple cultural landscapes in a world where views of cultural identity, rights and affiliations lend themselves to strife, conflict and division. Each year, a different writer worked closely with the core research team to produce a thought-provoking and illuminating set of outputs and events, including poetry collections, published essays, museum displays, and interactive multimedia resources.
In addition, TIDE has led to a further successful bid for ERC Proof of Concept funding (TRACTION, GA 966795), which is supporting a further initiative developing out of our Education and Policy work, by developing a sustainable online platform of continuing professional development for high school teachers of English and History, on the topics of race, identity, and migration.
Publications
The team has actively published a range of materials in a variety of formats over the project’s duration, including numerous individual and collaborative blogposts, teaching resources, reflection pieces, and television and radio programmes with national broadcasters. The peer reviewed publications that have emerged from project research include 2 collaborative essay collections (and 1 further forthcoming), 4 monographs (inc. 1 forthcoming), 2 PhD theses (one from doctoral researcher on project and second from researcher supported by additional leveraged funding from the host institution), 6 articles, and 5 book chapters.
Public Engagement
The questions posed by the project possess a unique urgency in the present climate, where debates about the rights and identities of displaced peoples, nations, and groups rage not only in Europe but across the world. TIDE's public engagement strategy worked with both local and national institutions, archival collections, and groups to impact the way transculturality and identity is taught and understood. It operated in three key areas:
• Education and Policy: We have worked with schoolteachers, researchers, and policy makers to influence the UK national curriculum and collaborate with think tanks on their reports and publications.
• Literature and Culture: This involved exciting new writing initiatives; collaborative theatrical workshops; local outreach through museum workshops and temporary exhibits; and larger networks of collaboration with national and international museums.
• Community and Society: TIDE liaised with local trusts, higher education widening participation schemes, and community groups and programmes to confront ongoing issues around transculturality and belonging.
• Academic Outreach: Alongside the project’s numerous publications, the team have fostered intellectual exchange by organising conferences, seminars, symposiums, invited talks, and workshops, and disseminated their research at events across Europe and North America.
New Writing
TIDE’s Visiting Writer programme was developed to provide an invaluable insight into how literature acts as a bridge across multiple cultural landscapes in a world where views of cultural identity, rights and affiliations lend themselves to strife, conflict and division. Each year, a different writer worked closely with the core research team to produce a thought-provoking and illuminating set of outputs and events, including poetry collections, published essays, museum displays, and interactive multimedia resources.
In addition, TIDE has led to a further successful bid for ERC Proof of Concept funding (TRACTION, GA 966795), which is supporting a further initiative developing out of our Education and Policy work, by developing a sustainable online platform of continuing professional development for high school teachers of English and History, on the topics of race, identity, and migration.
The relationship between transculturality and identity covers a vast and complex territory that our discipline-boundedness stops us from scanning, and connections as well as fault lines disappear from view when we focus on singular phenomena and single groups. Understanding transculturality invites a wider and more interconnected view, tracing influences and interactions across discourses and communities. TIDE’s cohesive yet complex methodological approach is a distinct response to this challenge. TIDE has opened a new perspective on cross-cultural encounters by (1) emphasising cultural mobility and encounter in a field that tends to be framed predominantly in terms of cultural clash and boundaries, (2) producing a new understanding of relevant key terms, concepts, debates and examples, and (3) bringing together not only specialist expertise from multiple disciplines, but also acquiring the participation of major contemporary writers and poets, who have helped to open up a new, urgent, and highly relevant place of dialogue between literary-historical research and contemporary developments in literature and culture around issues of identity and migration.