ESRC End of Award Report

Transcription

1 ESRC End of Award Report For awards ending on or after 1 November 2009 This End of Award Report should be completed and submitted using the grant reference as the subject, to reportsofficer@esrc.ac.uk on or before the due date. The final instalment of the grant will not be paid until an End of Award Report is completed in full and accepted by ESRC. Grant holders whose End of Award Report is overdue or incomplete will not be eligible for further ESRC funding until the Report is accepted. We reserve the right to recover a sum of the expenditure incurred on the grant if the End of Award Report is overdue. (Please see Section 5 of the ESRC Research Funding Guide for details.) Please refer to the Guidance notes when completing this End of Award Report. Grant Reference RES Grant Title Nostalgia in the 21 st Century Grant Start Date Grant End Date Total Amount Expended: Grant holding Institution University of Strathclyde Grant Holder Dr Sarah Edwards Grant Holder s Contact Address Details School of Humanities, LT level 7, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, G1 1XH 16, sarah.m.edwards@strath.ac. uk Telephone Co-Investigators (as per project application): Institution Dr Beverly Wagner University of Strathclyde Dr Kathy Hamilton "" Dr Juliette Wilson "" Professor Faye Hammill "" 1

2 1. Non-technical summary Please provide below a project summary written in non-technical language. The summary may be used by us to publicise your work and should explain the aims and findings of the project. [Max 250 words] Nostalgia is a shaping cultural force in the new millennium, impacting on a wide range of consumer behaviours and cultural productions. The study of nostalgia is increasingly important because technological advancements and the digital media environment are producing new dynamics between past and present, and between individuals and communities. New technology presents a paradox: on the one hand, it has the capacity to stimulate nostalgia by bringing large numbers of globally diverse people together: for instance, as diasporic communities connected via the internet, as worldwide audiences for bestselling nostalgic books or films, or as members of international organisations focussing on sustainability and green issues. However, technologies can also create fragmentation and alienation from the present; our increasingly mediated relationship to the material world has led to perceptions of social and moral decline and loss of traditional values. The research presented in our seminars demonstrates that nostalgia strongly influences the behaviour of consumers, marketers, writers and other cultural producers, and underpins a range of trends in contemporary culture. These include environmental initiatives, ancestral tourism, retro fashion and design, film re-releases or re-makes, and merchandising associated with particular authors or historical periods. Participants in our seminars emphasised that emotions including nostalgia play a central role in guiding consumer decision-making, as well as shaping audience responses to reading or viewing. At the same time, web 2.0 technologies and other modes of audience feedback enable a two-way process, in which the nostalgic responses of consumers may influence the decisions of cultural or commercial producers. 2. Project overview a) Objectives Please state the aims and objectives of your project as outlined in your proposal to us. [Max 200 words] The primary aim was to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue in order to further enquiry into the uses of nostalgia in contemporary culture. We expected to draw on perspectives from disciplines including marketing, consumer research, literary studies, history, and media and cultural studies. We also planned to stimulate interchange with those working in heritage industries, publishing and commercial marketing, particularly within Glasgow, where urban regeneration is producing both technological achievement and new forms of nostalgic identity. The series pursued the following objectives: - To raise awareness of the significance of nostalgia within contemporary culture by presenting current work and research in this area - To deepen understanding of the impact of technology on nostalgic experiences - To encourage inter-disciplinary dialogue, compare theoretical underpinnings and open the area to multiple methods of research enquiry - To promote exploration of nostalgia by graduate research students and stimulate new projects in the field - To strengthen the link between theory and practice in this area, disseminating contributions to the widest possible audience - To bring together a national and international group of academics to create a cross-cultural network for future collaboration 2

3 - To identify specific research projects, special editions of journals and conference opportunities b) Project Changes Please describe any changes made to the original aims and objectives, and confirm that these were agreed with us. Please also detail any changes to the grant holder s institutional affiliation, project staffing or funding. [Max 200 words] No changes c) Methodology Please describe the methodology that you employed in the project. Please also note any ethical issues that arose during the course of the work, the effects of this and any action taken. [Max 500 words] We held six seminars. For the first five events, we invited three or four speakers from within and beyond academia, ensuring that several disciplines and/or professional areas were represented at each event. At seminar 6, eight early-career researchers, each from a different discipline, offered short presentations, while three speakers from previous seminars acted as respondents. 14 Jan 2010: 'Material Culture 1: Retro'. Prof. David Lowenthal (Geography, UCL); Prof. Robert Schindler (Rutgers School of Business); Dr Bruce Peter (Glasgow School of Art). 22 April 2010: 'Material Culture 2: Print and Media'. Prof. Andrew Higson (Film and TV, York); Dr Lyn Thomas (European Studies, London Met); Julian Gorham (independent strategist and writer, Julian Gorham and others). 24 Sept 2010: 'Urban Nostalgia'. Prof Ian Gilzean (Scottish Executive Architectural Policy Unit); Mark O'Neill (Culture and Sport Glasgow); Prof. Svetlana Boym (Slavic Literature, Harvard). 21 Jan 2011: 'Diaspora'. Prof Lisa Peñaloza (EDHEC Business School, France); Prof Susan Holak (Business Dept, CUNY); Dr Daniela Sime (Education, Strathclyde); Dr Silvia Mejía (Foreign Languages, College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY). 31 March 2011: 'Sustainability'. Prof Andrew Price (Life Sciences, Warwick); Prof Kate Soper (Humanities, London Met); Prof Nina Ray (Marketing, Boise State University). 23 Sept 2011: 'Early Career Researchers'. Ellie Herring (Cultural Studies, Edinburgh); Lakshmi Priya (Architecture, Sheffield); Joseph Maslen (History, Sheffield Hallam); Áurea Rodrigues (Economics and Management, University of Aveiro, Portugal); Will Abberley (English, Exeter); Matt Gill (Art and Design, Nottingham Trent); Elodie Roy (Music, Newcastle); Annie Blanchette (Business, Exeter). Additional speaker on career development: Professor Mark Llewellyn (English, Strathclyde). Respondents: Robert Schindler, Mark O'Neill, Kate Soper. 3

4 At each event, we allocated places for up to 20 participants in addition to the speakers and organisers. These people extended the range of organisations, disciplines and countries represented at the events. Participants from outside academia included an events organiser, an artist, a copywriter, a printer, a designer, a curator, a public health programme manager, and a county council employee. Academic participants came from subjects including Media Studies, Genomics, American Studies, Jewish Studies, and Town and Regional Planning. Countries represented included Canada, the US, Sweden, Ireland, France, and Portugal. Seminars were publicised through: 1) contacts in relevant departments at Scottish universities; 2) academic mailing lists (Consumer Research Group, Middlebrow Network, Architexture, Scottish Network of Modernist Studies, Critical Geography Forum); 3) non-academic circulation lists owned by Culture and Sport Glasgow, Creative Scotland etc 4) circulation of previous participants 5) our website and a facebook page. We varied the format across the seminars. We used 'speed-networking' at seminar 1, to enable each participant to speak with every other person individually for two minutes. At seminars 2 and 3 we invited respondents to provide formal commentaries on the presentations, while seminar 5 concluded with an open discussion of future research directions. The first five events each included a tour of a local site relevant to the subjects of nostalgia, heritage marketing, or urban conservation. These were the Britannia Panoptican Music Hall, the Mackintosh House, Kelvingrove Museum, the People's Palace, and Scotland Street School Museum. d) Project Findings Please summarise the findings of the project, referring where appropriate to outputs recorded on the ESRC website. Any future research plans should also be identified. [Max 500 words] OUTCOMES: Our tangible outcomes are: Publication: a special issue of the journal CMC: Consumption, Markets and Culture, coedited by the five seminar organisers Website: - this provides a detailed record of the seminar series, including videos of the presentations by invited speakers Knowledge Exchange activity: two ESRC Festival events Network: approximately 100 people in total have attended at least one of our events, and we have established a JISC mailing list (NOSTALGIA@JISCMAIL.AC.UK) to facilitate ongoing collaboration and information exchange More generally, the complex relationships between technology and nostalgia have not been analysed in any depth in existing theory and research, and our seminars raised the profile of this theme, both within and beyond the academic community. We fostered many new research links and forged connections across a range of disciplinary and professional specialisms. In more detail, our guest-edited special issue of Consumption, Markets and Culture (a Routledge journal established in 1987), is in preparation and will appear in We have ten submissions currently under review, most of them from seminar speakers or participants; we intend to publish six or seven of these. We obtained separate funding for ESRC Festival events in both 2010 and In 2010 we 4

5 organised a writing competition and family event, 'Glasgow Remembered: Food and Nostalgia', under the auspices of the Aye Write! literary festival, held at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. In 2011 we ran a photo-essay competition entitled 'Glasgow Schooldays Remembered', and an associated event for children and their families at the Scotland Street School Museum. This was in association with the 'Inspiration' festival of creativity for young people. See details of these events below under 'impacts'. LEVEL OF INTEREST: When we announced each event, potential participants were invited to fill in an expression of interest form, briefly describing their areas of work and their reason for wishing to attend. We were able to accommodate most of those who applied, though the number of applications for the 20 places varied from 15 to 25 applicants. There were several regular attendees who came to three or four seminars, but each event attracted at least 10 new delegates. Demand was high for the early career/ PGR travel bursaries, and particularly for the presentation slots at the early career event (18 applications received). FEEDBACK: We distributed feedback forms at each event, asking for comments on communications and on the event itself, and suggestions for the future. Representative comments include: 'very engaged participants & good discussion; outstanding IT support and organisation, relaxed atmosphere which facilitated real intellectual exchange'; 'It worked very well a good range of speakers from different backgrounds and disciplines, plenty of time for discussion, well attended and a fascinating tour' 'productive and informative' 'thoughtprovoking; really like the open-ended tone good intellectual enquiry without specific agenda works well' 'very interesting and stimulating: valuable chance to discuss across disciplines'. While there were no criticisms of the content of events, there were several practical suggestions which we implemented. e) Contributions to wider ESRC initiatives (eg Research Programmes or Networks) If your project was part of a wider ESRC initiative, please describe your contributions to the initiative s objectives and activities and note any effect on your project resulting from participation. [Max. 200 words] N/A 5

6 3. Early and anticipated impacts a) Summary of Impacts to date Please summarise any impacts of the project to date, referring where appropriate to associated outputs recorded on the Research Outcomes System (ROS). This should include both scientific impacts (relevant to the academic community) and economic and societal impacts (relevant to broader society). The impact can be relevant to any organisation, community or individual. [Max. 400 words] Scientific impacts: Our seminar series drew together speakers from different disciplines, and a range of academic and non-academic practitioners. Their exchanges created an inter-disciplinary dialogue which advanced the theorisation of nostalgia, strengthened links between theory and practice and created new research capacities. In seminar 3, for example, both practising architects and architectural researchers presented their work and another speaker was involved in policy development in the museum sector. This seminar was accompanied by an exhibition of photographs by Svetlana Boym, mounted at Strathclyde's Department of Architecture. We have formed an ongoing, cross-cultural research network which includes early career researchers who are developing new projects on nostalgia and who received feedback from leading experts in the field at the final seminar. Economic and societal impacts: We have engaged with the general public by stimulating creative output in the form of photographs, poetry and essays on the concept of nostalgia. We achieved this aim through collaboration with local schools, libraries, festivals and businesses and with the support of the ESRC Festival of Social Science. This activity has helped to raise the profile of the creative industries in Glasgow. Our project website has become a resource for studying nostalgia and has had 8,816 page views to date, and our research network is user-driven. The creative writing competitions enabled the development of writing, photographic and presentation skills among adult and younger entrants, taking the children s work beyond the classroom to a wider audience. The exhibition which accompanied our third seminar was curated by recent graduates who have founded a design company aiming to place the community at the heart of urban projects ( This provided valuable experience for them, and is likely to enable future knowledge exchange with design and architecture practitioners. The 2010 Festival event attracted 60 members of the public and the 2011 event attracted over 100 votes for the poster competition as well as additional participants at the workshop. The ESRC press release for the latter event was disseminated to a wide range of media outlets and each seminar was reported to the university alumni association and to faculty newsletters. We have also received media coverage in the Sunday Herald (May 2010), the Corporate Edge blog (April 2010), and the Scottish Centre of Food and Feeding newsletter (2011). 6

7 b) Anticipated/Potential Future Impacts Please outline any anticipated or potential impacts (scientific or economic and societal) that you believe your project might have in future. [Max. 200 words] In our forthcoming special issue of CMC, the editorial introduction will contextualise the principal theories of nostalgia represented in the issue and will build on the findings of the series. The issue will include new research from film studies, postcolonial literary criticism, cultural geography, popular music and from a curator working on the new Riverside museum in Glasgow. There is also considerable potential for new collaborations via our research network. You will be asked to complete an ESRC Impact Report 12 months after the end date of your award. The Impact Report will ask for details of any impacts that have arisen since the completion of the End of Award Report. 7

8 4. Declarations Please ensure that sections A, B and C below are completed and signed by the appropriate individuals. The End of Award Report will not be accepted unless all sections are signed. Please note hard copies are not required; electronic signatures are accepted and should be used. A: To be completed by Grant Holder Please read the following statements. Tick one statement under ii) and iii), then sign with an electronic signature at the end of the section (this should be an image of your actual signature). i) The Project This Report is an accurate overview of the project, its findings and impacts. All coinvestigators named in the proposal to ESRC or appointed subsequently have seen and approved the Report. x ii) Submissions to the Research Outcomes System (ROS) Output and impact information has been submitted to the Research Outcomes System. Details of any future outputs and impacts will be submitted as soon as they become available. or This grant has not yet produced any outputs or impacts. Details of any future outputs and impacts will be submitted to the Research Outcomes System as soon as they become available. x iii) Submission of Datasets Datasets arising from this grant have been offered for deposit with the Economic and Social Data Service. or Datasets that were anticipated in the grant proposal have not been produced and the Economic and Social Data Service has been notified. or No datasets were proposed or produced from this grant. x 8