Project archive - Durham University

Into the Forest: Woods, Trees and Forests in the Germanic-Speaking Cultures of Northern Europe, c. 46 BC - c. 1500

Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough (Principal Investigator) Professor Giles Gasper (Co-Investigator) The National Forest Company (Partner), The Projection Studio Ltd (Partner)

An in-depth, multidisciplinary study of forests in northern Germanic cultures, including a complex network of historical and cultural connections and influences - religious, political, artistic, literary, economic, legal - and their development over time.
Connects with experts from broadcasting, ecology, heritage, education and the creative industries.

Transwar Japanese Political Culture and the Measurement of Public Opinion

Dr Adam Bronson (Principal Investigator)

Uses mid-twentieth-century Japan as a case-study to explore the effects of public opinion polls on political culture.
Reflects how opinion polls became a symbol of postwar Japanese democracy through developments that unfolded before, during and after the Second World War.
Traces transwar developments to show how opinion polls shaped political culture over time.

Supported by British Academy, Small Research Grant (2021)

Empire and Accumulation

Dr Jonathan Saha (Principal Investigator)

Develops the concept of “accumulation” from its roots in critical political economy to shed light on the accumulation of ideas, texts, and objects in empires.
Explores the histories of imperial accumulation in oil and timber company records held by the London Metropolitan Archive.

Dr Anne Heffernan (Principal Investigator)

Supports early career scholars from South Africa’s least well-resourced institutions in bringing their research to publication.
Promotes the voices of scholars who are most marginalized, particularly those from historically black universities, transforming knowledge production in these fields.
Enhancese North-South and South-South knowledge sharing.

Revolutionising optics: Ibn al-Haytham and medieval scientific thinking

Professor Nader El-Bizri (Visiting Professor) Professor Giles Gasper (Principal Investigator)

Re-shapes the history of European science, tracing the intercultural transmission of ideas and material culture in premodern Islamic civilizations and its shared cultural and intellectual heritage with European Medieval, Renaissance, and Early modern.
Includes collaborations from Physics to Philosophy and Mathematics to Theology.

Bush Wars? Conservation, Conflict and Cultures of Nature in South Sudan and Northern Uganda, c. 1840–2020

Dr Cherry Leonardi (Principal Investigator)

Explores the local meanings, knowledge, and management of biodiversity in South Sudan and northwest Uganda since the mid-19th century, to examine causes and implications of recent losses.
Uses oral history interviews and other oral, performance, and material documentary sources, placing people’s long-term relationships with nature at the centre of conflict histories.