Funded research projects

As an extension of the STEMM Change project we are working with Browne Jacobson LLP to develop bespoke models and training that further embed linguistic diversity and inclusiveness into recruitment and promotions processes. The aim of this collaboration is to provide better understanding and practice of how to communicate and conduct recruitment and promotions in order to lead to more socially representative staffing profiles and fairer work environments.

More information can be found here.

Understanding the reception of public health messages is of key importance to the UK’s ability to manage the next phase of the coronavirus pandemic. Human behaviour is shaped by the reception and production of discourse and by the reasoning about difference sources of information. This project addresses key challenges that the coronavirus pandemic presents in relation to understanding the flow and impact of public health messages in public and private communications. This project is led by the University of Nottingham in collaboration with Cardiff University, and working in partnership with Public Health England, Public Health Wales and NHS Education for Scotland.

This project extends initial findings taken from the STEMM-CHANGE project to co-develop a diversity and inclusion communications software AI tool. This toolkit is designed to mitigate language bias in job advertisements and role descriptions with the aim to promote diverse recruitment and increase the efficiency with which materials can be rewritten inclusively. This work is being undertaken in collaboration with Diversely, an international corporate organisation based in Singapore.

More information can be found here.

The Survey of English Place-Names was established in the 1920s and has enjoyed the British Academy's support since then. Its aims are to publish volumes on place-names across England, on a county-by-county basis. To date 95 volumes have ben published, covering most or all of 32 counties. Work is ongoing for Hampshire, Herefordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Shropshire, Somerset and Staffordshire.

English place-names evolved as descriptive labels and are often very old indeed. They are an invaluable (and under-utilised) resource for linguists, historians, archaeologists, and geographers, and they are of great interest to the general public. This funding has supported the initial development of an open-access web interface whose aim is to present and discuss the origins of place-names for experts and non-experts alike. Staffordshire is our pilot county.

Dr Peter Kirwan has been appointed the general editor of the leading journal in early modern performance studies, Shakespeare Bulletin. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press, this quarterly journal publishes articles, performance reviews and book reviews covering the wide range of early modern drama in performance. The journal and its editorial assistants will be hosted by the School of English.

We are undertaking research to learn about the experience of museums and heritage organisations with regard to their volunteer workforce, during the COVID pandemic. In particular we are looking at a) how organisations have been able / not been able to utilise volunteers during the various periods of COVID restrictions in 2020 b) how organisations envisage deploying volunteers during re-openings in 2021 (before vaccination programmes are complete) c) thoughts about the longer-term issues relating to volunteers in terms of specific organisational needs, the volunteers themselves, and impact on the local community and economy. Participating organisations have been recruited from a very wide range of heritage organisations (from small volunteer managed charities to large businesses) in two regions, northern England and the central Midlands.

We are undertaking research to learn about the experience of museums and heritage organisations with regard to their volunteer workforce, during the COVID pandemic. In particular we are looking at a) how organisations have been able / not been able to utilise volunteers during the various periods of COVID restrictions in 2020 b) how organisations envisage deploying volunteers during re-openings in 2021 (before vaccination programmes are complete) c) thoughts about the longer-term issues relating to volunteers in terms of specific organisational needs, the volunteers themselves, and impact on the local community and economy. Participating organisations have been recruited from a very wide range of heritage organisations (from small volunteer managed charities to large businesses) in two regions, northern England and the central Midlands.

The project extends Nottingham City Council's Future of the High Street Fund (FHSF) programme by exploring the different ways that immersive technology can be used. In particular, it focusses on the impact of covid-19, and the way existing digital archives, such as those held by Nottingham Theatre Royal, can be incorporated into FHSF activities.

This project builds on recent and current research initiatives at UoN concerning the legacies in Nottingham of the transatlantic trade in enslaved people. Continuing the review of the city's statues, plaques amd street-names, the project is engaging with schools and teachers to create learning resources.

"Our project compares evidence from dental calculus on skeletal remains (proteomics) with evidence from mediecal remedies. It will fill the gap between text and osteological/aDNA data by applying a new method which uses protein residues from tooth calculus. The outcomes may provide new insights into the diet and care of people who suffered from illness. The technique has never been applied to search for specific medical plants. For this pilot study we will use dental remains from the medieval cemetery at Norton Priory and compare it to medical texts and dietary advice.

Our project will examine if we can see a correlation between medical advice and practical application. It potentially can answer questions, such as: did the sick have a special diet? Do we see evidence for treatment? Cultures express attitudes towards sickness differently, but illness is a universal experience. This project can go some way to answer how a society so different from our own managed disease."

The cultural, political and intellectual links between Scotland and mainlandNorthern Europe created particular circumstances for the Scottish reception of the major fifteenth-century intellectual movement known to us as humanism. This project looks at the uses to which aspects of this movement were put between 1480 and 1560, examining a variety of works in both Latin and Older Scots.

Using the findings from the AHRC Place-Names of Shropshire project (2013-17), the project aims to change the way childhood educators think about language and landscape, to encourage them to explore local place-names as a learning tool for Key Stage 2. We are working with schools and educational groups in Shropshire, running training and development days, and we hope to create a range of downloadable learning materials and activities based on place-names.

The award is for research expenses relating to my new project, a new and fully annotated translation of Orkneyinga saga. The award will enable me to visit manuscript archives in Copenhagen and Reykjavík, as well as doing fieldwork and making museum and site visits in Caithness, Orkney and Shetland.

The Marginalised Families Online project will explore the role that digital (online and mobile) media such as messaging apps, discussion forums, social networks and blogs, play in the lives of marginalised family groups in the UK. It focuses on parents who are LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender), adoptive, and/or solo (raising children on their own).

The project aims to give a voice to families who tend to be under-represented in both an academic and broader social context, and to highlight some of the challenges they face. It uses innovative methods (drawing on sociological, linguistic and digital approaches and tools) to forge new understanding of the way parents navigate their roles, relationships and experiences in relation to social norms around gender, sexuality and the family. By focusing on the intersections between the experiences of LGBT, solo and adoptive parents, the project seeks to understand and address issues that relate to a range of diverse families.

This project involves sociolinguistic fieldwork with LGBT young people in three socioeconomically and culturally variable locations in the UK over the next two years. The project is focused on intersectionality, considering how factors such as the young people’s socioeconomic class, ethnicity, location, and support networks impact on their experiences as LGBT people and their subsequent identity constructions.

This project focuses on remedies for wound infections that include nettles (Urtica spp.) in their ingredients. These remedies are concentrated in surgical texts and hunting manuals (in reference to infected bites from dogs), as well as in medical texts for physicians. The project examines exactly how medieval texts use nettles: how specific are the medical contexts in which they are used, and are they repeatedly combined with particular partner ingredients? Further, do usage patterns correlate to evidence-based usage of nettles in ways that produce effective treatments against the bacteria that commonly infect wounds? Our objective is to develop a new direction of collaborative research in which modern data science and arts-science collaboration enhances our understanding of past medical practice, and through which knowledge of the past will be made relevant in a contemporary setting.

Oscar Wilde’s four society comedies, Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, are among the most performed plays in the English language. Yet key questions about their genesis, staging and politics remain unresolved; and with the exception of Earnest, little is known either about their original performance texts which in each case were different from the published texts by which they are encountered today.

Of these questions, the most important centre on how Wilde developed the hybrid formula – known as the ‘society comedy’ – which led to this string of West End hits, given that his previous dramatic experiments – Vera; or, the Nihilists, The Duchess of Padua, A Wife’s Tragedy and Salomé – were in different genres and much less successful.

Related questions concern Wilde’s working relationships with other theatrical professionals, and the extent to which these were collaborative or coercive; as well as how Wilde learned to handle political material on the stage.

My project aims to bring a wealth of new evidence to bear on these questions, providing new insights into how Wilde developed his craft as a playwright.

I will focus on a re-examination of Wilde’s first West End hit, Lady Windermere’s Fan, and its relationship with Vera – Wilde’s only previous play (with the partial exception of Lawrence Barrett’s 1891 production of a heavily reworked Duchess of Padua) to have received a commercial staging. No substantial new textual scholarship has been undertaken into either Lady Windermere’s Fan or Vera since the 1980s. My project will be the first attempt since then to undertake a systematic re-examination of the extensive archival evidence relating to the composition and staging of both plays.