The relationship between film and urban environments in one that is well established in writings on both film and cities. From the earliest days of the medium, the immaterial architectures of film have played a significant role in the way cities have been imagined and represented. Yet despite the almost elemental bond that exists between the filmic and the urban, there have been surprisingly few attempts to map the relationship between filmic representations of urban space and the social, material and lived spaces within which they are embedded. In this regard the current AHRC-funded project 'City in Film: Liverpool's Urban Landscape and the Moving Image' has proved ground-breaking insofar as it has sought to directly engage with the materiality of the urban fabric underpinning film practices in Liverpool. However, there are few explicitly cartographic analyses of film in studies to date. This project will provide the first full and extended research into this field of enquiry by developing an interactive digital map of Liverpool in film that will draw on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. Utilising already established resources on Liverpool's urban landscape in film, which include a comprehensive database of films made in and of Liverpool from 1897 to the 1980s, the research will enable different urban spatial formations (filmic, architectural, geographic) to be brought into critical spatial dialogue. Geographically referencing the film footage within contemporary and historical landscapes, this innovative project will establish a unique and sustainable model for research into cities and film. Maps, as Franco Moretti notes, function 'as analytical tools...bringing to light relations that would otherwise remain hidden'. By opening up the different cinematic spaces of the city to detailed cartographic and spatial analysis the researchers will be able to explore more effectively the correlation between the material development of the city (for example, changes in patterns of mobility, the horizontal and vertical expansion of the city, housing and transportation developments, architectural quality) and the filmic spaces of representation that have mediated and captured the changing character of Liverpool's urban fabric.\n\nThe research will involve detailed spatial analysis of a range of non-fiction genres (actualities, amateur/independent, documentaries, newsreels). The ability to geo-reference the data drawn from these films enables the project team to pursue innovative avenues of research that will contribute to interdisciplinary discussions on themes of place, space and representation within urban environments. The digitisation of selected film footage is integral to the analytical and evidence-based engagement with our research problems and questions. By conducting extensive ethnographic and qualitative research amongst amateur and independent filmmakers in Liverpool and Merseyside, as well as archival research into both filmmaking and planning practices in the city, we will gain a detailed understanding of the social, political and historical contexts within which key film practices were situated . This contextual data, along with audio-visual material drawn from interviews, oral histories, as well as digitised footage from a core selection of filmic material, will be incorporated within the GIS map, providing a rich and multi-layered reading of the city's architecture and social, cultural and historical geographies. \n\nOne of the principal aims of this project is to explore cutting edge ways of disseminating research on film to a wide range of audiences, through, for example, public screenings and exhibitions, conferences and seminars. In 2010 a version of the GIS film map will form part of an interactive public display to be exhibited at the new Museum of Liverpool, and the complete database will be accessible form the university library for scholarly and research activity.

This project addresses theoretical and practical discussions and approaches emergent from digitally enabled advances in audience user experience in the field of museums and cultural heritage. Specifically, it seeks to engage in and further international and interdisciplinary debate around difficult heritage, complex memory and associated ethical and methodological considerations arising when digital technologies are utilised by cultural heritage organisations to develop learning and participation applications. New technologies are increasingly commonplace, however, more needs to be explored in terms of understanding the diverse and complex learning spaces that these open up and by exploring how those spaces and interactions are evaluated. The project critically explores both the physical and virtual space(s) of the museum/ gallery and its objects, narratives, and emergent shifts in expected (and unexpected) usage in order to further best practices and foster new research agendas on an international scale. The network will use specific recent, ongoing and planned examples and initiatives from across the UK and S.Korea as case studies for discussion. For example, it will engage with ongoing and future initiatives at NML's International Slavery Museum, exploring the shift to online learning and digital exhibitions, as well as the collections relevance to S.Korea. In the case of South Korea, case studies will explore digital exhibitions at Art Sonje Center relating to the Demilitarised Zone in Korea, as well as other examples which explore the representation of complex memory, for example collaborative work on a virtual reality exhibition around forced labour under the Japenese occupation. Across all of these, there will be a critical exploration of inter- and transcultural aspects of practices of (re) presenting, curating, and narrating complex memory and identities by sharing current practices framed around learning and participation. This funded network is therefore crucial to ensure a multi-faceted collaborative approach that understands impacts on both the local, national and the global scale. The network builds on and significantly expands existing relationships across the three institutions of the Universities of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores and Sogang, Seoul, and their cultural partners. By capitalizing on and strengthening these with the inclusion of experts in the field, the key impact and uniqueness of this network is that it will revolve around international academic experts, stakeholders, sites and key cultural organizations, to scope and shape innovative practices in the area of memory studies, museum learning and participation, and explore the potential of evaluation frameworks which cut across sectors and disciplines, shaping approaches that can positively impact the (re) presentation of, and critical debate around, difficult memory, nationhood, identity and belonging.

The bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade is a unique opportunity to fund a research project that critically evaluates the phenomena of commemorating the slave trade and the production and content of events across a wide variety of creative industries and heritage sites in the UK throughout 2007/08. In addition, the project builds theoretical methods for understanding institutional commemorations that will both inform academic understanding of commemoration as an act and process, and will matter to those in the public sphere who commission and produce commemorative events. \n\nThe project will develop existing methods of capturing audience receptions of problematic pasts, in the context of new critical methodologies developed by the PI, and will share these with the partner museums.\n\nOf the 5 partner museums, 3 are creating new permanent galleries, most significantly the 2nd floor of the NMM into an Atlantic World Gallery and an Indian World Gallery; the 3rd floor reorientation of the BECM called 'Breaking the Chains'; and the annex for the NML called The International Slavery Museum. These reorientations of national museums are groundbreaking because until recently the subject of slavery has been largely absent. Now in 2007, not only will the exhibitions acknowledge the fact of slavery but national museums will put the transatlantic slave trade centre stage. Museums want to participate in discussions via IPUP about how to display problematic and uncomfortable content about the experience of slavery.\n\nSignificantly therefore, the AHRC KT research project and the website at \nwww.history.ac.uk/abolitionofslavetrade will provide a forum for discussions between academics and practitioners, and also develop existing methods for capturing audience receptions of problematic pasts and share these methods with the partner museums. The audience reception phase of the project will produce research data on identity issues relating to race and multiculturalism. This research will be shared not only with the partner museums but also with policy advisors in DCMS and DCLG. Although the Department of Education has not yet confirmed the timetable for when the transatlantic slave trade will become a compulsory part of the National Curriculum for History, understanding slavery and abolition is already informing teaching and learning on Citizenship.\n\nThe collection of data and the development of intellectual ideas will inform both the academic and also the public discussion about problematic pasts and contemporary Britain. This research project therefore represents part of a longer-term strategy for IPUP, which will organize a conference of international scholars (joint with the GLC, Yale) for September 2008 to reflect on the problem of slavery in the western thought tradition, and commission the publication of a volume of scholarly articles after the completion of the AHRC KT project. This will fit with the IPUP launch events for 2007/08 which consist of a series of international conferences and events (organized in collaboration with the IHR) on 'The Past and the Future of Britishness'. \n\nThis IPUP research project on the commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade will be complemented by the Bicentenary events organized for 2007 at the University of York which will consist of a series of public lectures on Slavery from 6 February; a summer school for Adult Learners, 2-6 July, Centre for Lifelong Learning, 'Fighting Slavery: Past, Present, and Future 1807-2007'; and an International Conference, 12-14 April, 'Abolitions. 1807-2007: Ending the Slave Trade in the Transatlantic World'. Speakers include novelist Caryl Phillips and leading academics Simon Schama, Philip Morgan, David Murray, David Attwell, Jim Walvin, Henrice Altink, Marcus Wood, Vincent Carretta, Trevor Phillips, Kwabena Adurang-Parry, Adiele Afgibo. All are participating in the website discussions.

Since 6000 BC, if not earlier, Trinidad has been the gateway into the Caribbean for waves of South American migrants - the first stepping stone in the long chain of islands that make up the archipelago. Its critical position to the settlement of the Caribbean is reflected in its deep archaeological record, documenting the complex interactions between its diverse peoples over millennia. Unique among its archaeological sites is Pitch Lake, one of the largest natural deposits of asphalt in the world (see Fig. 1 - Visual Evidence), which over the years has yielded extremely rare wood carvings - to date the largest concentration of ancient wood artefacts in the Lesser Antilles (of the 18 carvings known from the region, eleven were recovered from Pitch Lake). However, unlike any systematic archaeological excavation, these carvings have been dredged up as a consequence of commercial pitch harvesting (Fig 2), and any association between them, or the skeletal remains that were also recovered, have been lost. They are thus rarely discussed in the archaeological literature - they float outside chronologies, peripheral to the ceramic and stone foundations upon which Caribbean prehistory is based. Yet wood is among the most insightful of materials, lending itself to radiocarbon dating, stable isotope analyses and botanical identification - the latter two providing direct insights into people's interaction with their environment. The carving scars evident on these pieces echo the movements of those labouring over them and provide a window onto their past activities. Historical accounts from the 15th-16th centuries indicate that Caribbean cultures had rich wood carving traditions, and that much of their material culture was carved in wood - from massive communal houses to utilitarian objects such as canoes, paddles and vessels, to ritual items and ceremonial seats - and this heritage can now only be glimpsed through the handful of examples that survive in museum and private collections. This reliance on wood undoubtedly goes back to the first migrations - without canoes and paddles, for example, the islands could not be settled. Hence, despite the lack of context, the carvings from Pitch Lake - now held in three separate institutions - provide a unique opportunity to investigate the importance of wood artefacts, especially valuable in a context where wood was the basis of material culture, but rarely survives. The proposed research would be the first detailed, multi-disciplinary investigation of the Pitch Lake wood carvings, with the aim of placing these objects in a chronological and cultural perspective. From the artefacts (Fig 3) recovered from this one site we can potentially explore not only local adaptations, but regional influences and exchanges - as well as more esoteric/symbolic meanings. The methodologies enable a deeper level of investigation into the corpus - from the stable isotope analysis that can provide insights into the source of the trees used for the carvings, to the wood ID which can be cross-referenced with historical accounts of how such woods were used (from timber to medicinal knowledge). The deposit of burials and artefacts in the lake also suggests a deeper symbolism, one befitting such an unusual setting. Several myths collected during the 19th century, a time when an indigenous population was still resident in the area, recount that the lake was a portal through which the deceased returned in the form of birds to visit their descendants. The recurring themes in the legends, of death and the afterlife, give some support to the possibility that the area may have had a spiritual significance, one that may have had a considerable chronological depth spanning many generations. The lake could have had conceptual parallels to caves, used across the Caribbean for burials and the deposit of ritual objects - and as such a fitting area of ceremonial deposit and myth.

This project aims to unlock the potential, for scholarly and public benefit, of the outstanding collections of Fijian art, material culture and associated archives and photographs held in UK and other museums. Originating from Britain's voyaging, missionary and colonial ties with Fiji, these extensive collections, hitherto neglected, will be systematically researched, analysed and made the focus of major publications, exhibitions and outreach activities. \n\nFijian artworks are visually impressive and beautifully made; they include sculptures in wood and ivory, shell and ivory regalia, ritual equipment, weapons, pottery and large decorated textiles. Central to pre-Christian and post-conversion religious practices, and often heavily Tongan-influenced, many of these objects played an active role in relations with the British, resulting in significant collections in UK museums. Foremost are the Fijian collections at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), probably the most important in the world. With over 2,500 objects, 2000+ photographs, diaries, field notes and drawings, they include items from all periods of Fijian history since the late 18th century as well as extensive material from the early colonial period (1870s-90s). Other outstanding collections are in the British Museum, Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford, World Museum Liverpool, National Museum of Scotland and Maidstone Museum, while major overseas collections are in Paris, Salem, the Smithsonian Institution and the Fiji Museum. All 9 museums are collaborating with the project as official Project Partners. Many regional UK museums (in Aberdeen, Exeter, Ipswich, Birmingham and elsewhere) will also participate; the National Archives will also be a valuable resource. \n\nBuilding on the specialist expertise of project staff, working in partnership with UK and overseas museums (including the Fiji Museum), the project will:\n\n- Provide the first comprehensive history of Fijian art.\n- Contribute greater understanding of the enduring potency of Fijian artworks and exchange valuables.\n- Extend theoretical perspectives on the nature of exchange, and of object/person relations more widely, including analyses of gender, embodiment, equivalence, shrines and relics.\n- Provide a nuanced history of collecting which will illuminate complex and shifting Fijian/British relations, especially during the early colonial period (1870s-90s).\n- Elucidate trends in British intellectual and academic history through analysis of field collecting in Fiji and its implications for the development in Britain of major museums and the discipline of anthropology.\n- Enhance existing museum documentation with expert identification and analysis of collections, while linking key museums internationally.\n- Improve the ability of museums to display and interpret their collections for multiple audiences.\n- Disseminate research results to diverse specialist and public audiences, including UK-based Fijians, through publications, symposia and several exhibitions with associated educational outreach activities. \n- Contribute to museum/academic training programmes by holding workshops/curators' forum, and by involving 40+ graduate students in project-related course assignments.\n- Contribute insights for policy makers into the importance for understanding contemporary Fijian politics of historically-rooted relationships between chiefdoms. \n\nThe project team, led by UEA's Professor Steven Hooper, a Fiji specialist and Fijian-speaker with over 30 years research experience, includes Dr Anita Herle, Senior Curator at MAA, who will oversee research on MAA's Fiji collections. Other participants include former and current Fiji Museum Directors Fergus Clunie and Sagale Buadromo, and MAA Director Professor Nicholas Thomas (a renowned Pacific specialist; chair of the project Advisory Committee); all will contribute to numerous publications, exhibitions and other outputs.