This 30 month research project seeks to document, map, contextualize and critically analyse the development of the British antiques trade during the 20th century. The project will assess the cultural geography of the trade in antiques in a British context with a consideration of its international dimensions, especially the relationships to the European and North American markets. The project will document the trade in antiques, investigating a series of research questions related to the evolving business practices of the trade and the exchange and circulation of antiques, placing these practices into social, political and economic contexts and mapping these against the evolving cultural landscape of the consumption of antiques. It will result in a number of discrete, but interrelated academic and public-facing outputs, including an edited volume of essays, a conference and workshops, and a web-based interactive (keyword searchable) virtual map of Britain highlighting the locations of dealerships. Using GPS technology, and based on Google Maps, the interactive map will include consistent 'thumbnail' information and data sets, such as trading dates and biographical information for each firm; images of any significant objects that passed through the firm's hands; and links to any objects in public museum collections (in the UK, Europe and the USA). The website will also allow public participation in the research project through user-generated content, keying into the increasing interests of local histories through local heritage societies and family history groups. At the heart of the project will be discrete historical case study research projects into the history of a number of influential British-based dealerships utilizing previously unexplored archival material. An oral history archive based on interviews with retired and semi-retired members of the British trade will be assembled as part of a broader ethnographic study, concentrating on the more recent history of the trade, and in particular the transformation of the antique trade in the last few years of the 20th century. There has been a significant shift in emphasis in terms of art historical studies in recent years, with an emerging and consistent focus on the mechanisms and practices of the art market, and several major investigations into the history of the art market. But whilst there have been a small number of studies on antiques in terms of the history of collecting, the history of the British antiques trade itself remains a neglected subject. The preliminary mapping of the development of the 19th century antiques trade has already begun to highlight the significance of the development of the trade in the 19th century, but in terms of the 20th century trade there have been only a handful of published journal essays that have directed attention to this subject. Indeed, 'Memoirs of a 20th century dealer', the reflections on the trade in the period c.1940s-c.1980s by the late Roger Warner (2006), and 'Hotspur: Eighty Years of Antique Dealing', a celebration of the firm of Hotspur (2004), remain the only substantive pieces of writing on the subject of the 20th century trade, albeit emanating from the trade itself. This project will therefore direct further attention to the significance of antique dealers as active agents in the markets, highlighting the importance of their socio-economic and cultural practices. It will direct attention to the relationships between the history of the antique trade and the commercial antiques markets and established histories such as the history of 'decorative art', the histories of collecting, and the history of the public museum. It will also provide a new set of data that future studies and investigations can build upon, expanding the possibility of further analysis across a range of disciplines and approaches.

This Fellowship explores the benefits of co-producing energy history research with young people in museums. By collaboratively researching the histories of women and energy to co-produce a critical re-interpretation of domestic objects in Leeds Museums and Galleries' collections, we will effectively facilitate a public conversation via an exhibition, podcasts and digital classroom resources, on who has the power to make the decisions that need to be made to create the post-carbon home of the twenty-first century. I will work with Leeds Museum's established youth collective, the Preservative Party: a diverse group of 14-24 year olds. We will co-produce research founded in the numerous objects in the Leeds collections that represent the histories of energy but are rarely interpreted as such and never from the point of view of women influencing energy decisions. Building on the Preservative Party's work to explore the overlooked histories of museum objects, we will ask why it is important to understand how energy transformations were effected and often led by women in their homes? What can we learn from historic social and gendered drivers for change at a moment when we all need to transition to a post-carbon energy supply? How does co-production empower young people, often our contemporary leaders in climate activism, building new skills that enable them to be more effective environmental activists? The Fellowship will develop my research leadership in energy history through the co-production of research with young people. The project is founded on 20+ years of working together with Leeds Museums and Galleries to deliver educational engagement activities and teaching. I have led on cultural partnerships in Leeds, particularly during my 10-year tenure as the Deputy and then Head of the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies and successfully delivered the first Memorandum of Understanding between the University and our City museums and galleries. But I have never consolidated my research expertise in histories of the c19th home and my leadership in educational engagement and I have not yet co-produced research with the communities that I most want to learn from and impact - young people living in Leeds. The Preservative Party and I will co-create an exhibition and educational resources that will be disseminated on MyLearning.org: a digital platform for free National Curriculum Linked learning resources from arts, cultural and heritage organisations. These resources will speak to their current concerns about sustainability and the environment while questioning the history of decision making and the power of social persuasion in energy transitions. Focusing on the question of 'Who had/s the power to make energy decisions?' and reframing the history and historiography of this through women's experiences in the home, we will use cross-disciplinary explorations of the history of energy in a way that engages a diversity of voices in both process and outcomes. By co-creating the educational outcomes, our focus will be on continuing to develop the young people's agency in the way that education in heritage spaces is conceived and delivered in Leeds. I will share my learning on the benefits/challenges of co-production and its role in energy history research, via the work I do to support and inspire ECRs at the University, my museum collaborations, work on educational policy and my leadership of a national network of teachers, supporting them to support young people to develop the skills, cultural and science capital to increase their agency in energy activism. The Fellowship will create a step-change in my research leadership and will impact nationally and internationally our understanding of the importance of social and cultural history in energy futures and the role of young people, their teachers and our museums in generating environmental change.

This project brings together insights from history, criminology and urban studies to explore the future prospects of city parks as public meeting places, in both the Victorian period and the present day. The aim of the project is to generate a novel understanding of the future social significance and role of public parks and how social groups (might) live together and commingle safely in cosmopolitan cities. It makes connections between the past, the present and the future importance of these public spaces by exploring how they have evolved over time from their origins as spaces of social mixing between diverse groups in Victorian cities. It investigates official and public expectations of what parks might become in terms of their social possibilities and their desired effects aligned with visions of the future, both in the Victorian and contemporary eras. In these ways, the project connects with and advances the AHRC 'Care for the Future' research theme and its central ambition of 'thinking forward through the past'. The project combines historical analysis with a new contemporary study to explore the experiences and views of people that used and use Victorian parks in terms of their governance, regulation and policing. It therefore engages with the challenges of managing social mixing in public space, including the possibilities for conflict around behaviour, social disorder, and anxieties of otherness in the multi-cultural city. It also explores the outcomes commingling may facilitate in terms of promoting social cohesion and its potential civilising effects. The project will consider how the public park's original design and rationale remains relevant to the needs of the contemporary city and how it has adapted to changing social conditions. This research will allow us to 'care for the future' of the urban public park, not just by understanding its past and its present, but by translating that understanding into concrete policy proposals for its future governance. The project will provide a reinterpretation and reinvigoration of the vision, governance and sustainability of urban parks in cities of the future. In the context of austerity and local authority spending cuts to non-compulsory public services, including city parks, this is an opportune time to rethink the vision and governance of these public spaces. The research is based on three Victorian public parks in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Together, these case studies combine a diversity of park types in terms of their social ideals and purposes, the size and social profile of users and stakeholders, and the diversity of experiences of park life from places of grand show and ceremony to informal community parks. The project contributes new and unique inter-disciplinary insights connecting the arts and humanities with the social sciences. The project findings will feed into public policy debates about the future of cities and engage academic audiences working across disciplines, particularly in social and urban history, law, criminology, sociology, urban policy and cultural studies. The project will engage public audiences through a public exhibition, a free-to-access digital collection of photographs of Victorian parks in Leeds, and via blogs, twitter feeds, and media briefings.

From the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States to the local and national activism over the scandal of the Windrush generation's citizenship in the United Kingdom, the black presence in the transatlantic dialogue is slowly beginning to gain increased visibility. Several black intellectuals have gained increasing prominence in the public arena and have consequently developed a platform for talking, writing, and thinking about black activism and what it means to be a black intellectual in the 21st century. Yet, the concept of the black intellectual - when it has been recognised at all - has historically been gendered as male. Black male intellectuals have often talked for and about black women, subsequently marginalising the significance of the black female intellectual both historically and in the contemporary arena. This network therefore brings together scholars, both early career (including PhD students) and more established academics, working on black female intellectuals in the black Atlantic including Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The key point of the network is to share interdisciplinary understandings of black female intellectuals from both historical and contemporary perspectives thinking through different questions which will be used to frame the workshops. The first workshop will ask, as the central research question and the introductory session, how do we define "black intellectuals" as a concept? Does gender impact on this definition? What is it that the black female intellectual brings to the public debate and what forms are considered credible? The second workshop will consider how geographic and temporal parameters alter the form that understandings of the black female intellectuals take and the ways these differences are articulated. Biracial journalist and author Afua Hirsch has been invited to contribute to this workshop. A third workshop will question how issues of gender and class impact on understandings of black female intellectuals both as a form of activism (doing) and thinking (intellectualism). In particular, it will interrogate the differences between black male and black female intellectuals and explore the ways in which intersectionality functions more broadly within black intellectualism. Black activist and educator, Chardine taylor-Stone will contribute to this workshop. Leading on from this, a fourth workshop will consider the role of social media in shaping the experience of black female intellectuals in the contemporary world owing to the varied and multiple media resources available. Female activists from the Black Lives Matter movement based in the UK and Europe will be invited to share their experiences in addition to contributions from Gal-Dem, an online and print magazine written by women of colour. The workshops will also have a series of public lectures running alongside them located in public venues and pertaining to the individual theme of each workshop with invited speakers from across the interdisciplinary spectrum of the network. The network will apply for follow-on funding to host an international conference on black female intellectuals hosted by the University of East Anglia, bringing together practitioners, academics, and public policy groups namely the Runnymede Trust & the partnership project, History and Policy. The application for follow-on funding will also include a separate seminar event hosted by History and Policy using the project's Runnymede report as its focus and inviting interested policy makers including the Institute of Race Relations and the Black Training and Enterprise group, practitioners such as Chardine Taylor-Stone, journalists from both national and local media including Liv Little (Gal-Dem), Afua Hirsch (Guardian), and members of the network.

The First World War is too often exclusively remembered through the lens of trench experiences on the Western Front. A key aim of the project 'Legacies of War 1914-1918/2014-18' at the University of Leeds, from which this project arises, is to draw attention to diversity of experience and of the ever-present cultural, social and technological legacies of the conflict in order to broaden its meaning for a wide range of different audiences. One of the key ways in which communities engage with the heritage of the First World War is through the uncovering of local stories as a way of understanding the war as an international conflict. This project aims to uncover ways in which the war touched the everyday life, communal politics, social relations, culture and values of citizens who inhabited their street, town or region in 1914-18, the traces, memories, monuments, documents and culture it left behind, and the ways in which the mass displacement of populations during the war brought about contact with those of different social groups, nationalities and ethnicities. Leeds as a city was vital to the British war effort. It lost more men than the national average; equally, as a key industrial centre, Leeds factories and industries played an indispensable role in supplying the British troops and civilians during the war. Leeds residents also contributed in other ways: its households took in Belgian refugees; its hospitals cared for thousands of wounded soldiers from Britain (and its then Empire); its growing numbers of theatres, cinemas and music-halls catered for a war-weary population in need of entertainment. Today, in the Liddle Collection, University of Leeds, the West Yorkshire Archives (now in Morley), and Leeds Central Library, Leeds houses the most important collections of archival materials on the First World War outside of London. One of the key aims of the 'Legacies of War 1914-18/2014-18 project' is to facilitate an innovative, cross-cultural and intergenerational approach to the commemoration of the First World War. 'Leeds Stories of the Great War' aims to do this in a concrete way via a series of small co-produced research projects carried out by intergenerational Leeds community groups (consisting, for example, of sixth-formers, older people and former factory employees), collaborating with community facilitators, artists, local history experts and university academics. Taken together, the research findings of these projects will discover key aspects of Leeds life during the war, which will be made widely accessible in innovative ways to the public during the Centenary period, and will be stored in the form of a digital archive for future generations.