Core Research Question: How successful have approaches to immersive technologies at major heritage sites in Scotland been currently, both in terms of outcomes against business plan expectations and in terms of visitor response, and what kinds of future development are supported by the evidence? Research Methods: The proposed Research Methods in this initial pilot phase will lay the groundwork for the exploration of the effectiveness and potential of the core Immersive Technology Research Question. Under the guidance of the PI and research team, the pilot project RA will set up a questionnaire to test visitor response to the immersive dimensions of the Culloden, Robert Burns Museum and Bannockburn sites, as well as at the Riverside Museum in Glasgow (which has secured one of the highest -if not the highest-non-traditional museum audience in the UK) and the National Library of Scotland at Kelvin Hall. In parallel, they will set up observations and a focus group round the proposed collections and policy developments at Newhailes by the National Trust for Scotland. These approaches will follow the methodology used by the PI's CDA to evaluate audience response among the 60 000 visitors to the When Glasgow Flourished exhibition in 2014 and by the PI's Beyond Text RA to evaluate responses to the material Burns January exhibition in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow in 2010 and 2011; and by the CI Economou's RA in three different immersive exhibitions in Rome, Athens, and Ename as part of the Marie Curie CHIRON project between 2005-2008 (Economou & Pujol Tost 2011). The project team will identify audience focus groups from the existing visitor and client contact base of the partner organizations, and will explore their visitor experience while also exposing them to new developments in Immersive Experience technology. Consideration will be given to the development of future 'Smart' response evaluations, such as Fitbit and smartphone visitor response monitoring. Immersive experiences are means of 'composing' memory (that is, creating the conditions in which the memories which are publicly expressed are those which are formulated within a range of socially acceptable contexts. In the motorized era, trails have fulfilled the same function of embedding preferred memory narratives, while immersive experiences-delivered in part or whole through the medium of technology-strive to present a fusion of memory, place and performance to create a close and lasting relationship of visitor memory to the experience purchased by the visit. Immersive technologies have (although research on this is not yet developed and its development is a key component of the proposed partnership) arguably similar effects to electronic mass media in the composure of memory, but effects which are possibly delivered in stronger and more lasting terms. We will also work with Soluis as our digital partner, to create a decision-making model for policy and audience development. Research Context: The research context is that of both the recent rapid growth of the heritage sector, and within that the centrality of cutting edge immersive experiences for tourism, the heritage industry and audience development The development of immersive experiences at 'fantasy' venues such as the London, York, Blackpool and Edinburgh 'Dungeons' from Merlin Entertainments is a connected activity. Some of these visitor experiences are relatively recent, and audience feedback is at an early stage: however, there is some evidence that fully or predominantly CGI immersive experiences such as Bannockburn are less appealing and effective to a comprehensive audience demographic than they are to particular groups. Research Outputs: Website, a policy paper, a risk assessment, a visualization decision making tool and presentations at the AHRC Showcase, and connected events-e.g. presentations at DH conferences and a media/social media strategy.

It is widely recognized that the historic environment provides a source of cultural enrichment, and enhances people's quality of life and well-being. However, it also undergoes cycles of material transformation, of decay and renewal, which inform the meanings and values associated with it. Indeed, these changes contribute to the experience of authenticity. Decay acts as a tangible mark of age, and the patina produced by everyday weathering and wear provides a sense of connection across generations. At the same time processes of decay and degradation are assessed and arrested by organisations charged with conserving the historic environment for future generations. Much of this work relies on scientific methods and techniques, which have been developed for use in conserving the historic environment. However, by intervening to modify processes of transformation and decay, these techniques can have a powerful impact on the fabric of historic buildings. They can alter their appearance and introduce new materials, as well as affect the cultural meanings and values attached to them by various groups of people. In this project we use methods from the arts and humanities, including interviews and forms of participant observation, to examine the kinds of value attached to deterioration and decay in historic buildings. We investigate how decisions about the conservation of materials are informed by these values and related ideas of authenticity. We also explore how science-based interventions alter these meanings and values, and impact on perceptions of 'the real' and the 'authentic'. Our partners include the National Trust for Scotland and Historic Scotland, organisations that are involved in conserving and managing some of Scotland's most important historic sites. They provide case studies involving particular historic buildings or monuments that are currently the subject of active conservation. This provides us with the opportunity to study how the science-based techniques they use both inform, and are informed by, cultural values and ideas of authenticity. Our project brings together researchers from the humanities and the sciences in a cross-disciplinary collaboration. We are also in partnership with the leaders of a European research project (HEROMAT), which allows us to study the values attached to the latest developments in scientific conservation methods. The research will be of benefit to a wide range of academic researchers and professionals involved in conserving the historic environment. The results are intended to inform future conservation policy and practice, ensuring that science-based techniques are used in a culturally sensitive way in conserving the historic environment.

The central focus of this research is producing reliable, accessible and scholarly reading texts of Robert Burns for both the academic and general reader in the 21st Century, specifically Burns's Poetry and Correspondence. The Poetry has not been freshly edited in complete form since the 1960s, and the present edition will take advantage of around 75 new manuscript and 55 new print material discoveries. The two volumes of 'Poetry' will also include a proportion of 'Song' texts, which have been presented and read, historically, as 'Poetry' texts. Much will be made in the descriptive apparatuses and criticism produced by the 'Poetry' part of the project of 'Burns Song as Poetry'. Similarly, the Correspondence will capitalise upon around 100 new manuscript and 60 new print material discoveries. These three volumes of letters will also be the first time ever that there has been an edition of any kind, let alone a scholarly one, that brings together both sides of Burns's correspondence in its fully extant form. Correspondence to Burns has either never been published previously (about 50 per cent of this material), or it has been badly edited and often bowdlerized in print. As well as attempting to produce as complete and helpful a reading experience as possible through the application of modern textual editing techniques and providing explanatory annotation (of historical matters, the Scots language and other biographical and cultural information), 'Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century: Poetry and Correspondence' also allows a 'behind the scenes' or 'hands on' approach for the reader who desires it. This will occur through four substantial online workshops on the editing of Burns, including the large hinterland of forged and facsimile material sometimes mistaken for the real thing. Editorial possibilities and choices are explained for the editing of Burns song, poetry and correspondence (the material for the first among these three drawn from the AHRC-funded 'Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century', 2011-16, and the resultant Oxford University Press volumes published, or to be published - 2014, 2016 and 2018). These workshops are intended to be accessible to the generally interested 'layperson' as well as providing insight for other scholars and also archivists, curators, librarians and rare book and manuscript dealers, all of whom make up the substantial Robert Burns area of the Cultural Heritage sector. This online material will also be directly related to the 'Introductions on the Text' sections of each of the new OUP volumes. Similarly, and with additional benefits to the Burns Tourist sector, the interactive map of Burns's correspondents and their locations provides an accessible and path-breaking mapping of Burns's social, cultural and intellectual networks during the late eighteenth century. The research for 'Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century: Correspondence and Poetry' will also be showcased in public-facing workshops at four different geographical locations where there are holdings of Burns manuscripts: Alloway, Dumfries, Edinburgh and Irvine. Likewise three articles in peer-reviewed journals will also be of specialist editing interest to the academic community.

As the newspaper poetry columns, workers' periodicals, surviving records of local libraries and reading rooms, and society accounts show, industrial workers spent substantial amounts of their working lives and brief leisure time in writing, reading, and discussing works of literature. Every industrial workplace had its writer in this period. Most had more than one, like poets and journalists 'Nisbet Noble' (James Ferguson) and 'Will Harrow' (John Stanley) at Stanley Mills in Perthshire, or autobiographers and poets 'Rustic Rhymer' (Thomas Stewart) and 'Davie' (David Wingate) in the same Lanarkshire mine. 'Piston, Pen & Press' recovers the forgotten ways in which these industrial workers engaged with literary culture from the 1840s to the First World War. By focusing on miners, railway workers, and textile factory workers it will investigate how profession, location, and the perception of being part of a specific workforce community influenced workers' activities as authors, performers and readers. Our concentration is on Scotland and the North of England, with Britain's two greatest Victorian industrial cities, Manchester and Glasgow, as centres of interest. We will use archival research and scoping studies of newspaper and periodical databases to uncover the poems, songs, periodical and newspaper writings and other prose writings (including autobiography and biography) of workers in these industries. We will additionally work with the preserved records of nineteenth-century libraries and reading rooms to trace a history of reading through borrowers' records, and to study records of 'literary' associations (minute books, members' directories, manuscript magazines) linked to specific workplaces or operating in their vicinity. No previous project or published work has attempted to reflect on working-class literary cultures in the long Victorian period in terms of both profession and location. Further, existing studies and anthologies do not provide our interdisciplinary focus on the history of reading, the history of associational culture, and the literary analysis of workers' writings. Although recent historical work on Britain's industrial revolution has shifted towards a greater consideration of workers' writings, research into literary representations of Victorian industry is still dominated by accounts of observers or employers, not by how workers themselves represented their labour and presented themselves as a cultured workforce with investments in established as well as popular literature. Despite growing interest in working-class reading, much evidence of workers' cultural investments and cultural literacy remains scattered in local and regional archives. What we currently know or hypothesize about what Victorian workers (like those listed above) wrote, read or sung, and how they accessed literary works, is a fraction of what we could know through in-depth archival research and a careful and comparative analysis of findings. While the academic outcomes of this project will contribute significantly to the study of working-class culture, history and literature, and to our scholarly perceptions of Victorian industrialism, we also seek to create public awareness of this neglected aspect of industrial heritage. Building on our existing connections and developing new ones, we will work with selected museums and non-academic partners, both national and local, on ways to include this vital intangible heritage in their collections and outreach activities. In doing so we hope to foster fruitful discussions between institutions and individuals in the heritage sector in Scotland and the North of England about the status and significance of literary cultures in Britain's industrial past. Through our connections to the General Federation of Trades Unions and potentially other unions, 'Piston, Pen & Press' will also incorporate reflection on the 21st century workplace and historical workplace culture.

Iona, although a small island off the larger island of Mull, off the west coast of Scotland, has one of the oldest, richest, and most complex place-name records in Britain and Ireland. It also has a complex modern landscape as a result of multiple user-groups interacting with the landscape of the past in different ways. This project interrogates the dynamics of the namescape (the historical and changing landscape of names) of Iona and its environs, shedding light on the past, and proposing new ways of curating place-names as part of heritage management. The 'Life of Saint Columba' written around AD 700 by Adomnán, the ninth abbot of the monastery of Iona, gives our earliest detailed impressions of this landscape, including some of our earliest recorded Gaelic place-names in Britain or Ireland. In the modern period the island became a destination for tourists and antiquarians, who interacted simultaneously with older texts and traditions and with the landscape and monuments they found, creating, curating and reinvigorating names. In the past century a traditional Gaelic crofting community has evolved into a more mixed economy, with a greater range of year-round occupations, augmented by seasonal auxiliary staff and faith-tourists. Permanent organisations, e.g., the National Trust for Scotland and Historic Environment Scotland now have differing management responsibilities towards the built and natural environments of the island, joining the international faith group, the Iona Community. This has created a complex dynamic of new names, translated names, and forgotten names, in Gaelic and English, a contested landscape of heritage and naming. These place-names (settlement names, landscape and coastal features, monuments) have never been subjected to formal rigorous analysis, despite the fragility of many of the names used by the Gaelic-speaking community in recent times. That fragility (highlighted by recent deaths) makes it vital that we subject this namescape to a programme of rigorous research, publication, curation and dissemination to the public and to official public bodies, and that we do it now. The team we have assembled for this purpose represents cumulative and long-standing expertise on Iona's history and heritage, on place-names and place-name survey, and on Gaelic and history in the adjacent island of Mull. In assembling this team at this time, the project is of utmost timeliness. The core tasks of the project will be to research in-depth the place-names of Iona, to make that research widely available to the public through an online resource, and to bring them to publication in a volume of the Survey of Scottish Place-Names. Because of its long-standing links to Iona, this will also include the place-names of the nearby small uninhabited island of Staffa, also managed by NTS. The research will involve an in-depth investigation of the earliest records of Iona and its landscape, as well as work with modern recordings of Gaelic place-names, and new fieldwork into contemporary usage among the various communities who inhabit and work on Iona. The research will be set against the context of the neighbouring island of Mull, examining how Iona may share features with or differ from its environs. Our work on the concerns of curating heritage place-names will be explored in an international conference on 'Authority and Authenticity', with subsequent essay collection. We will engage fully with a variety of beneficiaries from the project, producing a number of key ancillary outputs designed for the public and for the aid of heritage management: an interactive website allowing exploration of the names and the landscape; a popular guide to the place-names; standardised lists of names. We will further engage with the public and with heritage management bodies via a variety of events, including workshops, and a conference in 2021, the 1500th anniversary of the traditional date of the birth of Iona's founder, St Columba