The period c. 1100-c. 1300 saw a flourishing of historical writing in England and Wales, which included a burgeoning interest in the shared remote past of the island of Britain. There has been a tendency to view these narratives as chronicles of Anglo-centric civilization, progress, and expansion on the one hand; on the other, as accounts of the kingdoms of Britain and their struggles for independence and hegemony. In some senses, it has been sensible to view this period of historical writing in light of conflict. In the two centuries between the Norman Conquest of England and Edward I's conquest of Wales, the people of Britain-as well as their rulers and elites-faced civil war, pitched battles and sieges, and contested borders. However, it is possible to discover what chroniclers of the remote past thought not only about conquest and struggle, but also about moments of peaceful, formal or even merely respectful interaction between rulers, obscured as these might be by accounts of short-term or protracted violence and oppression between peoples. We contend that their historians were engaged in another kind of struggle which played out on the pages of the remote past: the search for parity. The presence of this search is not an obvious phenomenon in scholarly thought about high medieval Britain which highlights, rightly, the very real presence of conquest and colonization on the one hand, and of competition and struggles for self-realization on the other. The glimmers of real effort on the part of Britain's medieval chroniclers to make alliances and meetings work, in a past that was long over, have the potential to provide a set of new and refined insights about historical writing in this period and qualities it shares in both England and Wales, across language and genre, and the precise nature of any political commentary it is really making. We argue that chroniclers' revisions to the past often sought to refine and to improve the relationships between leaders, which will revise how contemporary historians should view chroniclers' perceptions of the differences in statuses of the peoples of Britain. Our project considers meetings, missives and messages purportedly exchanged between and among rulers in Britain's remote past (that is, the era of the Britons, Picts and Scots, and early Anglo-Saxon settlement) in twelfth-century chronicles of Britain. It looks specifically at narratives of meetings and exchanges (in writing or via a messenger) in the past that were rewritten based on existing accounts, interpolated into existing accounts, or perhaps entirely imagined. The significance of newly-written correspondence in these chronicles lies in how it served to redefine relationships between early medieval rulers and peoples in the minds of twelfth-century readers. Our core primary sources are several important Latin and Welsh chronicles with several characteristics in common: those that a) exhibit some knowledge, direct or indirect, of Geoffrey of Monmouth, b) write at some length about Britain's remote past, c) are at least in part rewritings of earlier sources, and d) display an awareness and interest in interactions among rulers in Britain pre-900. In Wales, the core sources are the Welsh Latin Annals, the Welsh Brut y Tywysogion and the Brenhinedd y Saesson; in England, they are Geoffrey of Monmouth and his contemporaries, and the later twelfth-century works of Roger of Howden and Richard of Devizes.

'The Stuart Successions: fresh approaches to the understanding of seventeenth-century history and literature' has been developed out of, and would immediately follow, the AHRC-funded 'Stuart Successions Project'. In this project we explored a category of writing which has long been recognized but never well understood. Each of the six Stuart successions (James I in 1603, Charles I in 1625, Charles II in 1660, James II in 1688, William III and Mary II in 1688-89, Anne in 1702) generated a wealth of publications. So did the accession to the role of Lord Protector by Oliver Cromwell in 1653, and that of his son Richard in 1658. Succession literature includes a range of elegies on the old monarch and panegyrics on the new; indeed most of the greatest poets of the day felt the need to participate in this activity, some on successive moments of transition. Other kinds of succession literature include histories, genealogies, sermons, satires, news-reports and political tracts. Through surveying and analyzing this material we have been able to throw fresh light on particular moments of transition and also on processes of change across this turbulent period of British history. Our outputs include a database of succession writing, a major volume of essays, and an anthology of primary texts. As this research has demonstrated to us, however, Stuart succession literature holds more than merely academic interest. The Stuart era is widely recognized as a pivotal one in the development of British political and cultural life; it has an established place in the media and the cultural sector (e.g. museums), and recent reforms to school curricula, in History and English Literature, are according it increasing prominence. This is hardly surprising given the achievements and events of the period: Shakespeare was a Stuart for half of his working life; others to shape this century include Milton, Hobbes and Behn. The Stuart era included the greatest British civil war, an unprecedented experiment with republicanism, and eventually the founding of Great Britain itself. The topic of succession, meanwhile, is today pressing itself increasingly upon the public consciousness, as journalists and playwrights, among others, are already speculating about the impact of a third Caroline reign. In this context, we identify four user-communities with which our follow-on project will engage: secondary schoolchildren and their teachers; our partner organizations, united by their commitment to education about the past; media programme-makers; and the general public. We propose a focused and collaborative project involving all three members of the current project team and four major partners: the Ashmolean Museum, the Bodleian Library, the Historical Association and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. It will be supported by Historyworks, a company committed to bringing academic research into the public domain in professional, creative and effective ways. We will select items drawn from the collections of partners, and work collaboratively to develop for each one a range of original interpretative materials. Among other outputs, we will produce: a bespoke website; learning materials (including lesson plans); a series of c.20 vodcasts (short documentary-style audio talks illustrated with still photographic images, suitable for publication via a website as well as for use by our partners); a one-day 'Shakespeare and the Stuarts' workshop for A-Level English and International Baccalaureate students; a 'Stuart Successions and Seventeenth-Century History' study day for secondary teachers; and treatments for radio and television programmes. The project is designed to combine quality impact directed at specified audiences with a commitment also to reach a much wider range of potentially interested parties. It also balances a focus on particular events with an interest in providing resources that will be of use across a longer period.

CONTEXT England's Medieval Immigrants: Migration History Resources for Schools aims to maximize the impact of AHRC-funded advanced research from the project, 'England's Immigrants, 1330-1550', which ran between 2012 and 2015. Its major research output, www.englandsimmigrants.com, provides a database of nearly 65,000 named individuals born outside England who lived within its bounds in the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. In particular, it captures all the data for the government inquiry conducted in 1440 in preparation for a universal tax on persons born outside the kingdom - the only such documented process before 1841. The 1440 data thus provide a unique snapshot of the names, nationalities, places of English residence, occupations, households and family structures of up to 20,000 aliens - approaching 1% of the population of mid-fifteenth-century England. From Sept 2016, the GCSE curriculum for History will include major components on the long-term history of migration to the British Isles. The shortage of suitable resources to support teaching and learning for the medieval elements of these modules has prompted the designers of the new curriculum (the Oxford and Cambridge and RSA Examination Board, and the Schools History Project) to seek support from the England's Immigrants team. The present project is a collaboration of the University of York, The National Archives, and the Historical Association, together with an independent Consultant, to create online resource packages that support teaching and learning in the history of migration to Britain at Key Stages [KS] 2-5 of the National Curriculum, including GCSE, and to develop an impact evaluation tool that will generate significant data on the impact of research-based teaching and learning of History in schools. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES The aims of the present project are: 1. To enhance the impact of the successful AHRC-funded research project, 'England's Immigrants, 1330-1550' 2. To make a key contribution to the study of migration in schools (KS 2-5 and GCSE) 3. To create methodologies for measuring the impact of AHRC-funded research in schools The objectives (fully detailed in the separate Objectives section) are: 1. To create a definitive online resource for KS 2-5 teachers and students that allows effective use of the database www.englandsimmigrants.com in the new GCSE curriculum from Sept. 2016 2. To create a definitive online resource for KS 2-5 teachers and students for the history of migration between the coming of the Romans (55BCE) and the expulsion of the Jews (1290) 3. To create a methodology for the systematic evaluation of the impact of this project during the academic year 2016-17 4. To enable a group of KS 2-5 teachers to engage pro-actively in the development of new, research-based teaching resources on the history of migration in the Middle Ages APPLICATIONS AND BENEFITS The online resource packages linked to Objectives 1 and 2 and the impact evaluation tool developed under Objective 3 (together with the resulting impact evaluation report) will be made freely available via www.englandsimmigrants.com and www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/. The outputs are all designed to maximise the impact of AHRC-funded research in the teaching and learning of History in Schools. To achieve this aim, the project identifies five groups of beneficiaries: 1. Teachers and students who use the resulting resources at KS 2-5 and in GCSE 2. Examination boards, who will have access to reliable, research-based resources to support migration history 3. Public agencies, include RCUK and HEFCE Impact strategists, who will benefit from the findings and conclusions of the impact evaluation report 4. Researchers in Education, and specifically those working on research-based teaching and learning 5. Participants in the Teacher Scholar Programme run as part of the activities of the project, for their career development

The 1944 Education (Butler) Act overhauled the structure of British education. For the first time secondary schooling became a mass experience, which would have an impact upon the life course of successive generations growing-up in late 20th century Britain. By 1961 3.2 million pupils were being educated in state funded secondary schools, and over 600,000 in the independent sector. Over the ensuing 50 years, educational reform has repeatedly divided political and popular opinion as successive governments have attempted to remodel the system. Yet while this narrative of political meddling has been exhaustively told, we know very little about what pupils and parents thought mass education was for after 1945. Reform of the system occurred against a backdrop of profound social and economic transformation across British society. Traditional social structures appeared to fragment as processes including affluence, social mobility, a decline in deference, individualism and consumerism reconfigured how individuals understood their position within wider society. Drawing on an innovative range of sources, this project will provide a new social and cultural history of postwar secondary education, embedding education in the experience of rapid social and cultural change in late 20th century Britain. This represents an indispensable contribution to the existing picture of post-1945 education by moving beyond entrenched historiographical positions, which too often treat education as a proxy for other concerns, such as national decline or class realignment. Rather than relying entirely on 'expert voices' - politicians, commentators or teachers - we ask how the everyday experience of education shapes and reflects pupils' and parents' aspirations, expectations, and sense of self, across their lives from youth to employment to parenthood. Using the original data and interview transcripts from postwar longitudinal studies and post-1950 social surveys, we will explore the intersection of national, regional, local and individual histories of education, charting how these differed across the UK and changed over time. Our findings will combine a broad national overview with a series of local case-studies to root the experience of education within specific contexts. Unlike previous studies, our research looks beyond England and Wales to consider the whole of Britain and the complete spectrum of schools (secondary modern, grammar, comprehensive and independent). We will deliver a diverse range of outputs, including two academic monographs and 5 journal articles, as well as resources aimed at a wide public audience. We will develop an interactive website to facilitate direct collaboration between the public and the project. It will incorporate short pieces written by the research team, alongside interactive maps and a database of archives holding material on education to help interested family and community historians. We will also curate content generated by the public as part of a 'School Days' memory blog. This will combine images, material from our archival research and users' own testimonies. Our archival research will be supplemented with new material produced through oral history workshops and interviews. A number of podcasts will be hosted on the website, featuring a series of conversations about educational experience between several generations within a family. Participants will be recruited through schools and local history groups with whom we will develop relationships during our research and also by drawing upon our Project Partner organizations. By reconnecting the history of post-war education with the story of wider social change, this study will offer an important new historical perspective on phenomena that remain at the forefront of contemporary political and sociological debate.

The original project made a comprehensive study of the membership of the English convents and the English members of Mary Ward's Institute established during the period when they were proscribed in England. These institutions with more than 3907 (mainly English), members were all founded in exile in continental Europe from 1600 to 1678. They remained there until the French Revolution and its associated violence forced them to leave their adopted homelands. The project and related research has shown that they were significant foundations with international connections. Prior to the project, the convents have been little studied by historians and their documents and activities have remained largely unknown. One significant additional output is the forthcoming publication (Pickering & Chatto, 2012-13) is six volumes of manuscript sources from the enclosed convents and this will significantly raise the profile of the project. Queen Mary has undertaken to maintain and support the database and website in the long term. Most (twenty two) were enclosed convents with a further fourteen mainly smaller houses founded by Mary Ward and her followers. They were not isolated from the world: their contacts and networks spread widely, including members of the royal family of England, the archdukes of Brussels and members of lay and ecclesiastical hierarchies across Europe among their supporters. The nuns built substantial convents and schools, commissioned works of art and music, and created important libraries and centres of learning for women. They continued to attract members and all except two survived until recently. Given the positive feedback currently being received by the Who were the Nuns? project, the follow-on funding will permit further engagement with a wider public audience through developing the current website and study days. We will: - Enhance the searches provided on the existing website based on research already undertaken for the original project. - Develop methodology to provide directed dynamic statistical searches in order to analyse the lives of the English nuns under three specific headings - life cycles, county communities and social networks. - Enhance the database by adding images of places to individual entries. - In partnership with the Historical Association, set up a series of four symposia for local and family historians in carefully-chosen sites for study days to develop the use of the database and related material. The proposed project team builds on the experience of the individuals involved with the original grant and we have identified specialists needed to support the new IT applications. James Kelly started as the post-doctoral research assistant on the original project and proved invaluable to the project as his experience grew, working closely with the original project manager, Dr Caroline Bowden. Dr Bowden is retiring but is intent on continuing her association with the project in an advisory role. Both Dr Jan Broadway and Dr Katharine Keats-Rohan have indicated their enthusiasm and support for the new proposal. Jan Broadway has created the existing successful database (http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/wwtn/database.html) and is eager to take it further. Computer technicians at the Institute of Historical Research will add expertise where required. Katharine Keats-Rohan, building on her fine collection of family tress, will contribute the section devoted to analysis of the social class of the supporting family networks. Members of the Geography department at Queen Mary have undertaken to provide GIS mapping support. The proposed partnership with the Historical Association will secure delivery of a wider target audience making the results as accessible as possible beyond the academic world to include family historians. This will allow us to get more feedback about the possible uses of the database and website.