Building networks for creative and cultural responses to historic pollution and climate change research

The proposed project would transform the research capability of the Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Nottingham (UoN), supporting engagement with our cultural and creative partners to translate and communicate research and to enable significant developments in cultural heritage management in response to the challenges posed by past, present and future climate change and pollution.

The new institutional research strategy at UoN (2022 - 2027) is shaped by our ambition to be a 'university without borders;' a key tenet of which is to 'build shared facility and infrastructure platforms' in order to support inclusive and supportive transdisciplinary partnerships. In keeping with this, we are seeking to ensure that our arts and humanities research on palaeoenvironments is visible, sustainable and accessible in the long term. The Faculty of Arts has already invested in specialist technical support to oversee the day-to-day running and upkeep of six laboratories and provide technical supervision/training in the use of equipment and techniques to relevant staff, students and researchers. However, there remains an urgent need to replace and upgrade essential research equipment and facilities that will improve our interdisciplinary network's capacity for creative and cultural responses to historic pollution and climate change research.

The new equipment and facilities will be used to highlight the human stories of past environmental change; where and how societies have been resilient in their responses to changes and how these compare to the current consequences of human-driven climate change. We do this work in partnership with organisations from the UK's creative and cultural sectors, working together to make these stories visible so that they can be understood, made meaningful to our lives and society and thereby influence the behavioural changes we need. We also work to protect cultural assets from the effects of climate change in partnership with their managing organisations.

To ensure that our research continues to have meaning into the future we will build digital archives to host our paleoenvironmental data, our interpretations and creative outputs, to make them accessible, findable and reusable to new and diverse audiences. By hosting these together, we will maximise the power of an interdisciplinary approach to create research outputs that can be more widely communicated and understood.

To ensure that our network continues to benefit from this investment, we will train partners from across the different sectors of our network, to use the new facilities, equipment and archives. Working together across disciplines will act as a catalyst for further developing diverse responses to contemporary challenges using historic pollution and climate change research.