St. Vincent's Botanical Garden (SVBG) was established in 1765. It was among the earliest tropical gardens in the world, and the first in the British colonial Caribbean. Dr Alexander Anderson (1748-1811), a Scottish surgeon and botanist, served as SVGB's superintendent during its early development (from 1785 to 1811). Anderson was a man of his time; educated, inquisitive, and keen to make a name for himself. Travelling widely in the Caribbean, he recorded plants new to western science, introduced many plants into SVBG, documented the uses of various plants and exchanged observations, information, and plants with many significant gardens and botanists of the time. Anderson's letters, plant specimens, plant catalogues, and Caribbean natural histories, are held in London by the Linnean Society, Natural History Museum, Kew Botanical Gardens and the National Archives. These have been mostly unavailable to SVGB or Caribbean scholars as access currently requires an in-person visit. This project will digitise the Anderson archives held by the Linnean Society and the Natural History Museum, including his important Hortus St Vincentii which details the plants growing in SVBG in 1800, and includes a number of botanical illustrations. Several of these are by John Tyley, a young African-Caribbean man; at this time, it was very unusual for botanical illustrations to be signed, especially by an African-Caribbean. Digitisation of Anderson's Caribbean natural histories, and his details of plants growing in the SVBG, will allow global on-line access to these important historic resources for the first time. The project will also interrogate the digitised archive against wider material; letters sent by Anderson held at Kew Gardens, and receipts relating to SVBG and further plant catalogues held at the National Archive. The entire Anderson archive will then be analysed to detect and document the contributions made by the indigenous (Carib/Garifuna) and enslaved African peoples whose knowledge and physical labour fed into successful development of SVBG, and western scientific knowledge more generally. Examples include Anderson gaining information about medicinally used plants from indigenous peoples, and enslaved Africans whose work helped the garden grow from 350 plants species in 1785 to over 3,000 in 1800; the rapid and continuous expansion of the gardens (its buildings and diversity of plant holdings) speaks to the effort, insights, and knowledge of indigenous and enslaved African peoples. Additionally, Caribbean plants introduced to Anderson by indigenous people were described scientifically based on Anderson's collections, and as such the local names and uses of these plants, and those of plants introduced from Africa, were credited to Anderson rather than indigenous and enslaved African people. The project aims to rectify this and give credit to those who helped Anderson's garden flourish, and then share this information globally. The project will create a public pop-up exhibition in order to tell some of the histories hidden in Anderson's archive and celebrate how indigenous and enslaved African people contributed to the SVBG and thus to environmental and medical science more widely; a specially commissioned piece of art will compliment this. Community events will share findings and materials with people in St Vincent, and the Garifuna and African-Caribbean communities living in New York and the UK. The project will publish academic articles in both environmental science and the humanities as well as developing a set of best practice recommendations to guide future environmental scholars when reworking publications and theories developed in colonial contexts to better detect and appreciate the contribution of traditional knowledge systems. The recommendations and findings will be shared among scholars from many disciplines. Finally, a book detailing the hidden histories of Anderson's archive and SVGB will be written.

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The project employed critical concepts of presence, performance and display in an investigation of the previously often overlooked reception history of Shakespeare in the domestic and private setting. It sought to contribute to the study of Shakespeare's place and significance in cultural history, through increasing awareness of Shakespearian 'afterlives' in performance and reception outside the public, theatrical and national spheres. More broadly it sought to contribute to histories and theorisations of domesticity, and to key enquiries within Performance Studies into the relationships between performance, audience and location. The selected case studies were chosen to cast a light on different aspects of the expectance of Shakespeare in the home; (a) Shakespeare and the culture of childhood; (b) reception of Shakespeare in the home through media of radio, television and recordings; (c) the domestic performance of Shakespeare in the form of readings and recitations; (d) the display of Shakespeare - related objects in the home. In each case the nature of documented every day and private performances of Shakespeare was examined in order to trace some of the ways in which Shakespeare has been absorbed into the practices and physical environments of actual homes and families. In so doing special attention was paid to the role of women and children in these processes. The project also examined surviving evidence of the material culture connected with Shakespeare in the home, in the form of books, pictures, games, toys, clothes, decorative objects and interior and exterior decoration inspired in some way by Shakespeare's plays and poems, or his own life and supposed personality and appearance. The project gave rise, as envisaged to five essays, one published, one in press (at proof stage), and three on the point of submission for publication, together with a number of other completed of forthcoming outcomes such as conference papers, keynotes lectures and research seminars.

The purpose of the period of research leave requested from AHRC is to prepare for publication the findings of research on the uses of music in the early twenty-first century, which develops earlier work (see Blake and Jeffery 2001; and Blake 2004b; 2005a; and 2005b, in attached CV). The writing project will report on research carried out in and before the autumn of 2005. At least two conference papers, a chapter in a commissioned and contracted edited book (which will be delivered in December 2005), and a commissioned and contracted single-author monograph (due for delivery in September 2006) will disseminate the research findings. The project will open with a literature review. Recent books, journals, websites, and company information will be consulted. This will establish the ways in which policy makers such as the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), companies such as EMI, Sony and Motorola and their advertisers, and the online members of user communities, have imagined shifts in the availability uses of music, and have, and/or are, actively providing for such shifts- for example through: The formation of cultural policy and revisions to copyright and intellectual property law (e.g. the Creative Industries Intellectual Property Forum which was launched by DCMS in 2004); MP3 download provision on laptop computers, MP3 players and mobile phones; The iTunes personal computer programme and online music sales facility, and its recently introduced Virgin and HMV rivals; The Garage band music composition programme which is currently delivered with new Apple computers*; Non-proprietary web forums which discuss the best use of these devices. The literature review will aid in the preparation of documentation for semi-structured interviews which will aim to test policy makers', producers' and users' attitudes to legal, ethical and personal issues arising from the uses of music through new portable technologies. Interviews will be held with representatives from government; from record and mobile phone companies and the advertisers who work for them; journalists who regularly evaluate these businesses' products; with the operators of non-proprietary websites dedicated to the users of mobile technologies such as the iPod; and at least four groups of 8-10 consumers from London and the South-East of England, selected by age (plus or minus 25), and gender-balanced. A schedule has been drawn up for these interviews, which will be held during the autumn of 2005. If necessary further Interviews with groups of users of mobile technologies will be scheduled for January 2006. There will be catch-up literature reviews in January, March and May 2006, and this may lead to further email correspondence or face-to-face contact with interviewees, if it is necessary either to clarify issues or there has been a significant change in, for example, product availability, or the legal position on the ownership and use of music. The Garage band programme is of particular interest because of the assumptions it makes about the ordinary computer user's attitude to composition through the provision of ready-made music. In composing a 'new' piece of music, the user is encouraged to use existing factory-made samples. This apparently conceptualises the composition of music as the juxtaposition of available material, which may in turn reinforce users' willingness to pay, or not to pay, for copyrighted music. The project will test such assumptions and the ways in which technologies confirm or deny users' beliefs and desires.

The aim of this project is to investigate how the Church of England has engaged with selected public policy debates in relation to biomedical ethics since the 1960s. What has it been aiming to achieve, and why? What strategies has it adopted, and why? What effect has its public engagement had on policy outcomes and public perceptions? How has that public engagement been reflected in the media? By concentrating on one Christian denomination and a narrow range of ethical and policy issues, it will be possible to produce a focused case study of the involvement of faith communities in public ethical and policy debates in contemporary Britain.\n\nThe interest of this research lies in the fact that the role of religious groups in the policy process in contemporary Britain is highly contested. This is illustrated by the debates leading up to the passing of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (2008): the Select Committee examining the legislation made particular efforts to engage representatives of faith groups in the debate; yet at the same time, some contributions to the debate and some media comment expressed considerable suspicion of religious involvement and influence.\n\nThe involvement of religious traditions in policymaking in liberal societies has been much discussed in the academic literature in both political theory and public theology. Less attention, though, has been paid to the ways in which religious groups have actually engaged with public debates, how their modes of engagement compare with the various possibilities set out in the academic literature and what effects their involvement has had.\n\nThis research will begin to fill that gap, by focusing on three controversial areas in biomedical ethics that have been the subject of policymaking and legislation between the 1960s and the present: abortion, human fertilisation and embryology, and assisted dying. Over that period, the Church of England has had a high level of engagement with these issues. The aims and strategies it has adopted, and the rationales for those aims and strategies, will be investigated through a study of archival sources documenting that engagement and interviews with key personnel. The effects of its public engagement on these issues will be assessed by analysing Parliamentary records (including Hansard and committee reports), selected media coverage, and empirical survey data on public perceptions of the bioethical issues being studied and of the churches' involvement in public life. In the light of these analyses, further empirical survey research will be conducted to investigate more specifically the public impact of the Church's public engagement with the issues being studied.\n\nThe findings of this project are expected to offer new insights into the engagement of faith groups in public debate and the political process. As such, they will be of use to academics working in public theology, bioethics and politics, to those responsible for faith communities' engagement with public issues, and to policymakers interested in the role of religious traditions in the policy process.\n