The Cultural Heritage, People and Place: Understanding value via a regional case study project addresses the AHRC DCMS call Research culture and heritage capital with an interdisciplinary team. It seeks to holistically address overlapping thematic areas set out in strands B and C of the call ("exploring linkages between methodologies that measure why people value culture and heritage and economic techniques" and "defining and incorporating non-use values into social cost benefit analysis"). It engages with these through three aligned research questions: 1) How might narratives of locale and culture be drawn upon in the identification and development of more multifaceted and relevant definitions of non -use value? 2) How do these values align within the wider cultural ecosystem, what are the intersections and gaps across secondary data, and how might these be made visible? 3) Which cross disciplinary methods and interactions can be used to define, stimulate and measure multi scalar locale specific tangible and intangible cultural heritage values? To address these, it will use a mixed methods approach that investigates current culture-led initiatives, focusing on an in depth study exploring the timely and highly relevant National Museums Liverpool (NML) Waterfront Transformation project, with NML as this project's research partner. This case study provides an ideal pilot site and project which will yield nationally applicable findings and recommendations in addition to its relevance to regional agendas. Here, the project will engage with existing and emergent data and produce new data through cross sectoral collaboration and co-creation strategies that develop the necessary holistic approach for capturing, articulating and analysing diverse values of culture and heritage. Liverpool and the city region will further provide a wider socio economic and cultural context that in many ways defines the challenges of evaluating cultural value(s). The city has rich tangible and intangible cultural heritage assets but it, and the wider city region, continue to face significant social and economic challenges and spatial inequalities. Here, the value(s) of culture and associated practices can be seen to go beyond - or are, at least, not inextricably bound to- the economic and are often difficult to capture.

The Cultural Heritage, People and Place: Understanding value via a regional case study project addresses the AHRC DCMS call Research culture and heritage capital with an interdisciplinary team. It seeks to holistically address overlapping thematic areas set out in strands B and C of the call ("exploring linkages between methodologies that measure why people value culture and heritage and economic techniques" and "defining and incorporating non-use values into social cost benefit analysis"). It engages with these through three aligned research questions: 1) How might narratives of locale and culture be drawn upon in the identification and development of more multifaceted and relevant definitions of non -use value? 2) How do these values align within the wider cultural ecosystem, what are the intersections and gaps across secondary data, and how might these be made visible? 3) Which cross disciplinary methods and interactions can be used to define, stimulate and measure multi scalar locale specific tangible and intangible cultural heritage values? To address these, it will use a mixed methods approach that investigates current culture-led initiatives, focusing on an in depth study exploring the timely and highly relevant National Museums Liverpool (NML) Waterfront Transformation project, with NML as this project's research partner. This case study provides an ideal pilot site and project which will yield nationally applicable findings and recommendations in addition to its relevance to regional agendas. Here, the project will engage with existing and emergent data and produce new data through cross sectoral collaboration and co-creation strategies that develop the necessary holistic approach for capturing, articulating and analysing diverse values of culture and heritage. Liverpool and the city region will further provide a wider socio economic and cultural context that in many ways defines the challenges of evaluating cultural value(s). The city has rich tangible and intangible cultural heritage assets but it, and the wider city region, continue to face significant social and economic challenges and spatial inequalities. Here, the value(s) of culture and associated practices can be seen to go beyond - or are, at least, not inextricably bound to- the economic and are often difficult to capture.

This project seeks a new understanding of the relationship between Christianity and the state in late antiquity (c. 250-700 CE). It examines how Christian ideas permeated the representation and practice of governance in the later Roman Empire at the end of antiquity, and developed into the basic political framework of the Byzantine Empire and post-Roman Europe. This process of Christianization is hardly understudied. For centuries, historians have debated the implications of the Emperor Constantine's conversion in 312 CE; more recent work has traced the complex cultural and social impact of the resulting legalization and expansion of the church. But these new histories of religious change have left the state behind. Through my leadership activities, I will seek to diversify and revitalize the study of late ancient Christian political thought. I will run panels at international meetings and a conference in Liverpool leading to an edited volume. This network will move discussion away from old-fashioned analysis of the constitutional relationship between emperor and bishops to explore a wider social history of governance (e.g. gendered praise and invective, the imperial family, ethnic discourse, demonology). It will also seek to reshape old narratives by incorporating previously understudied texts, languages, and regions of western Eurasia. These network events will build on a conference I ran at the University of Liverpool in June 2019. My individual research project takes a novel approach by focusing on overlooked Christian political actors: not emperors, kings, or bishops, but rather the thousands of administrators who served late Roman and post-Roman regimes in their palaces and across their provinces. More often than not, it was these elites through whom people in the late ancient Mediterranean experienced the power of the state. This project assembles and analyses the literary and material evidence for the religious beliefs and practices of imperial and royal officials across the Mediterranean world between 400 and 600 CE. By considering these texts and objects in the light of modern theories of identity, I will evaluate how the religious affiliations of this service aristocracy impacted their political agency. Reconstructing contemporary expectations of these Christian officials will provide a window onto how Christian political thought was put into action and shaped the day-to-day reality of governance in the later Roman Empire and its successors. The result will be a new account of how religious change reshaped the culture of the state in societies from Gaul to Mesopotamia in late antiquity. The main outcome of this project will be a monograph on the religious identities of imperial and royal officials in the fifth and sixth centuries. This book will speak to wider histories of Christianization, the relationship between 'church' and 'state', and the formation of western ideas of secularity and (de)secularization. The major Impact element of the project will be a collaboration with the Antiquities curators of the Liverpool World Museum to help plan and realize an exhibit of their classical collections opening in February 2021. As part of this team, I will use my research in this project and my wider expertise to advise on the display of late ancient objects not currently accessible by the public, as well as giving spotlight talks. This partnership will feed into further collaborations, including a Study Day on best practice in exhibiting late ancient material which I will organize for summer 2022 in partnership with Prof. Bonnie Effros. In sum, this Early Career Leadership fellowship would allow me to establish myself as an international research leader in my field, bring my second book project to fruition, and develop a substantial Knowledge Exchange and Public Engagement project which will engage with museum curators and a wider public.

This public history project explores place and memory in the waterfront districts of seaport cities, taking Liverpool as its case-study. Historically, the waterfront zone was a vibrant, multi-functional space, frequented at different times of the day and night by a plethora of people, including mariners, merchants and clerks, shipping office workers, industrial workers, dock and warehouse labourers, bartenders, sex workers, police officers, tourists and social reformers. Many aspects of this society survived into the 1960s, when airlines and containerisation removed the need for most people to work in or even visit the urban waterfront, resulting in rapid dereliction and community dispersal. The focus of this project is the visual capture of personal and community experience of Liverpool's central waterfront district in the 1950s and 1960s, the last generation of traditional seaport society. Cultural mapping workshops and film-making will encourage contributors to identify and recreate their own histories of this space, exploring community identity and continuity, and generating findings for academic and museum research. \n\nOutputs in the form of visual memory maps and video histories will enhance knowledge of the built heritage and material culture of these spaces, primarily by identifing and interpreting key sites of memory. The project moves beyond earlier oral histories, using cultural mapping methodology to document cityscapes and people's experience within them. The core data collection will take the form of memory-mapping workshops with former waterfront residents, workers and visitors. Participants will create annotated maps answering specific questions about the locations of sounds, traffic, different groups of people, dangers and threats, and places of varying significance to them at different points in their lives. Participants will also be asked to discuss archive photographs and film, comment on relevant museum collections, and bring materials of their own. In the course of these workshops, the project will acquire a rich collection of visual, oral and material evidence. Film-makers will then interview selected participants on location, building explict visual connections between sites of memory and recollection. Broader public debate and engagement will be encouraged through the creation of a website, which will host material contributed to the project in the form of image, text and film. \n\nThe project outcomes reflect the complementary priorities of the museum and academic partners, and will be created collaboratively. An interactive web resource will combine elements of the memory maps generated in the participant workshops with film and audio commentaries on significant locations, artefacts and images. This resource, along with the artefacts and archive collections themselves, will provide a new context for interpretation and use of collections, and should form the basis of future exhibits. An urban history journal article will explore the project's methods and findings in the context of the PI's existing (text-based) work on earlier eras of waterfront economy and culture. A museum studies or public history journal article will discuss the project's methods and findings in comparison with earlier examples of waterfront community involvement and oral history in museums, considering in particular this project's appreciable broadening of subject matter and exploitation of new media for collection and dissemination. A 20-minute documentary film will encapsulate the community, museum and academic elements of the collaboration, and will be on display in the Merseyside Maritime Museum. All project materials will be acquired into the permanent collections of National Museums Liverpool and will be publicly accessible, via the website and the Maritime Archives & Library. \n

In partnership with Merseyrail and the University of Liverpool's Victoria Gallery & Museum (VG&M) we would like to invite members of the public, artists and scientists to help create a science trail that tells the story of the building of a particle accelerator in one of Liverpool's underground railway tunnels, and its control room in a Liverpool museum. Ten years previous to the completion of the LHC tunnel, engineers completed a circular tunnel beneath the city of Liverpool. With 4 stations, the Wirral Line loop (WLL) facilitates millions of journeys annually as passengers access Liverpool's iconic waterfront, museums, business districts, shopping areas, universities and homes. The Wirral Line also connects some of the areas with lowest rates of accessing higher education in the UK. We would deliver the project in three main phases: Phase 1: We tell the community about our STFC funded work (including contributions from particle, nuclear and accelerator research clusters). These events, led by academics and students from the University of Liverpool, will draw parallels between the tunnels of the LHC and WLL. The community sets the scientific objectives of the accelerator. We outline a 'design brief' for the accelerator. Phase 2: Public submitted designs are reviewed. A celebration of the ideas will take place in printed and social media. Some carefully selected ideas are taken forward to commissioning stage. Phase 3: Working with external companies, groups and physics workshop to implement the science trail. The trail will bring to life the idea of an accelerator installed in Liverpool city centre, which is based upon the responses of the public. The trail will include: -art installations at each underground station (potentially representing 4 detectors of LHC); -interactive exhibits at Lime St station (gateway to Liverpool, facilitates 16 M annually); -control room experience at the World Museum, Liverpool. In the accelerator control room, we will look at the global perspectives of physics, including the role of accelerators in medicine, uniting the world through collaboration on large scale science experiments; -marvelous machines and history of accelerators experience at the VG&M. The completed materials would initially remain on show in Liverpool for one year.