Exploring the British Diaspora: Histories, Lives and Identities of the British Abroad

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The knowledge exchange proposal draws directly from the Principal Investigator's British Academy Small Grant funded project (held in collaboration with Dr Pauline Leonard, University of Southampton) on the British in contemporary South Africa and will create a network of other leading social scientists, across disciplines such as Politics, Sociology, Geography and Anthropology, working on British emigration to diverse contexts such as Spain, France, Australia, Hong Kong, Dubai, Beijing and Thailand. The partnership with the Migration Museum Project (MMP) will bring together this diverse body of research and disseminate it to the general public. The MMP aims to create a national museum of migration and has members and associates who are key figures in the museum, policy, media, political and business sectors. The MMP faces a greater challenge in obtaining material about outward migration as most domestic collections at museums and heritage bodies focus on the history and contemporary dynamics of inward migration to the UK. It is also important to consider migration as a historical and ongoing dynamic and dual process of outward and inward migration. Knowledge transfer from social science academics to the MMP on this topic will therefore address and overcome this challenge. This partnership allows for maximum and ongoing public impact for the research. The programme would therefore create a knowledge exchange between academic communities and museum curators and educators, schools, cultural, policy and media communities and this will allow for academic research in this field to impact on wider public discourses and debates about migration. The objectives of the scheme are designed to achieve these outcomes in a focused way across a period of six months. Working with social scientists existing research and professional museum curators and cultural heritage practitioners, the project will deliver the following:-An academic/MMP workshop that will allow for knowledge exchange between social scientists and museum curators/cultural heritage practitioners and will be focused on how best to highlight research on the British diaspora and British emigration for a wider public audience. This will also create an academic/MMP network around the theme of the knowledge exchange programme.-The curation of an attractive and engaging online exhibition and learning resource focused on 'The British Diaspora: Histories, Lives and Identities of the British Abroad'. This will include case studies from different countries/regions, pictures, stories, podcasts and links to further research and resources. The online exhibition and learning resource will draw directly from existing social science research and reflects the different geographical, disciplinary and methodological approaches of the academic network.-A high profile public launch event of the online exhibition and learning resource, hosted by the MMP and held at the Royal Commonwealth Society (at the invitation of its director Dr Danny Sriskandarajah - who is also an MMP Board Member). This knowledge exchange scheme will form a lasting, creative and attractive resource for members of the public, media, museum and cultural heritage sector to consult and explore the history of British emigration, its impact on the world and the continuing dynamics of British emigration and lives abroad. Ultimately, it will inform any future MMP exhibitions on outward British migration and part of a future National Museum of Migration.