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Performances, Sounds, Images, Objects

Introduction

Generating new understanding into the ways we communicate

With increased movement and cross-fertilization between countries and cultures, and the acceleration of global communications, we have entered an era where not only the written word, but also performances, sounds, images and objects can be circulated more rapidly and widely than ever before. In response to this, the AHRC has created Beyond Text, a strategic programme to generate new understandings of, and research into, the impact and significance of the way we communicate.

Background

Beyond Text is a programme that has been developed by AHRC following a two year period of consultation with the arts and humanities research communities. Introduced in 2007, it aims to support a multidisciplinary community of scholars and practitioners drawn from Higher Education, museums, galleries, libraries, business, policy, media, technology and the law to explore the ways in which communication is articulated, transmitted, received and controlled. It also aims to enhance the connections between those who make and preserve works, and those who study them.

The Programme

Beyond Text centres on five thematic, interdisciplinary areas: Making and Unmaking; Performance, Improvisation and Embodied Knowledge; Technology, Innovation and Tradition; mediations; Transmission and Memory. These themes provide a framework to investigate the formation and transformations of performances, sounds, images, and objects in a wide field of social, historical and geographical contexts, tracing their reception, assimilation and adaptation across temporal and cultural boundaries. The programme has a budget of £5.5 million over 5 years and runs from 2007 to 2012.

Programme Contacts

Professor Evelyn Welch, Programme Director, Tel: 0207 882 8463

Lucy Parnell, Programme Manager, tel: 0117 987 6628

Sue Hart, Senior Awards Officer, tel: 0117 987 6633

Find out more

Further details about the programme are in the programme specification or on the programme website.

pdf icon Programme specification (87kb)

Funding Opportunities:

Please note that this Student-Led Initiative round will be the last funding call under the Beyond Text Programme.

Funded Research:

  • 10 Small Grants - Beyond Text
  • 9 Large Research Grants - Beyond Text
  • 15 Research Networks and Workshops - Beyond Text

Postgraduate awards made:

  • 6 Collaborative Research Studentships - Beyond Text
  • 9 Student-Led Initiative - Beyond Text

About AHRC initiatives

This programme is one of the AHRC programmes which opens up opportunities for research that has intellectual and wider cultural, social or economic urgency and that the Council considers is best supported by concentrated investments. It will also assist researchers working on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary areas which do not fit into conventional funding opportunities.

 

What's New

Find out about our latest events including:

Cultures of Consumption

The AHRC/ESRC funded Cultures of Consumption programme was a major multi-disciplinary programme which ran from 2002 to 2008.

Find out more about this Cultures of Consumption programme.

 

Activities

Find out about our latest activities including international, knowledge transfer and evaluation in the policy section.

Case Study - Picturing China

Picturing China's Modern History is an AHRC funded project making available for the first time previously unseen historical archives.

Find out more about this Research Grant Project.

Funding Opportunities

You can find out more about our funding opportunities, in the Browse Funding Opportunities section of our website