Historic houses are among the UK’s most popular tourist attractions, with visitors spending over £1bn each year visiting historic homes. As of 2018, the National Trust has over 5.2 million members, and English Heritage nearly 1 million members and 6.5 million visitors annually. These heritage sites are potentially a great opportunity for public engagement, if academics and heritage organisations work together to produce accessible and informative content about the buildings, their inhabitants and their histories.
Oliver Cox’s Fellowship funded the creation of a Heritage Partnerships Office at the University of Oxford, which creates, facilitates, and maintains sustainable partnerships between University researchers and the heritage industry. ‘Academia does not have a monopoly on expertise’, Oliver says, and this project was designed to create relationships that allow for heritage organisations and academics to benefit from each other’s work. Since the Fellowship ended, the Office has expanded significantly.
The Fellowship led to a successful Knowledge Transfer Partnership Application for the Trusted Source project, a collaboration with the National Trust to provide academically informed content for their website. From here, the collaboration developed into the National Trust/Oxford Partnership Office, and to the involvement of the National Trust as a strategic partner in the Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnership.
Oliver writes that one of the most exciting aspects of the Fellowship was realising that ‘there is an enormous wellspring of enthusiasm amongst the visiting public for “Triple A” content — content that is accurate, authentic, and accessible.’ He also stresses the individual benefits of this project, noting that it has built him a public profile as an expert on country house histories, leading to various public lecture engagements.
The Fellowship also provided him with further research opportunities, and he has since contributed to publications and produced journal articles on British country houses.
Knowledge Exchange Fellowships Brochure
