Impact and Engagement

Explore a range of current projects that take anthropology and archaeology beyond academia.

Anthropological and archaeological research is highly relevant in tackling most contemporary challenges. With our focus on grounded empirical research, with and for communities, we have impact on people’s everyday lives around the world.

Drugs and development in Africa and the UK  
Lead: Neil Carrier

Cannabis is the most commonly consumed and produced illicit drug throughout Africa. This project explored cannabis' socio-economic and cultural roles in four African countries - Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe - through qualitative research (including ethnographic and archival methods - demonstrating its place in African societies and how this is changing in an era of policy liberalisation related to the substance. The project established a network of academics, policy-makers and activists interested in cannabis, and has led to a number of publications including a forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press.
Reliable energy access is fundamental to health, education, civic participation and equitable access to services, yet many Amazon forest communities continue to face significant barriers. Working with long-standing partners at the Federal University of Pará and the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Institute, we explore what “energy resilience” means in everyday life for forest peoples. Bringing together expertise from anthropology, engineering, sociology and geography, we develop practical approaches to understanding and strengthening resilience through energy access. Alongside research with Amazonian communities, we create stakeholder networks and knowledge-sharing workshops to ensure findings benefit both local communities and wider policy and academic audiences.

Language and gender bias in children’s books.  
Lead: Fiona Jordan 

Children’s books play an important role in their socialisation. In collaboration with local schools and bookstores, we are aiming to meet the need for greater gender equity in reception classroom libraries. We’re building community data collections tools that assess hidden representation and language bias, so parents and teachers can choose “fair tales” for young children. 

Our Project Blog and YouTube explain a little more about the aims of our project. 

A new AHRC-funded ‘one-stop shop’ to support advanced mass spectrometric analysis of organic compounds for the UK heritage and archaeological communities  

Lead: Lucy Cramp

Having received £1M investment from the AHRC Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS) funding programme, we are establishing a world-class UK centre that integrates four major areas of molecular and isotopic analysis under one organisational umbrella. This capability, including organic residue analysis, (compound-specific) light stable isotope analysis, radiocarbon dating (specialising in small and non-conventional samples, and compound-specific techniques) and strontium analysis, can be accessed by the heritage community for the characterisation, provenancing and radiocarbon dating of heritage materials, using specialist protocols developed here.
More information can be found on the HSDS Catalogue of Services and on our Organic Residue Analysis website.

Amplifying the voices of victims and survivors of non-recent child sexual abuse.  
Lead: William Tantam

Voicing Silence addresses the persistent silencing of child sexual abuse survivors in England. Through a collaborative zine and co-produced workshop, academics, practitioners, activists, and survivors explore barriers to disclosure, amplify survivor voices, and promote creative, informed interventions. The project aims to influence practice, policy, public understanding, and social change.

The zine is available here: Breaking Silences: Survivors, researchers and practitioners speak about Child Sexual Abuse - Bristol

A transdisciplinary research project based on Dominica after Hurricane Maria 

Lead: Adom Philogene Heron 

Surviving Storms reconsiders hurricane ‘resilience’ from the perspectives of everyday people, asking how residents past and present have survived, remember, and rebuild after storms. Using oral history, archival research, vernacular architecture, GIS mapping and film, the project centres local knowledge, adaptation and repair, creating a digital map-archive from which Dominicans, Caribbean people and others can learn from the past to confront uncertain climate futures. 

Exhibitions, Media and Public Engagement 

Our academics share their research with the public in a variety of ways. 

New installations opening summer 2026 at Southampton City Art Gallery take a new look at the Avebury prehistoric landscape and the archaeological work that has animated it. Exploring a diverse, rich, and complicated set of themes drawn from Avebury’s past, present, and possible future, these works encourage us to think about Avebury and the possibilities in enfolds in new and challenging ways. From the 15th June to the 17th of October 2026 visitors can experience the artist’s responses to the Avebury archive commissioned by the Avebury Papers project at Southampton’s City Art Gallery. Accompanying the exhibition will be a series of talks by the Avebury Papers project team, workshops, art schools and a family activity day.
The Avebury Papers is a four-year Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project led by the Universities of Bristol and York to digitise, explore, and share the multimedia archive of Avebury’s Neolithic origins and ongoing investigation. Following an open call in September 2024, two artists - Gayle Chong Kwan and Kialy Tihngang - were chosen to create responses to the wealth of stories and information contained within the Avebury archive.
Gayle Chong Kwan is an award-winning multidisciplinary British artist and academic, of Chinese/Mauritian and Scottish heritage, whose work is exhibited internationally in galleries and the public realm. Gayle Chong Kwan has created a new installation work, ‘Oneiric Archaeologies’ (2026), incorporating sound, tactile wearable sculptures, ritual, and social dreaming to explore the collective re-shaping, re-use, and understanding of the Avebury’s Neolithic landscapes.
Kialy Tihngang is a multidisciplinary Glasgow-based visual artist, working in sculpture, video, textiles, animation and photomontage, often in collaboration with performers and musicians, involving elaborate handmade sets, costumes and props. Kialy Thingang’s installation ‘The Bluest Eye’ (2026) invites viewers to explore the ripples and sedimentation of migration, pseudoscience, history, and myth in the making of a place.
Avebury is more than a heritage site – it has always been a place of awe, fascination and wonder; a place that has drawn generations of the curious and the inquisitive to it. The work of Gayle and Kialy taps directly into that wonder, revealing Avebury's power and inviting us to engage with this incredible monument in wholly new ways