Arts and culture

From telling the human stories behind important breakthroughs to finding innovative ways to develop our understanding of complex issues, our research spans disciplines, redefining people’s traditional understanding of what ‘the Arts’ can be.

Grounded in the principles of inclusivity, diversity and creativity, our projects examine pertinent questions through the lens of arts and humanities, exploring new ways of interpreting some of the world's most important issues.

• Theatre and technology combine to recreate a lost palace
  A multi-award winning heritage tour is transforming how museums help audiences interpret and enjoy heritage sites, using the perfect marriage of theatre and technology to create an immersive experience of history where it happened, without visitors once looking at a screen.
• Measuring social influence for business and government
  Developing new analysis tools that determine the extent to which social networks influence decision-making.
• Inspiring mathematicians
  Researchers are bringing maths to life by telling the human stories behind important breakthroughs, and using music to illustrate complex mathematical problems.
• Danceroom spectroscopy
  Using interactive high-performance computing to visualise molecular dynamics and inspire thousands of people with the beauty of the microscopic world.
• Transforming public understanding of the brain
  Professor Hood’s BBC series ‘Meet your brain’ proved such a success that the British Council invited him to repeat his lectures in Japan, China, South Korea and Singapore.
• Visualising the Olympics
  Visual imagery depicting the Olympics projects a host nation's cultural identity onto the world stage, providing fascinating insights into the socio-economic and political contexts of the time.
• Using reason to define a complex system
  Investigating meaningful commonalities in how the different scientific disciplines tackle complexity and whether they can provide a reliable definition of a complex system.
• Uncovering the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in south-west Turkey
  A Bristol-led team of archaeologists uncovered evidence about the Lycian Bronze Age through excavations at Çaltılar 'höyük', an ancient settlement mound in Turkey.
• Questions of guilt and innocence: telling stories about wartime Czechoslovakia
  Developing a new understanding of a nation’s experience during the Second World War can be an emotive, controversial area, particularly when discussions reveal a new, more painful history.
• Composition for brass band: Gaia Symphony and Eden
  John Pickard, internationally-recognised composer in the Department of Music, has composed pieces for brass band to wide critical acclaim.
• East meets West: building a ‘remembering’ community
  Can telling stories about a socialist past and sharing these with a wider public help improve understandings of multiculturalism in Britain today?
• The Schola Cantorum
  The Department of Music is home to a very special choir: the Schola Cantorum, a 16 strong all-female choir specialising in medieval music.
• Thucydides — still relevant today?
  Thucydides, the ancient Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens, has long been considered the father of both scientific history and political realism. But how extensive is his influence on the modern world?