The five centres offered research and support for specific themes.
Voices of War and Peace
The University of Birmingham, in collaboration with Cardiff, Durham, Manchester Metropolitan, Newcastle, Birmingham City, Wolverhampton and Worcester universities.
The centre offered research support and guidance for community groups around the First World War in general, and in particular around the following themes:
- belief and the Great War
- commemoration
- childhood
- cities at war
- gender and the home front.
For more information:
Gateways to the First World War
University of Kent, in collaboration with Leeds, Brighton, Portsmouth Universities and Queen Mary, University of London.
Gateways contains a range of expertise which helped community groups explore the following areas:
- memorials, commemoration and memory
- life on the home and fighting fronts
- the medical history of the First World War
- wartime propaganda and popular culture
- maritime and naval history
- operational and military history.
For more information visit Gateways to the First World War.
Everyday Lives in War
University of Hertfordshire, in collaboration with Universities of Central Lancashire, Lincoln, Exeter and Essex.
How did war affect daily life between 1914 and 1918 and what was the legacy of the conflict? This centre aimed to encourage community research into questions such as these and has particular expertise in:
- First World War food and farming
- theatre and entertainment
- conscientious objection and military tribunals
- supernatural beliefs
- childhood
- family relationships
- cartoons, trench publications and popular culture.
For more information:
Watch the video by Adam Jones-Lloyd, made for the Everyday Lives in War Engagement Centre in which Tony Dyer, a flight test engineer builds a replica First World War Sopwith Camel seat.
More films from the centre are available on their Everyday Lives in War YouTube channel.
Living Legacies 1914 to 1918: from past conflict to shared future
Queen’s University Belfast, in collaboration with universities of Ulster, Newcastle and Wales and Goldsmiths College University of London.
The Living Legacies First World War Engagement Centre in Belfast explored the enduring impacts and legacies of the First World War and how it lives on in the twenty-first century.
The centre was interested in helping communities to:
- tell their stories and share these stories with others
- rediscover the forgotten First World War heritage in our landscapes
- find out why and where people moved as a result of the war
- express stories about the conflict through drama and theatre.
It has particular expertise in the following areas:
- museums and exhibitions
- migration and ‘moving lives’
- material cultures and archaeology
- digital technologies and digitisation
- performing arts.
For more information:
The Centre for Hidden Histories
University of Nottingham in collaboration with Oxford Brookes, Manchester Metropolitan, Nottingham Trent and Derby universities.
The centre’s key thematic interests included:
- migration and displacement
- the experience of others, from countries and regions within Europe, Asia and the Commonwealth
- impact and subsequent legacies of the war on diverse communities within Britain
remembrance and commemoration
- identity and faith.
For more information visit The Centre for Hidden Histories.
