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This chapter discusses the ‘Prosopography of the Byzantine World’ (PBW), which appears in many pages of this book. It is a British Academy project that is largely funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The chapter also introduces the concept of prosopography, and mentions several conclusions that PBW drew from the papers and from extensive discussions that occurred in the framework of the colloquium.

The call for a separate Research Council for humanities was initially met with unfavourable comment. Although the government eventually announced support for the creation of such a research council, it was only after lengthy deliberations that the Dearing Report recommendations were finally granted, hence creating the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). This chapter discusses the early years of the AHRC. During these years, the funding of the ARHC was under the prerogative of the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE). The Funding Council was then initiating new models of funding institutions of higher education and the AHRC was generally given less funding. This neglect of the funding of AHRC discouraged humanities scholars to entail directed research. In 1998, the British Academy through Tony Wrigley asked for additional funds from the HEFCE. Upon the commencement of its official existence, the AHRC with its first chief executive Paul Langford prepared the new Board, planned the creation of the research awards department, and planned the integration of the postgraduate awards section in the British Academy within the overall structure of the new organisation. This new organisation was driven by the goal to improve the breadth and depth of the knowledge and understanding of human culture in the past and in the present and thereby enhance the quality of life and the creative output of the nation.

The AHRB was given the core responsibility to produce 12,000 active arts and humanities researches over the UK. As of 1998, the Board had made over 4000 awards involving over 5000 researches. Across the UK, in the institutions of the government and the academy, several have been engaged with the AHRB and were actively committed to the fulfilment of the AHRB as a true Research Council. In 2005, the Arts and Humanities Research Council achieved its desired transformation after having built an impressive array of assets. This chapter discusses the transformation of the Arts and Humanities Research Board to a Research Council. In the process of the transformation of the Board, several changes were made. Among of these are the transition of the charitable status of the board and the transition of the AHRB's assets and obligations in to the new Non-Deparmental Public Body (NDPB). It also meant that the now AHRC must provide multi-year funding and the creation of strategic initiatives that would support intellectual urgency. The integration of the AHRC within the Research Councils also meant the restoration of arts and humanities to the circle of serious sciences and knowledge.

This chapter examines the transition and alignments of communities through a consideration built around the changing role of the community in the photographic archive and the shift from subjecthood to agency. It also examines the use of the photographic archive as a means of exploring the new potentialities of the community archive. The chapter reflects on the sense of the community as pictured within the archive and the increasing potential of self-archiving and curation afforded by new digital technologies. It draws on recent projects funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Connected Communities and Digital Transformations schemes. A model in which the disruptive can be privileged and the counterfactual become an essential component of the archivist's armoury is offered.

This volume is the third of a series of collections arising from an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded project on criminalization. It contains revised versions of papers discussed at the project workshops in 2010–11. The book is concerned with three related sets of issues about criminalization that are captured by its title — The Constitution of the Criminal Law — and addressed by the authors of these papers. This introductory chapter provides a brief sketch of those issues along with an overview of the subsequent chapters.