Research activities and networks

HOBAR has supported a number of major externally funded research projects, including:

• Legacy projects such as the UK Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945 (UK-RED), which ran from 2007-2011 and was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). UK-RED has over 34,000 records of evidences of reading in the British Istes from 1450-1945.
• Public engagement projects such Reading Communities: Connecting the Past and the Present, which ran from 2015-16 and was funded by the AHRC. Reading Communities engaged members of the public in research in the history of reading, enabling them to make connections with readers from the past.
• Recently completed largescale European collaborations such as Reading Europe Advanced Data Investigation Tool (READ-IT), which ran from 2018-2021 and was funded by the European Union's Joint Programme Initiative for Cultural Heritage (JPICH). READ-IT developed digital tools to support colloborative interdisciplinary research in reading, both in the past, and present.

Through these and other projects, HOBAR works with external academic partners to showcase excellent book history research in English & Creative Writing to the wider world. HOBAR members are also actively involved in leading large editorial projects, scholarly organisations, academic journals, and running research partnerships.