Cash boost to look at impact of storytelling
AN international team of academics - including a criminology expert at Edge Hill University - has been awarded a £78,000 cash boost to continue research into the impact of storytelling.
Dr Rafe McGregor, Reader in Criminology at Edge Hill, is part of a group that was first awarded a £140,000 grant in 2021 from the Croatian Science Foundation.
The work to investigate how the stories and fiction we share can impact society has now been granted additional funding.
Stories in society have been a hot topic in recent years with the publishing industry wrapped in debate about editing older books to remove content that could be deemed offensive.
Agatha Christie novels, Ian Fleming’s James Bond books and classics by Roald Dahl including Charlie and The Chocolate Factory have all been edited to meet modern-day values.
Dr McGregor said: “There is a culture war going on about what promotes a better society and a world we want to live in.
“This research will help to facilitate the debate. The additional funding is a big show of confidence at 55 per cent of the original grant.”
The extra funding will expand the team - a collaboration between Edge Hill, The University of Rijeka, Queen Mary University of London, Humboldt University of Berlin and Oxford University - to seven.
The project is divided into three strands; stories and knowledge, stories and ethical life, and stories and social cohesion and the research runs until January 2026.
Dr McGregor’s work has included exploring how films and TV can help us understand real-life crimes and social issues, focusing on Fight Club, Game of Thrones and 2019 psychological horror Us.
That strand of work alongside the University of Rijeka’s David Grcki has resulted in a book - An Epistemology of Criminological Cinema which is published next month.