External Research Frameworks

English Heritage is committed to supporting the development of research frameworks for the Historic Environment. Our primary role is to facilitate and enable the various sectors of the discipline to create collaborative frameworks to ensure that research values are embedded in all historic environment work, to help set priorities for action and spending, and to sustain long term objectives. We support this process with limited grant aid for specific projects, and by publishing and disseminating the results widely through the discipline.

The key principles are:

• to exploit on-going work wherever possible, and to use existing networks to co-ordinate effort;
• to use broad-based partnerships to bridge some of the perceived fragmentation of different sectors of the discipline (contractors, consultants, curators, universities, museums, societies, and independent researchers) and to encourage a widespread sense of ownership;
• to provide limited financial assistance in order to lever-in additional resources from our partners for the development of research frameworks;
• to ensure that the resulting frameworks are dynamic, evolving, open and non-prescriptive, and do not stifle independent or opportunistic research;
• to publish and disseminate the resulting research frameworks as widely as possible in order to maximise their impact and utility;
• to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the development of regional and local frameworks to improve rapport with, and increase participation by the independent sector and the general public, and to stimulate wider public participation and interest in the historic environment.

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