This Network brings social and health science scholars into dialogue with museum scholars, leaders and policy makers to create a sustainable research agenda focused on the museum attendance and benefit gap. The network will draw in scholars with expertise in inequality, poverty and low educational attainment, experts in culture and health, public health, health and cultural attendance, and scholars of implementation science with expertise in rigorous approaches to intervention development and harnessing research for large-scale change. The Network explores the hypothesis that a deeper understanding within museums and museology of (1) the nature and experience of inequality and (2) how large-scale social and behaviour change is approached in fields such as health, will open up the capacity to understand, theorise, design, implement, evaluate and sustain practices which may address the museum attendance and benefit gap. Data from the official Taking Part Survey, which includes the attendance gap between Upper and Lower Socio-economic Groups in England, show that it has increased from 22.7 percentage points (pp) to 24.7pp over the past 15 years. The same pattern is evident in the rest of the UK. Sociologically, museum visiting reflects the socio-economic gradient, closely tracking inequalities in education, income, employment, mental health and other indicators of social wellbeing. This analysis is supported by decades of research in cultural sociology internationally which, regardless of methodological or theoretical approach, confirms that people who participate in and benefit from state-sponsored cultural forms including museums, are, in the main, from upper socio-economic groups and that the single most important predictor of museum visiting is not class, ethnicity or income but level of prior educational achievement. Population-level studies in the epidemiology of culture, which tell us that simply visiting a museum may have positive health benefits, emphasises the lack of fairness in the current distribution of cultural resources and the way museums reflect and contribute to established inequalities in health and wellbeing. Despite 40 years of concerted efforts by museums of all genres and scales, supported by national and local government policy and targeted investment, including more than £5 billion of Lottery Funding, the strategies used by museums in the UK to reduce inequalities in museum visiting are not working. Whilst pockets of positive transformation have been achieved, museums have failed to find ways to understand, consolidate, share and sustain progress. Focused on measuring small-scale impact and without an evaluation framework linking the activities of individual museums and the ways in which they utilise visitor research with the macro data from surveys like the Taking Part Survey or with the sociological literature on inequality, museums' current uses of research cannot offer insights into the larger question of representative participation. To begin to positively impact deeply entrenched and unequal patterns of attendance and benefit and make credible claims about their contribution to society, museums need to understand the extent to which the attendance and benefit gap is driven by societal factors, which museum interventions are most likely to have an impact, and how they can harness and grow their research capacity to move beyond 'intuitive' approaches to inequality and social change. The new partnerships and synergies the Network will generate are urgent: increasing inequality, the long-term impact of post-2011 austerity, and the dramatic impacts of COVID and new technologies are changing patterns of visiting, often in ways that increase inequalities. As the cultural sector seems likely to face a new round of austerity, having a clearer, more realistic, understanding of how museums might make a greater and more transparent contribution to society will be invaluable.

Many members of the public who visit the ever-popular displays of ancient Egyptian and Sudanese objects in UK museums are unaware of how they came to be in these collections. Some assume that they were all obtained through scientific excavations, while others believe that their presence is the result of looting. The role of the antiquities market is rarely considered. This route was complex and encompassed both sanctioned excavations and illicit activities, opportunistic sellers and licensed vendors. A past focus on heroic narratives of archaeologists has obscured the reality that many of them were openly active in the antiquities market, buying, and selling objects for potential profit. This business-like side of their work may have helped to support them, and their excavations financially, but also led to many less well-provenanced objects entering museums across the UK, Europe and North America. This project focuses on several individuals who intersected the roles of excavator and dealer, who were active in British-led excavations in Egypt and Sudan 1880-1939. This project will assess how expansive their activities were, how and why they purchased objects in the field, how they viewed these transactions ethically, and will explore the impact of their activities on museum collections today. Egyptological work in this area has often focused on excavations, or discrete elements of collecting such as individual auctions or collectors. Although there is a growing body of work that recognizes the complex historic realities of collecting, the entanglement of archaeology and the antiquities market in Egypt and Sudan has not been fully investigated. This is the first project which makes explicit the connection between excavation, the antiquities market and museum collections. This project will transform our understanding of the provenance of many collections of Egyptian and Sudanese held in British museums and offer a methodology for future research. By focusing on individuals and their activities as case studies, it will provide a fuller and more transparent narrative of diverse colonial collecting practices. The project combines detailed object provenance research primarily based at National Museums Scotland with additional collections and archival research conducted in Edinburgh, London, Oxford, Liverpool, and Manchester, as well as UK-related archives in Toronto. The project focuses on selected individuals whose acquisitions entered the Scottish national collection, as a lens to examine the broader phenomenon. It will focus on curator Edwin Ward, collector-for-hire Charles Trick Currelly, and archaeologists/academics John Garstang and William Matthew Flinders Petrie. Their purchases, sales and brokering activities will be examined, and considered in relation to each subject's socio-economic status and ethical views. 1880-1939 saw the zenith of archaeological activity in Egypt and Sudan, the formation of many museum collections and varying degrees of imperial/colonial control, and alterations to export rules. This period provides the best opportunity to contextualize individual actions in relation to colonial history and museum collecting narratives. The project will share information and insights with archive holders, museums and universities, during research visits, and online through the NMS research repository, providing rapid dissemination of the project's aims, themes and insights to researchers and students. The project is partnered with the Egypt Exploration Society, World Museum (Liverpool), and the Petrie Museum and the project's findings will be integrated into the knowledge databases of these institutions. The project includes several public events and an academic symposium to focus attention on the subject, opening greater discussion on historic collecting practices in Egypt and Sudan and how these collections are dealt with in museum practice today.

Since 6000 BC, if not earlier, Trinidad has been the gateway into the Caribbean for waves of South American migrants - the first stepping stone in the long chain of islands that make up the archipelago. Its critical position to the settlement of the Caribbean is reflected in its deep archaeological record, documenting the complex interactions between its diverse peoples over millennia. Unique among its archaeological sites is Pitch Lake, one of the largest natural deposits of asphalt in the world (see Fig. 1 - Visual Evidence), which over the years has yielded extremely rare wood carvings - to date the largest concentration of ancient wood artefacts in the Lesser Antilles (of the 18 carvings known from the region, eleven were recovered from Pitch Lake). However, unlike any systematic archaeological excavation, these carvings have been dredged up as a consequence of commercial pitch harvesting (Fig 2), and any association between them, or the skeletal remains that were also recovered, have been lost. They are thus rarely discussed in the archaeological literature - they float outside chronologies, peripheral to the ceramic and stone foundations upon which Caribbean prehistory is based. Yet wood is among the most insightful of materials, lending itself to radiocarbon dating, stable isotope analyses and botanical identification - the latter two providing direct insights into people's interaction with their environment. The carving scars evident on these pieces echo the movements of those labouring over them and provide a window onto their past activities. Historical accounts from the 15th-16th centuries indicate that Caribbean cultures had rich wood carving traditions, and that much of their material culture was carved in wood - from massive communal houses to utilitarian objects such as canoes, paddles and vessels, to ritual items and ceremonial seats - and this heritage can now only be glimpsed through the handful of examples that survive in museum and private collections. This reliance on wood undoubtedly goes back to the first migrations - without canoes and paddles, for example, the islands could not be settled. Hence, despite the lack of context, the carvings from Pitch Lake - now held in three separate institutions - provide a unique opportunity to investigate the importance of wood artefacts, especially valuable in a context where wood was the basis of material culture, but rarely survives. The proposed research would be the first detailed, multi-disciplinary investigation of the Pitch Lake wood carvings, with the aim of placing these objects in a chronological and cultural perspective. From the artefacts (Fig 3) recovered from this one site we can potentially explore not only local adaptations, but regional influences and exchanges - as well as more esoteric/symbolic meanings. The methodologies enable a deeper level of investigation into the corpus - from the stable isotope analysis that can provide insights into the source of the trees used for the carvings, to the wood ID which can be cross-referenced with historical accounts of how such woods were used (from timber to medicinal knowledge). The deposit of burials and artefacts in the lake also suggests a deeper symbolism, one befitting such an unusual setting. Several myths collected during the 19th century, a time when an indigenous population was still resident in the area, recount that the lake was a portal through which the deceased returned in the form of birds to visit their descendants. The recurring themes in the legends, of death and the afterlife, give some support to the possibility that the area may have had a spiritual significance, one that may have had a considerable chronological depth spanning many generations. The lake could have had conceptual parallels to caves, used across the Caribbean for burials and the deposit of ritual objects - and as such a fitting area of ceremonial deposit and myth.

The ARHC-funded Artefacts of Excavation project revealed the expansive legacy of British fieldwork in Egypt and its distribution of archaeological finds to around 350 museums, in 27 countries, across 5 continents. No other area of world archaeology has a material legacy on this scale and 'ancient Egypt' remains one of the most popular types of museum exhibit worldwide. Yet that colonial history of dispersal is little known in Egypt itself and Egyptians have largely been disenfranchised from it. In Western museums, Egypt is rarely a specific modern country. If it is, it is generally seen as a place from where objects are taken, rather than a place populated with living communities also engaged and interested in these finds. Little attention has been given to the impact of these colonial legacies on modern Egyptian communities and how they feel about this history today. The removal and export of ancient Egyptian objects from Egypt by foreign archaeological missions, and the continued disenfranchisement of local communities from the production of the country's ancient history, has led to negative perceptions of archaeology and museums hosting Egyptian collections. There is, however, a demonstrable interest and demand in Egypt for better information about how artefacts excavated by foreign countries were exported and where they are now. This impact project is to ensure that Egyptians benefit from our UK-based findings on the dispersal of their heritage, to foster and increase capacity for international dialogue and knowledge exchange about these collections and histories, and to transform and empower Egyptian narratives around them. At the same time we wish to transform awareness in the UK of modern Egyptian interest in its heritage. Our programme of dissemination, cultural events, artistic responses and museum exhibitions - co-developed with community partners - will increase understanding in Egypt about the conditions of export and what happened to artefacts once they had left the country. To achieve this we will translate and make accessible our key findings into Egyptian Arabic and tailor it for specific audiences. These audiences include the Ministry of Antiquities and Ministry of Tourism officials, museum curators, university staff and students, as well as school children, families, the general public and lower economic status communities. Moreover, these activities will provide a more participatory platform for Egyptians themselves to articulate their own thoughts and responses to this history. This will include a professional museum manual published by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) Egypt, press briefings for journalists and specially commissioned education packs for Egyptian schools (through Egyptian charity EducateMe). It will encompass social media activity, through Q&A live sessions, blogs and online comic narratives. Partnerships with Egyptian cultural NGOs, including El Sawy Culture Wheel, Mahatat for Contemporary Art and Tawasol, will allow us co-develop innovative creative responses to reach and enfranchise those audiences that might not traditionally visit museums. These cultural events, in turn, will help to inspire independent Egyptian artists who we will commission to produce small artistic works that can accompany a mobile temporary exhibition that will be designed for easy installation and transport in Egypt and the UK. The latter will challenge assumptions regarding modern Egypt by partnering these Egyptian artists with UK Museums (the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, National Museums Scotland and Liverpool World Museum), which will provide them with the opportunity to travel to the UK to exhibit and share their works.

There are approximately 30 million slaves alive today. Around the world, including in the UK, these disposable people are held against their will, trapped in a situation of control such as a person might control a thing, and forced to work for no pay. This number is more than at any point in history and more people than were transported from Africa to the Western Hemisphere during the entirety of the Atlantic slave trade. It is a number greater than the population of Australia and almost seven times greater than the population of Ireland. It includes around 1.1 million enslaved people in Europe. Over the past 15 years, a growing movement against this new global slavery has achieved many successes, including new legislation, a small number of prosecutions, changes to company supply-chains, and increased public awareness. But it is repeating mistakes of the past. Around the world, it starts from scratch rather than learning from earlier antislavery successes and failures. Focused on urgent liberations and prosecutions, antislavery workers operate within short time frames and rarely draw on the long history of antislavery successes, failures, experiments and strategies. At the same time, the public reads about shocking cases of women enslaved for 30 years in London, children enslaved in rural cannabis factories, and the large number of slaves who mine the conflict minerals used to make our mobile phones and laptops. For many of us, this presence of slavery confounds our understanding of history: wasn't slavery brought to an end? Weren't the slaves emancipated? This confusion extends beyond the public to politicians, policy makers, human rights groups, and educators. Official responses to slavery cases often reflect this confusion, expressing more emotional outrage than clear thinking. However, responding to recently-expressed interest by antislavery groups and policy makers, including the recent appeal by Luis C. DeBaca (Ambassador in the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons) for scholars to translate the lessons of abolitionism for contemporary use, our project seeks to provide this movement with a usable past of antislavery examples and methods. We will bring to the present the important lessons from antislavery movements and policies of the past, and help translate those lessons into effective tools for policy makers, civil society, and citizens. As we identify, theorise and embed antislavery as a protest memory for contemporary abolitionism in this way, we will also emphasise that what earlier antislavery generations achieved was harder than what we face today, we don't have to repeat the mistakes of past movements, the voices of survivors are the best signposts to where we should be going next, and the lessons of past antislavery movements offer a way to 'care for the future'. Throughout the project and across all its strands, we offer in the face of a mammoth task-ending the enslavement of 30 million people-a reminder of past antislavery achievements. For example, on the eve of the American Revolution, few Americans could envision a world in which slavery did not exist. Yet 100 years later, slavery did become illegal in the United States. This was an achievement that stemmed from the collective, varied and ever-evolving protest of countless slaves and abolitionists. Today we have a chance to end slavery, and to do so within our own lifetimes. This will be a watershed for humanity, a moment when we finally reject *the* great lie of history, that some people are sub-human, and embrace instead that great abolitionist truth-the truth that earlier abolitionists tried to teach us-that labour must not be forced and that people are not for sale.