Impact case study database

With work on the Genizah Collection at CUL reliant on research funding and philanthropy [E1], the GRU has placed an emphasis on improving the profile of the Cairo Genizah and on educating the public about the relevance of its discoveries. In particular, the GRU has focussed on what the Genizah reveals about the history of the Jewish communities of the medieval Mediterranean and Near East, as something of broad public interest as well as an important – and, until the 20th century, neglected – aspect of Jewish heritage. The success of this approach can be noted through the extensive media coverage of the Cairo Genizah as a significant cultural treasure, the presence of Genizah manuscripts in major public exhibitions – national and international – and through the vastly increased numbers of the public who request to visit and view the collection in CUL [E2]. Moreover, these visitors are now as likely to request to see marriage deeds, children’s exercises or begging letters, as to see ‘the oldest Bible manuscript’. Of particular importance has been the increased interest in learning about the Genizah from the UK’s Jewish community: synagogue groups and Jewish schoolchildren now make up the largest proportion of the Collection’s visitors. The Hasmonean High School, Hendon, for example, has been bringing 200 year 9 students annually for the last four years [E3].

Online engagement

The GRU reaches its different audiences mainly through web-based and public engagement. Educators, in higher and school-age education, are served mostly through the Genizah Collection of Cambridge Digital Library, the Fragment of the Month series (now in its 14th year, with more than 90 short online articles), the bibliographic database, and teaching resources such as the short movies on conserving manuscripts (‘A brush with history’) and medieval medicine (‘Beneficial if God wills’), and the Artefacts of Ancient Judaism teaching site. There have been 29,000 unique users of the Genizah on the Digital Library since 2013, with more than 780,000 page views [E4]. The two movies, produced by CUL as part of the Wellcome-funded project on medicine in the Genizah, have more than 8,000 views on YouTube [E5]. We have received requests from teachers and university lecturers to add further material to the digital collection, as well as add further translations into English to improve its use in teaching. The Princeton Genizah Project and the National Library of Israel’s comprehensive Ktiv digital library are both importing our data.

Exhibitions

Public engagement has been carried out through exhibitions, the media and cultural engagement, and a programme of visits and lectures at CUL. The GRU has advised on the use of Genizah manuscripts in public exhibitions [E6], including ‘One God – Abraham’s legacy on the Nile’ (Berlin, 2015–16; 60,000 estimated visitors) [E8], ‘Egypt: Faith after the Pharaohs’ (British Museum, 2015–16; 66,000 visitors) [E7], and ‘Jews, Money, Myth’ (Jewish Museum, London, 2019; 16,000 visitors) [E8]. Genizah manuscripts featured in CUL’s 600th anniversary exhibition ‘Lines of Thought’ (2016; 48,000 visitors), before, in 2017, they had their own dedicated exhibition, ‘Discarded History: the Genizah of Old Cairo’ (42,000 visitors over 6 months) [E8]. The exhibition was popular with synagogue and Jewish school groups, with daily curator tours and several study days laid on. The success of the exhibition led to an invitation to tour it in the US, and for a show-and-tell of the manuscripts to assembled religious leaders and ambassadors at the Israeli Embassy for their Eid al-Fitr events in 2017.

Media

The GRU has worked closely with radio, TV, authors, and film-makers to promote the Genizah in popular culture. CUL’s Genizah Collection featured prominently in episode 2 (‘Among Believers’, first broadcast September 2013) of Simon Schama’s major BBC series ‘The Story of the Jews’. Uri Rosenwaks’ three-part documentary series on Moses Maimonides, ‘Ha-Nesher ha-Gadol’ (‘The Great Eagle’) used manuscripts and extensive interviews with GRU researchers. It was broadcast on Israeli public television (IPBC) in 2017 (c. 300,000 viewers per episode). The producer of Jay Rayner’s ‘The Kitchen Cabinet’ (BBC Radio 4, 2018) contacted us to advise on a segment about the medieval spice trade. The work of the GRU, with interviews of staff, was the subject of a feature on Swiss public radio (SRF – Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen, November 2019) [E9]. A longterm collaboration with Canada-based film-maker Michelle Paymar culminated in her feature-length documentary ‘From Cairo to the Cloud’ (2018) [E10]. In her testimonial Paymar writes that: Quite simply, without the assistance of Ben Outhwaite and the researchers, scholars, and staff of the Genizah Research Unit, From Cairo to the Cloud - The World of the Cairo Geniza, a feature-length documentary film, could not have been completed.’ Researchers from the GRU were interviewed extensively for the film, and the GRU advised on the script and supplied much of the imagery. The movie has been shown at international film festivals, with its UK premiere at the Cambridge Film Festival 2018, where researchers took part in a live Q&A following the screening [E9]. The GRU has advised several authors on aspects of Genizah history for their novels. Correspondence with Stefan Hertmans helped with the historical background to his international hit ‘De bekeerlinge’ (2014; English version, ‘The Convert’, 2019). We also assisted American author Michael David Lukas for his novel based on the discovery of the Cairo Genizah, ‘The Last Watchman of Old Cairo’, which won the US National Jewish Book Award for Fiction in 2018. And Manchester-based author Henye Meyer’s ‘Who is like your people?’ (2021) is a novel based on the documents of ‘Obadiah the Proselyte’, found in the Genizah Collection. American cookbook doyenne Joan Nathan visited for help on medieval recipes and ingredients from the Genizah for her ‘King Solomon’s Table: a culinary exploration of Jewish Cooking from around the world’ (2017) [E11]. The GRU’s conservation and digitisation work featured – alongside the Dead Sea Scrolls – in a National Geographic cover photo-essay ‘Bible Hunters’ (2018).

Public engagement

Throughout, and especially since the reception of the ‘Discarded History’ exhibition [E6], the GRU has maintained a programme of public visits and lectures to the Collection in CUL. These are advertised on the GRU’s website, and through outreach, and we are approached to host visits by groups of usually 20 or 30 visitors at a time. Visits last for two or three hours and consist of a lecture and Q&A on the Genizah, and a viewing of selected manuscripts. Visitor numbers were 673 in 2017–18, and 968 in 2018–19 [E12]. Visitors are mostly from the UK Jewish community – synagogues, schools and religious leadership – but we have also hosted the Sutton Trust, history students from KCL, UCL and Norwich universities, US and Israeli tour groups, secondary school children and lifelong learners. The success of these engagements can be seen in the number of repeat visitors we have, often bringing different groups of people with them, and the requests to put on special displays of themed material (divorce deeds, to show their diversity, for a recent visit by the senior rabbis of the Federation of Synagogues). The success of these visits can be seen in the communications that we receive afterwards: ‘deeply memorable learning experience’ (Alyth Synagogue); ‘staff members commented on how valuable it was to carry on the link with you’ (Hasmonean High School for Girls); ‘an amazing resource and a spyglass into Jewish history’ (Beis Tefillah Synagogue); ‘everyone who went has phoned me to thank me (a rarity in itself)’ (Finchley Reform Synagogue); ‘thrilling seeing the more everyday documents’ (Reform Rabbi); ‘the best thing about the day’ (Sutton Trust widening participation group); ‘they really have become a major contribution to public education not to mention illumination for academics’ (Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society); ‘it is important for our students to see that their heritage is being researched’ (Hasmonean Multi-Academy Trust) [E3].

Atto and her research partners have addressed the endangerment, vulnerability and fragility of Assyrian and Yazidi communities and cultures by means of innovative digital resources, museum partnerships, documentaries, and by influencing policy. These projects have had significant impact in three interconnected areas, in which Atto has played a strategic role:

1. Preservation of Surayt and development of institutional resources

The Aramaic-Online Project (2014-17) and its follow-up project (2017-20) have highlighted the endangerment of Surayt (the vernacular language of Syriac Christians in the region of Tur Abdin, SE Turkey) and the need to revitalise this language in a worldwide context. A new orthography and grammar [ R1] which are the outcome of three workshops with the involved partners and the International Surayt Conference held at the University of Cambridge (27-30 August 2015), are increasingly being accepted and used by mother tongue teachers, authors and scholars. There has been a pressing need for a standard orthography and grammar because Surayt as a vernacular language has started being used in digital communication, in the church and in state schools, replacing partly the place of classical Syriac Aramaic. The lack of one standardised way of writing Surayt has made it difficult to communicate with this language in writing, which has accelerated also its endangerment especially in a diasporic context.

Online course: The online course is provided in 24 learning units covering all levels of CREF (A1-2, B1-2 and C1 levels) supported with a digital corpus equivalent for C2 level. The course was initially planned to be in English, German, Swedish and Dutch. Arabic, French and Turkish versions were added later. These languages have been carefully selected to reach as many potential learners as possible in the diaspora. For example, in the case of Arabic, many learners are resident in Sweden ( Gozarto familjföreningen) having originally emigrated from North Syria. The project’s influential revitalisation work was acknowledged by one of the leading scholars of this Aramaic language, Prof Otto Jastrow in his expert review report for the Erasmus+ Agency (2017: 6,7): ‘The Aramaic-Online course is a major breakthrough for the preservation of the highly endangered Surayt language. […] As a result there now exists a homogeneous, high quality and up to date tool for the teaching of Surayt which will be of enormous benefit for stabilizing the language under diaspora conditions and will attract younger people to study the language of their forebears.’ [ E1]

Textbook: A printed text version of the online course available in English, German, Swedish and Dutch. Eight hundred copies have been distributed to language teachers, members of the speaker communities and academics. The Södertälje Municipality’s Mother Tongue Unit in Sweden purchased 75 copies for their teachers working in primary and secondary schools. The historical centre for Swedish adult education, Arbetarnas Bildningsförbund and the Gozarto Cultural Association for newly arrived Syrian refugees purchased 20 copies to distribute among their members. Furthermore, 1,000 French copies have been published on the initiative of the Patriarchal Vicar of Belgium, France and Luxembourg [ E2] and distributed freely among the speaker community living in Belgium and France. The textbooks are also available as an open source on the project’s website. To date, the books have been downloaded more than 7,235 times (English 2,502; German 1,346; Swedish 1,105; French 1,209; Arabic 564; Dutch 378). [ E3] The textbooks are also available in English and German on the digital publication platform ISSUU. Recently, three follow-up books have been published: German B level textbook, a reader and a glossary with ca. 12,000 entries.

Learner apps: Two learner apps have been developed to support the online course and empower Surayt with modern IT-tools and programmes. The first lexical app, SuryoyoTalk was released in Dec 2019 on IOS. Within two weeks it entered the ‘Top 5 educational apps’ downloaded in Sweden. [ E4] The Android version and the popular ‘Hangman’ game was released in October 2020. These updates will increase the number of users. The developer, joined the project later and we offered to make our material freely available to him [ E4]. The second learner app Surayt-Online was released in October 2020.

Digital corpus/reader: Atto initiated and coordinated the subproject,’10 Authors, 100 Articles in Surayt’ to develop new learning material in Surayt on modern topics. After training more than 30 people in the use of the developed orthography and grammar for writing Surayt, 15 authors wrote more than 275 articles about different themes in a modern context. 178 of these texts are reviewed and included in a digital corpus. 10 of these articles together with grammatical notes, glossary, and exercises are configured as a Reader, which has been provided online and has been published as an open source. [ E5]

1. Impact and further exploitation

A significant outcome of these projects is that the diaspora speaker communities have come to value Surayt more highly as a language and it is being revitalized in its use in everyday life. Classical Syriac Aramaic has been perceived as a sacred ‘high’ language because of its use within the Syriac Orthodox church, whereas Surayt has had a subordinate position, which had been one of the key reasons it was endangered. As a result of Atto’s projects, many stakeholders (teachers, authors, clerics etc.), who had wanted to protect the status-quo around the promotion of classical Syriac, now see the importance of the survival of the Surayt language. This shift has been evidenced in the following ways [ E6]:

• Surayt has been included as an elective course (15 ECTS) in the Master course in Semitics ( Neo-Aramaistik) at the Freie Universität Berlin.

• Sami Dik (Germany) who was trained by the project is now teaching 30 children in a church school and 170 children in 12 German state schools.

• Odom Hanno (Turkey) who was also trained by the project has started teaching a distance language course in Surayt at Mardin Artuklu University in Turkey. In Spring 2020 13 students enrolled to the course.

• In Sweden around 95% of the teachers who once only taught Syriac now teach Surayt instead. Many teachers in Sweden were trained by the project team in Aug and Oct 2016 and now follow the project’s orthography.

• Gabriel Aslan, the head of the Syriac Orthodox Church board in the Netherlands, has taught Surayt in the Twente province since 2018, replacing the teaching of Syriac. Aslan follows the standard orthography and methodology developed by our project. This concerns the teaching of 500 children in the church schools in the Twente region.

• Benjamin Barthoma (teacher, assistant principal in the Municipality of Jönköping, Sweden) has started on his own initiative a Saturday school for teaching Surayt to young adults, making use of the Swedish version of our Textbook; 10 people attended the second class.

• Several new books have been written in Surayt, as well as translations of books in other languages, using the project’s orthography and grammar. They include: “Alice in Wonderland” translated by Jan Bet Sawoce (2015), “Music Heritage of Mesopotamia” (Assyrische Jugendverband Mitteleuropa, 2016), two series of children’s books (5) for the age group 0-7 (by Helane Numansen-Mutlu, Bar Hebreaus Verlag, 2019 and 2020).

• The changing role of Surayt and its embrace by the speaker communities have also affected the use of Surayt in the liturgy of the Syriac Orthodox Church (to which 99 % of Surayt-speakers belong). In his testimony, Archbishop Polycarpus Augin Aydin of the Syriac Orthodox Church in the Netherlands writes: ‘… the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, in the Western European Diaspora, is now using about 60 per cent Surayt and 40 per cent classical Syriac in her liturgy.’ [ E7] This can be seen as a ‘silent reformation’.

1. Empowering refugees

The Gilgamesh project has created a space for the stories of vulnerable refugees to be heard by a broad audience. Atto coordinated and curated the art exhibition ‘Untold | Unheard | Vulnerable | Refugees’ hosted by the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden (19 May - 21 Dec 2018). Twelve Assyrian and Yazidi artists displayed their artwork depicting the suffering of their people in the Middle East. Museum staff reported that ‘the exhibition had an effect on our visitors, coming from the very powerful content. Museum staff overheard comments from visitors like; “very strong”, “difficult/hard” and “touching”. Unfortunately, the visitors notebook was torn apart and the content has disappeared. The technical producer of the museum wrote that: ‘…the feeling is that it was deliberately torn apart and the notes from the audience has disappeared, sadly. Only the cover of the notebook is left and the perpetrator has written “fack” and crossed over “Untold” in the title [ E8].

Atto and her colleagues have also produced the documentary film Pomegranate: Voices of Sinjar based on the testimonies of three female victims of the genocide perpetrated by ISIS in 2014, which was shown as part of the museum exhibition (19 May-31 Dec 2018), at the annual commemoration of the Yazidi genocide in Sweden (Arlöv, 3 August) and in the Festival of Ideas in Cambridge (20 Oct 2018). One viewer in Cambridge donated £1000 to the NGO Yezidi Emergency Support (UK) as a result of seeing the film [ E9]. Another wrote in her testimony: 'The documentary made me realise that academic learning should be about understanding what it is to be both human and inhuman, and hopefully this world will be repelled by evil and look for good [ E9].’ Fareeda Khalaf, an ISIS survivor from the same village as the two women who appeared in the documentary, stated after viewing the documentary in Gothenburg that the documentary told her story as it is and that nothing should be edited. Another Yazidi woman activist and director of YAZDA Sweden, Delkhwaz Haciy said in the discussion session after the viewing that so far this is the documentary that has affected her the most of all the many documentaries that she has seen about the Yazidi genocide [ E9].

One of the Yazidi women that Atto interviewed for her research, Faheema Saleh, asked Atto to write an expert letter in support of her asylum application in the UK, which had been rejected several times, despite the fact that she is one of the victims of the 2014 Yazidi genocide. For her Upper-Tribunal case, Atto wrote an expert letter to the immigration tribunal (28 April 2019) based on her earlier research to support Ms Saleh in her asylum application in the UK. In May 2019, Ms Saleh was finally granted asylum. In her testimony, Ms Saleh wrote: ‘Your letter helped me because it was a proof of my words, and also your explanation of the problems of minorities in the Middle East was understandable to the judge and she believed what you wrote because this was a part of your job’ [ E10]. Another Yazidi refugee Majhor Hagi revealed that judge C. E. Roblin gave weight to Atto’s witness in her decision to grant Mr Hagi asylum in the UK: ‘Although miss Atto has not visited the area again, I found her a persuasive witness who expressed the view that if the Appellant returned to Iraq the Appellant would be imprisoned for his ideas. He would also be at risk of being targeted by Islamists whose aim is the disappearance of Yazidi culture. I accept her witness.’ [E10]. Mr Hagi was subsequently granted asylum in the UK.

Suleman’s research in the field of ‘Islam and Bioethics’ has been impactful in terms of capacity building, shaping practice and influencing policy in relation to the training needs of professionals, and in improving the healthcare access needs of minority faith and cultural groups.

1) Muslim Perspectives on ELC – capacity building, shaping practice and influencing policy

Capacity building: Suleman’s research on stakeholder experiences and perspectives on ELC has revealed a knowledge and training gap amongst healthcare professionals about the experiences and needs of minority faith groups. In response, she has worked closely with beneficiaries to design and deliver relevant training and education resources. Through knowledge exchange workshops, a validated casebook and national, regional and local training days, her research has been disseminated widely to hundreds of UK healthcare and religious professionals and academics. The co-production of these resources has allowed both stakeholders and beneficiaries to be involved, and has been central in ensuring their relevance and impact. Stakeholders, such as NHS Blood and Transplant, the Royal Free Hospital, London, and hospices across the UK, have regularly approached Suleman with requests for training and resources. Participants of the training noted that: ‘Work with Dr Suleman is influential in our understanding of how we can meet the needs of families from a Muslim background, not only to support best end of life care for their loved ones, but to understand how we can support more organ donation decisions … needed for the wider community.’ ( [E1] Testimonial from NHS Blood and Transplant training lead). ‘As a hospital chaplain it is crucial to have as wide as possible an understanding of people from different background … I now have more confidence to support our Muslim patients and will be looking to further resources to grow in my understanding’ (Hospital Chaplain) [E2]. ‘After attending the conference on Palliative and ELC for Muslim patients, it gave me new food for thought. With an innocent ignorance and limited knowledge of the Muslim faith, it encouraged me to consider if some of the barriers that are faced when trying to provide end of life care are often unintentionally based on White British

beliefs and values, and not always understanding that what could be considered as a barrier to accepting is rather more of a cultural/religious belief’ (Palliative Care Nurse). [E3].

Beneficiaries of the research have been encouraged to hold conversations about ‘ELC decision making’ and to initiate difficult conversations and challenging cultural norms, to enable end of life decision-making to occur earlier, rather than at a time of crisis.

Shaping practice: Stakeholders attending knowledge exchange workshops and a national training day organised and delivered by Suleman, have benefited through the establishment of new collaborative partnerships leading to the design and delivery of locally adapted resources and training. Beneficiaries have described significant changes to their practices, including local policies on burial support. ‘The series of meetings and training that I have been fortunate enough to attend regarding end of life care, led by Dr. Mehrunisha Suleman, have had a significant positive impact on the outcomes that we are producing. The 'burial support' document for Muslims will now have a more detailed end of life care addition, addressing wills, organ transplantation and where care can be delivered. … Some of these discussions have historically been either treated as taboos or have been surrounded by misinformation, leading to confusion and poor decision making, both at home and in hospital settings. The document will serve to clarify issues and support informed decision making for clinicians, care providers, families and chaplains’ (Practice Manager) [E2].

Furthermore, Suleman’s findings documenting the anxieties faced by healthcare professionals when meeting the needs of Muslim patients and families, has resulted in the co-production of resources and training, providing beneficiaries with increased confidence in supporting Muslim patients and families. Thus, her research has underpinned significant changes in practice that have been of value to healthcare professionals, increasing cultural awareness and wellbeing in terms of providing much needed training and educational resources. A Senior Palliative Care Nurse who has attended training and casebook expert workshops notes that, ‘I have learned that personalised care for communities is not about a tick list but about respect and human understanding. I look forward to continued relationships.’ [E2].

Another attendee writes, ‘… I have very superficial, and at times stereotypical, knowledge of Muslim beliefs and practices. The event was super informative in that respect. ... I won’t feel as if there is some huge gap of perceptions and beliefs I can never cross. I also realised that I will most happily talk to an imam, and until now I’ve never felt I am, in fact, allowed to approach them’ [E2].

A registrar who attended a Cultural Diversity at the End of Life workshop added that Suleman’s *‘research gave us an excellent insight into the reasoning behind the wishes and priorities of our Muslim patients. We were also able to learn about their experiences and the importance of involving local chaplains, local religious leaders and the community in helping us bridge the gap between the secular medical world and the religious Muslim world.’ [E4]**.

Influencing policy: Recommendations made by Suleman at a policy workshop organised by the Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS) led to a dedicated section on ‘Engaging communities and faith groups’ in their ‘End of life and palliative care: the policy landscape’ report (2019). The AMS acknowledged Suleman’s advice on the need for culturally competent palliative and ELC, and the requirement for more research to understand the needs of minority faith and ethnic groups in the UK. The AMS report states that:

‘Dr Suleman drew attention to the fact that when [discussions about] end of life care ... encounters minority perspectives, the result could be a mismatch in values. While there has been very little work done so far on minority perspectives, Dr Suleman suggested ways in which this could be improved. For example, the gathering of thousands of people in the Muslim community for Friday prayers can be used as a bridge between the health care infrastructure and the community. The presence of ‘trusted people in trusted places’ can help starting and sustaining discussions, so the needs of these populations can be understood and met.’ [E5, p.11].

In 2019, increasing recognition of Suleman’s research, led to an invitation from Michelle Ballantyne (MSP Member for South Scotland) to deliver a presentation on “Muslim perspectives on end of life care” at the Scottish Parliament, as part of a cross-party group on “End of Life Choices” [E6]. Such engagement and dissemination activities have been key to increasing cultural awareness amongst policy makers, lobby groups and key stakeholders about the access challenges faced by Muslim patients and families with ELC needs.

Suleman’s research findings have been key in establishing a collaboration between the Cambridge Centre for Islamic Studies (CIS) and the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), through which she authored a report on elderly and End of Life Care needs in the Muslim community in the UK [R2]. The novel community-academic partnership has underpinned the MCB’s approach to the authoring and dissemination of the report. In an email, the MCB notes that Suleman ‘ was a pivotal member of the project team in ensuring the quality and comprehensiveness in what was the first study of its kind conducted by the Muslim community, for the Muslim community. Her End of Life Care (EOLC) research findings included in the report have been important in setting an agenda for both health professionals and the Muslim voluntary sector, with respect to training needs and chaplaincy priorities.’ [E7].

2) Wider expertise and engagement on Islam and Bioethics

As one of few global experts on Islam and Bioethics, in 2019, Suleman was invited to join the Nuffield Council on Bioethics as a council member, where she has made a significant contribution to Council’s work on ‘Research in Global Health Emergencies’, the “Ageing” and “Gender Identity” working groups, as well as informing the Council’s future strategy and public engagement [E8].

Suleman has also co-authored a chapter on Islamic perspectives on emerging genomic technologies, in a pioneering book on Islamic ethics and genomics. Her research on ELC has also been incorporated into publications on ‘Conscientious Objection’ for the Encyclopaedia of Islamic bioethics, as well as the Atlantic Council’s report on ‘Islam and human rights’ (p. 3, 44, 49) [E9].

The international recognition of Suleman’s work is illustrated by her having been invited to collaborate and present her work at international programmes on palliative care and ELC, including Georgetown University in Qatar and The University of Chicago. The latter led to Suleman authoring a chapter based on ELC research, which has contributed to a key book publication on ‘Islam and Biomedicine’. She has also been appointed to UNESCO’s Ethics Teacher Training Course (ETTC) where she has ‘played a key role’ towards capacity building in Malaysia, Indonesia and New Zealand [E10].

In summary, the extensive uptake of Suleman’s research and expertise, by policy makers, third sector organisations, the healthcare sector, as well as academia and the wider public, highlights the relevance of understanding the relationship between Islam and Bioethics. Her commitment to this nascent field of research, sensitive collaborative working and understanding the needs of a diverse group of stakeholders is stimulating much needed capacity building, cultural awareness and implications for policy and practice.