In March 2019 we launched the Historic Royal Palaces Research Institute to provide a community network for staff undertaking research across the organisation and provide a platform for our academic projects, programmes and partnerships. The research we do at Historic Royal Palaces underpins everything about who we are and what we do.
Our vision is to bring to life our palaces, their collections, landscapes and communities by exploring new perspectives and techniques and developing innovative engagement methodologies.
We have developed a number of priority research areas to support our work as an Independent Research Organisation and our collaborative research partnerships:
World-famous as a royal fortress and prison, the Tower of London is also one of the most substantial standing remains of medieval England’s Jewish history.
From the mid-twelfth century to the expulsion of the Anglo-Jewry in 1290, the Tower was both a place of imprisonment and of refuge for hundreds of Jews.
This two-year project explores the Tower’s central place in this complex story of coercion and coexistence.
Jewish HistoryThis one-year research network will assess the characteristics, iconography and material culture associated with Tudor royal progresses and in particular those of Henry VIII.
Henry VIII on tourPortable Palaces explores the tent as an important and ubiquitous expression of architecture through a study of the design of the royal tents and associated temporary buildings that were created for the sixteenth-century English court.
Portable PalacesThis one-year research network will examine Queen Victoria's role in the fashioning of her own image, and the consequences of this for monarchy, nation, and empire from the nineteenth century to the present.
Victoria's Self-Fashioning'Lest we forget' explores the ways in which the public commemorated the First World War through a case study of ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’- an art installation of over 800,000 ceramic poppies, planted in the Tower of London moat in 2014.
Lest We ForgetStudy and research Heritage Management, guided by experts at Historic Royal Palaces and Queen Mary University of London.
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