The impact of diasporas: markers of identity INTRODUCTION

In 2010, the Leverhulme Trust made two Research Programme Grant awards to teams working on the ‘Impact of Diasporas’. Eleven projects grouped within the Oxford Diasporas Programme at the University of Oxford have drawn on multiple disciplines to examine themes as diverse as diaspora engagement in war-torn societies, diaspora engagement policies, and stateless diasporas, and have worked in field locations from New Orleans and Kenya, to London and Sri Lanka. In contrast, the work of the research team based at the University of Leicester has concentrated on the impact of diasporas in the distant past on Britain, with a particular emphasis on the first millennia BCE/CE. That interdisciplinary programme brings the skills of historians, archaeologists, linguists, social psychologists, and geneticists to seven distinct projects to challenge disciplinary boundaries and develop a new understanding about the impact of deep time diasporas on the formulation of identities in Britain, past and present.