Hindsight Perspectives for a Safer World Project

Project overview

23 April 2021

History & Policy at King’s College London is delighted to be working with the Lloyds Register Foundation on the Hindsight Perspectives for a Safer World project to create a body of reports based on materials in the Foundation’s Heritage Education Centre. We are actively seeking historians interested in participating in the project, which has a wide scope – you may have a specialism in histories of shipping, engineering, energy and environment, safety regulations, innovation or industrial policy to name just a few, and the topics are by their nature global so a wide range of period and location specialisms might be relevant. For further information about project scope and fees for report-writing, please contact alix.mortimer@kcl.ac.uk.

Challenges faced by the shipping and engineering industries today may have informative precedents. Trained historical analysis of the archive material, backed by wider research and specialised knowledge, can explore, for example, how technological change was successfully incorporated into fleets and infrastructure, and how safety regulation kept pace with change (or did not) and what the lessons are for professionals and policy makers today. A network of relevant historians, policy makers and professionals will help us tailor the reports to the requirements of potential stakeholders, ensuring that they combine academic rigour with practical value, and reflect the concerns of the present to inform the future. 

Impact

• There is huge potential for professional, policy and public audiences to learn from the archive as they navigate the challenges of the coming years in the maritime and engineering industry, supported by a detailed research and report writing process managed by professional historians.  

• As the reports take shape, they will generate other outputs and activities such as workshops and blog posts, providing informative nuggets of information in their own right, and also spreading the word about the HEC collection and other archive’s resources and potential. 
• The body of work created by the project will help the Heritage & Education Centre contribute to thought leadership in wider Foundation activities, and in the professional safety space. 
• The global network of professionals, academics and public policy audiences created in the course of the project, and brought together under the banner of the Foundation’s key challenge areas, will outlast the project, and be a valuable resource to its members. 

Project Progress
The project started in March 2021 and initial focus will be on stakeholder mapping, round table events and building the network.

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