ACADEMICS at the University of York have been granted funding of more than £3 million for major research projects.

The funding has been granted by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), with £1.5m for research and performances for the Jewish cultural archives, and £1.6m to fund research into future heritage projects.

Doctor Lisa Peschel, a lecturer in the Department of Film, Theatre and Television, and Doctor Nick Barraclough, a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology, are working on the project Performing the Jewish Archive, which will bring recently-discovered works from the 20th Century to public view, with performances at international cultural festivals and at historic sites including Clifford's Tower.

Dr Peschel said: "Many of our artists' careers were cut short and their creations were thought lost due to exile, emigration and the Holocaust. We are delighted to be able to bring their works out of the archives and back into the world of the living."

Professor Sharon Macdonald, anniversary professor of cultural anthropology in the Department of Sociology, will be part of the Assembling Alternative Futures for Heritage team, which will look at the principles by which things become available as potential ‘heritage’ for the future, and how items are decided upon and preserved. The project will work with York Museums Trust, with an exhibition at York's New School House Gallery.

Professor Macdonald said: "I am really excited about this project as it tackles a fundamental sociological question of how people make futures, as well as crucial practical problems facing individuals and museums. Along with our partners in York and elsewhere, this will let us rethink what is meant by ‘heritage’, how it is made and cared for, and how that might be done in the future."