Broodbank, Professor Cyprian
Professor of Mediterranean Archaeology (as from October 2010), University College London, Institute of Archaeology
Archaeology / Prehistoric Archaeology
The Making of the Middle Sea: A Prehistory of the Mediterranean from Palaeolithic to Iron Age (completion of major book-writing project)
Award value (80% FEC): £55,781
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 6 months
The Mediterranean is one of the most dynamic cockpits of world history from the remotest past until the present, with an impact on global culture far beyond its size. It is also a place where the past is highly relevant to issues of pressing wider concern today. Despite much academic and popular investigation of its history from Classical times onward, there remains no modern overarching, interpretative synthesis of the preceding, formative millennia during which almost all the key elements of Mediterranean life (seafaring, towns, agriculture, as well as common cultural and technological practices) came into existence and began to coalesce. Moreover, such studies as do exist seldom integrate the north African and Levantine flanks with the European, to create a fresh focus around the central sea. I have been researching and writing such a book for a mixed academic and popular audience over the past several years, and the aim of this application is to enable me to complete, up to publication readiness, the major landmark research project of the middle phase of my career.
Burchardt, Dr Tania
Senior Lecturer, London School of Economics, Department of Social Policy
Sociology / Social Policy and Administration
Multi-dimensional indicators of inequality in receipt of care services: measurement and communication[LQS]
Award value (80% FEC): £55,830
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 12 months
The Fellowship will release my time to pursue research using quantitative methods, with a view to developing more effective tools for communicating complex results to a range of audiences. For the first part, I will use Sen's capability approach to assess inequalities in the experiences of disabled people who need assistance with activities of daily living, drawing on newly-available data on outcomes, perceived discrimination, and choice and control from the Lifetime Opportunities Survey (a flagship disability survey run by DWP). In the second part, I will explore how multi-dimensional indicators of inequality, such as those developed in part 1, can most effectively be presented and communicated to non-specialists. This will entail developing a range of static, moving and interactive graphical representations of the results and 'road-testing' them with journalists, voluntary sector organisations, policy civil servants and members of the general public. Outputs will include at least one academic journal article and a website offering practical guidance.
Cameron, Dr Ross
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Leeds, Philosophy
Philosophy / Metaphysics
The Metaphysics of Time
Award value (80% FEC): £76,782
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 12 months
I propose to write three papers exploring the nature of time. The first concerns the apparent conflict between the claim that the present is objectively privileged and Einstein’s claim that simultaneity is relative to a frame of reference. I will argue that there is no conflict. The second will develop the thesis that the future is open in contrast to the fixed past: I will defend the view that it is metaphysically indeterminate how things will be against rival accounts of openness. The final paper will examine McTaggart’s paradox that time is unreal and the argument that things cannot survive change across time. I will argue that these puzzles are of a kind and must have a common solution: namely, that only the present is real. I will communicate my results to philosophers by publishing these papers in peer-reviewed journals, and to the wider community by incorporating the results into the syllabus of my advanced metaphysics undergraduate class, and by producing a series of talks aimed at older schoolchildren to encourage them to pursue higher education.
Cole, Dr Tim
Senior Lecturer in Social History, University of Bristol, History, School of Humanities
History / Modern History
Holocaust Landscapes
Award value (80% FEC): £93,617
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 12 months
This research project journeys through the varied European landscapes where the Holocaust was implemented, experienced, resisted and - in the post-war world - remembered and forgotten. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, a number of key research questions drive analysis of landscapes that range from forests to camps, rivers to roads and railways to attics. Firstly, how were these places created/reshaped/utilized/ destroyed by the Nazi and collaborator states? Secondly, how did victims (and bystanders) “read”, experience and use these olfactory, aural, visual and sensory landscapes, and carve out alternate spaces within Holocaust landscapes? Thirdly, how have these landscapes been commemorated/erased/resurrected/ recycled/redistributed in the post-war world? The research will be disseminated through both academic outputs (journal articles, book chapters and ultimately a monograph) as well as seminars and lectures to teachers (both in Higher Education and schools) and the public. In addition, a TV documentary proposal will be developed for consideration for commissioning.
Dean, Dr Deborah
Associate Professor in Industrial Relations, University of Warwick, Warwick Business School
Sociology / Sociology of other, e.g. work, media etc
Performing Ourselves. What Working As An Actor Tells Us About Society
Award value (80% FEC): £93,437
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 12 months
Professional actors are paid to represent us to ourselves and we are simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar with them as workers. This project explores actors’ working realities to understand advantage and disadvantage in wider society. Centrally, despite all performers doing the same work using the same skills, they are allocated work in highly segmented labour markets based on society’s attribution of meaning and value to age, gender, race/ethnicity, disability and sexuality. This enables exploration of broader issues, including ageing populations of industrialised economies; related concerns around disability and gender; race/ethnicity divisions; the regulation of these issues. The project draws on an interdisciplinary framework to explore unique empirical research in the UK, US, and continental Europe, which reveals strikingly similar outcomes across very different national contexts and societal conceptions as both persistent and changing. This enables new theoretical insight into why particular meanings and values are attributed to these workers, who act as society’s proxies.
Distaso, Professor Walter
Professor of Financial Econometrics, Imperial College London, Imperial College Business School
Economics / Econometrics
Risk management implications of weather-related extreme events
Award value (80% FEC): £108,444
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 8 months
This research will examine how extreme climatic risks affect the functionality of (re)insurance markets. I will characterize the existence of nondiversification traps due to fat-tailed distributions, allowing for extreme events to cluster and switch between regimes of different intensity. I will highlight the features introduced by heavy-tailed risk for different types of insurance coverage, and the role of regulation and government incentives in ensuring that welfare gains can be achieved through coordination efforts. The project will build on these results to determine the optimal design of insurance contracts in terms of cost-effectiveness, insurability, capacity, and ex-post financing. Therefore, it will develop and promote fundamental market innovations in risk sharing arrangements, allowing (re)insurance markets to function efficiently. Finally, the project will highlight the most relevant industry, policy, and regulatory implications of the research activity, to ensure that the key innovations proposed become integral part of insurers' agenda and climate-change policies.
Fisher, Dr Kate
Senior Lecturer in History, University of Exeter, History
History / History of Science
Sexual Knowledge: Uses of the Past
Award value (80% FEC): £86,482
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 12 months
This project pioneers a new direction for the history of sexuality. Interrogating the peculiar Western fascination with the sexual customs of past cultures, it will be the first study of the ways history has been marshalled to challenge beliefs, to sustain sexual identities, to support sexual reform, or to reinforce claims about universal desires. Two strands will produce two separate sets of outputs. A monograph will explore uses of the past in sexological constructions of knowledge at the beginning of the twentieth century, when historical evidence was central to sexologists’ methodologies and critical in substantiating their authority. Second, a public engagement scheme invites young people to consider how the past may help them make sense of their sexual identities. Exhibitions, events and schools programmes will draw upon “erotic objects” in exploring the relationship between ourselves and past cultures. Updating sexologists’ questions, young people will use these objects in debating sexual issues, improving access to informative and empowering material on sex and sexuality.
Fraiture, Dr Pierre-Philippe
Reader in French, University of Warwick, Department of French Studies
Modern Languages / Intellectual History (Modern Languages)
VY Mudimbe: past and present Africa
Award value (80% FEC): £64,897
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 8 months
This project will involve the completion of a monograph and the organisation of a conference. The book will chart the intellectual history of the seminal Congolese thinker VY Mudimbe from the late 1960s to the present day. This journey from Lubumbashi to Nanterre, and Duke University, will trace Mudimbe’s trajectory against major debates on decolonisation and postcolonial representations. This exploration of the context in which Mudimbe’s thought has unfolded will underscore the discursive strategies that he has developed to recover the basis underlying the representations of past and present Africa. The book will show that Mudimbe’s life is informed by a series of decisive dialogues with some of the key exponents of continental philosophy and African thought. Although other members of the public such as journalists and politicians will be invited to take part, the conference will be predominantly aimed at an audience of sixth-formers from the Coventry area. This event will seek to explore Mudimbe's thought and show its relevance to our undestanding of past and contemporary Africa.
Franklin, Dr Michael
Senior Lecturer, Swansea University, English
English Language and Literature / Colonial and postcolonial literature
Pluralism and the Multicultural Heritage of Maurya and Mughal India: the Contribution of Warren Hastings’s Orientalist RegimeAward value (80% FEC): £74,987
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 9 months
This investigates the literary and politico-religio-cultural aspects of Warren Hastings’ Orientalist regime. Following the pluralistic tolerance of Maurya King Ashoka (273-232 BCE) and Mughal emperor Akbar (1556-1605), he “found[s] the authority of the British Government in Bengal on its ancient laws”, stressing syncretism in both Hindu and Muslim traditions. He expounds the political rationale of Orientalism in Wilkins’ “sublime” Bhagvat-Geeta (1785). Hastings patronizes Indo-Persian poets; establishes a Calcutta Madrasah; writes an Oriental tale from a Mahabharata source, and commissions Gladwin to translate Akbar’s “Institutes” for insights into multicultural governance. Launching the Asiatic Society, William Jones offers his research as a “Nezr” (ceremonial gift). Sanskritist Wilkins reciprocates with a Hafiz ghazal (ode), symbolizing the Sufi concept of suhl-i kul (peace with all). I shall research the regime’s use of Sufi mysticism and Hindu Vedantism, quietist and potentially syncretist, to foster the interculturalism of Dara Shikuh’s “Mingling of the Two Oceans” of Hinduism and Islam.
Gathercole, Dr Simon James
Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Divinity
Religious Studies / New Testament
The Gospel of Thomas: Introduction, Translation and Commentary
Award value (80% FEC): £94,091
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 12 months
This project is a commentary, with introduction and translation, on the Gospel according to Thomas, a work extant in Coptic, and in Greek fragments. The commentary will be published by Brill, and builds on a monograph to be published in 2012 by CUP (The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas). The project will challenge a growing consensus on Thomas in three areas. (1) It aims to show a unity of religious outlook to the work, denied by those who consider Thomas to have grown gradually over about a century. (2) The few commentaries on Thomas are almost exclusively concerned with the clearly important relationship of Thomas’s Jesus tradition to that of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Since this has been treated in my CUP monograph, the commentary will be free to concentrate on its principal concerns of philology and religious outlook. (3) The commentary seeks to elucidate Thomas against the background neither of the mid-late first century, as in the recent commentary of DeConick, nor as in the recent monograph by Perrin of the end of the second century, but rather of the early-mid second century.
Graeber, Dr David
Reader in Social Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London, Anthropology
Anthropology / Historical Anthropology
Culture as Creative Refusal: A New Anthropological Approach to World History
Award value (80% FEC): £100,530
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 12 months
What if what we think of as "cultures" are really social movements that were successful in achieving at least some of their aims? This programme of research is inspired by newly emerging approaches to world historical process which suggest that much of what we are used to considering as innate cultural traits are really the result of a constant political dialectic of innovation, rebellion, and refusal. It intends to finally break through the tacit evolutionism that still pervades our thinking, to demonstrate that most of what we still see as "primordial" (biblical patriarchy, Native American individualist spirituality, "heroic" orders, or for that matter, most existing egalitarian social orders) to be self-conscious rejections of and reactions to the values of nearby or earlier urban civilizations. This suggests a new way to envision the dialectics of world historical process, as one of movements and counter-movements; an approach I will then test with a particular study of the culture history of Madagascar, long viewed as a test-case in such questions.
Hobbs, Dr Richard
Curator, Romano-British Collections, The British Museum, Prehistory & Europe
Archaeology / Classical art and archaeology
The Mildenhall Treasure Project
Award value (80% FEC): £71,870
Award Start Date: 20 December 2011, 12 months
The Mildenhall Treasure, a huge hoard of Roman silver vessels of the fourth century AD, found at Mildenhall, Suffolk in 1942, is one of the most iconic discoveries from Roman Britain. Despite its importance the hoard remains inadequately researched and published. This research will re-examine the significance of the treasure to our understanding of late Roman Britain and the wider world of late Antiquity, by looking at a number of key aspects: manufacture, iconography, inscriptions and graffiti, the origins and ownership of the treasure and what it tells us about East Anglia at the beginning of the fifth century AD (the “end” of Roman Britain) and the wider context of discoveries of Roman silver from many parts of the Empire. The proposal is to research a printed monograph which examines all the main aspects of the hoard; an on-line British Museum research catalogue; a short introduction to Mildenhall aimed at the general reader; and to disseminate results of the research through other media such as refreshed gallery display, lectures and a one-day seminar.
Holloway, Professor Sarah
Professor of Human Geography, Loughborough University, Geography
Geography / Social Geography
Geographies of education and the significance of children, youth and families [LQS]
Award value (80% FEC): £101,813
Award Start Date: 1 January 2012,12 months
The retrenchment and renewal of the welfare state under the previous Labour and current Coalition Governments is changing the role of schooling in England. Workfare initiatives which insist that parents seek work to support their children have stimulated growth in school-based childcare. Other policies which seek to redress disadvantage and ensure social cohesion through spending on education (e.g. Extended Services, Pupil Premium) also add to schools’ responsibilities by emphasising child enrichment and parenting support. This Fellowship draws on recent research with headteachers, parents and children from diverse socio-economic backgrounds to explore their attitudes to schools’ new role in providing wraparound childcare (breakfast/after school clubs), child enrichment (clubs/activities) and parenting support (parenting classes, family learning). The results will inform: academic debate in Geographies of Education; policy development in fiscally-tight times through engagement with local/national government and education practitioners; and public engagement via the media.
Ingram, Dr Alan
Lecturer in Geography, University College London, Department of Geography
Geography / Cultural Geography
Art and war: an exploration of British and Iraqi responses
Award value (80% FEC): £101,232
Award Start Date: 26 September 2011, 12 months
This project will explore the responses of British and Iraqi artists to the invasion and occupation of Iraq since 2003. Building on previous success in research with artists and curators working on the Iraq war, the project will explore the kinds of art works that have been produced, the ways in which they have been exhibited and the wider implications of this for public understanding of war in the UK. Located in cultural and political geography, the project will also engage with growing interest within art history, theory and practice with questions of war, space and place. The research is timely in that the outputs of the project will be delivered around the tenth anniversary of the 2003 invasion. Building on my existing research experience in this field and working with public engagement professionals at UCL (a RCUK and HEFCE-funded Beacon for Public Engagement), the project will create a platform for wider discussions of art and war through a consideration of cultural and political geography.
Jenkins, Dr Andrew
Senior Research Officer, Institute of Education, University of London, Department of Quantitative Social Science
Education / Lifelong Learning
Educational Trajectories and Wellbeing: A Lifecourse Perspective [LQS]
Award value (80% FEC): £83,142
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 12 months
Continuing adult participation in learning is of great interest in contemporary society. It is important for people to keep their skills up-to-date if they, and the economy as a whole, are to prosper. Engagement in learning may also have substantial benefits for personal wellbeing. This project will use a large sample of individuals, all born in 1958, who have been surveyed at numerous times during their lives, to track the extent to which people undertake learning at different phases of their lifecourse from age 16 to age 50. Types of learning will include obtaining qualifications, vocational training and learning for pleasure. It will investigate whether the type, and amount, of learning has an impact on overall wellbeing as people reach the age of 50. The major innovative features of the proposal are, firstly, the analysis of participation in learning over a substantial part of the adult lifecourse and, secondly, making connections between long-term learning participation and the wellbeing of the individual.
Kariyawasam, Professor Rohan
Professor of Commercial Law, Cardiff University, Law
Law / Commercial and Company Law
Market Competition, Net Neutrality, and Privacy: A New Layering Theory
Award value (80% FEC): £109,269
Award Start Date: 30 September 2011, 12 months
Two of the most current important developments in internet architecture--and that will have significant implications for digital trade--are the migration of legacy internet networks to a new breed of Next Generation Networks (NGNs), and the exhaustion of current internet addresses. The single most important driver of change is the convergence of the network, with an integrated Internet Protocol (IP)-based NGN delivering a combination of data, voice and video. This migration to NGN makes it possible for different underlying platforms (for example, fixed telecommunications and cable television) to offer equivalent services, that have the potential to benefit competition, but simultaneously enable offers of multiple services to the end-user that could give rise to new anticompetitive concerns. To address these concerns, the applicant has developed a draft theory (Layering Theory) to more accurately define a relevant market in the Internet sector. Accurate market definition is central to any competition investigation and the theory will assist regulators in assessing NGNs.
Kosowski, Dr Robert
Assistant Professor in Finance, Imperial College London, Imperial College Business School
Economics / Financial Economics
Distinguishing Risk Taking from Skill in Levered Financial Institutions
Award value (80% FEC): £108,079
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 9 months
The main objective of this research project is to develop a set of innovative tools to monitor and predict systematic risk in levered financial institutions (LFIs). Existing approaches to systemic risk and macro-prudential supervision fail to properly distinguish skill from excessive risk appetite when interpreting levered financial institutions' performance. We develop and apply a comprehensive structural approach to the objective of the risk taker to better measure and predict the performance of levered financial institutions with complex incentive contracts. The empirical application of the structural model allows us to use previously unexploited information in higher order moments of portfolio returns (or performance volatility) in a novel way to draw inference about a levered financial institution’s true skill and risk appetite. Intuitively, evidence of high levels of leverage at a time of unchanged skill levels but increasing risk appetite, may serve as a superior indicator of systemic risk than leverage levels on their own.
Lawson, Dr Tom
Reader in History, University of Winchester, History
History / Modern History
“The Last Man”: Britain and Genocide in Tasmania, a study in history and memory
Award value (80% FEC): £87,614
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 12 months
This proposal is to carry out final research and write a short book on the relationship between British state, society and culture and the destruction of the Indigenous community in Tasmania. When the British first invaded there was a population of somewhere between 2 and 7000 people. The settlers launched an explicit campaign against these people in the 1820s, and subsequently sought to remove the survivors to an outlying island. In 1876 the 'last' Tasmanian died to much fanfare in the British press. This genocide was widely discussed in British culture over the next century - it was a persistent feature of nascent anthropological science, and laments for the lost Tasmanians were a common theme in literary and museum culture including in children's fiction. This project aims to understand the British contribution to this destruction and asks how it has been remembered and memorialised, a history which it traces through to the present. Ultimately the project asks what this episode can tell us about the role of genocide in the history and memory of the British Empire.
Matthews, Dr Samantha
Senior Lecturer, University of Bristol, Department of English in the School of Humanities
English Language and Literature / History of the Book (English)
The Album Poem and Nineteenth-Century Manuscript Culture
Award value (80% FEC): £87,719
Award Start Date: 1 January 2012, 12 months
This project challenges the standard model of the nineteenth century as the age of mass print media by examining the popular revival in domestic manuscript circulation of creative work, through the case of the album poem, an overlooked genre of occasional lyric poetry not destined for print. Based on a textual corpus derived from archival and database sources, the project develops an interpretive model drawn from theories of scribal publication, creative composition and French critique génétique. Case studies of specific authors, albums and readerships demonstrate the album poem’s significance for revisionary perspectives on identity, gender and power relations. A monograph and two articles disseminate the findings to a scholarly audience; the establishment of an international scholarly network and inaugural study day promotes the importance of this emerging research area; a public lecture and archive-centred workshop promote the work to a wider audience. A later public exhibition and website compare contemporary social networking to textual transmission within album culture.
McCloy, Dr Rachel
Lecturer in Psychology, University of Reading, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences
Psychology / Social Psychology and Organisational Psychology
Behavioural Science for Public Policy
Award value (80% FEC): £91,945
Award Start Date: 1 January 2012, 12 months
The proposed fellowship is designed to raise the profile of behavioural sciences in national and local policy contexts. The project will initially involve a review of current applications of behavioural science to policy. This will be carried out via a review of the existing Government and academic literature, and a series of interviews with key stakeholders in government and academia. This work will then be used to produce a set of resources (report, seminars) tailored to policy-makers. By doing so, a hope is to brand the policy relevance of behavioural science more consistently so as to strengthen its position in the policy arena. The report will take the form of a brief practical guide on behavioural science for policy that will be written to be understandable by a general audience. The seminar series will be themed around applications of behavioural science to key areas of policy, bringing together policy makers and relevant academics. Over the course of the fellowship, an introductory text on Behavioural Science for Public Policy will also be produced.
Megoran, Dr Nick
Lecturer in Human Geography, Newcastle University, Geography, Politics and Sociology
Geography / Political and Electoral Geography
“Gray space” in Osh: understanding Uzbek minority responses to inter-ethnic violence
Award value (80% FEC): £61,836
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 12 months
In June 2010 hundreds of people were killed and thousands of properties damaged in Uzbek-Kyrgyz violence in the Kyrgyzstani border city of Osh. This project uses the work of critical urban theorist/political geographer Oren Yiftachel to understand the treatment of the Uzbek minority since the initial violence and ascertain their emerging strategies for sustaining viable futures. In so doing the research will critically rework his approach to advance theoretical understandings of the role of space in nationalist urban violence globally, and propose alternative practical policy interventions in Osh. A comprehensive dissemination strategy will convey findings and policy recommendations to British, international, and local agencies who are currently funding a range of post-conflict interventions in the city. This project is therefore positioned to advance an exciting new direction of geographical scholarship, and to make an important contribution to both reconstruction in the city and to wider UK/international aid practices.
Metcalfe, Dr Alexander
Senior Lecturer in History, Lancaster University, Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
History / Medieval History - History
Arabic Documents of Norman Sicily: The Monreale Census Lists
Award value (80% FEC): £79,382
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 12 months
Almost 1,000 years ago, Sicily was one of the richest places in Europe. Its population was mainly Arab-Muslim, but its rulers were Christian, originally from Normandy. A few years before a widespread Muslim revolt, a census of households on crown lands in western Sicily was held from which two enormous rolls of parchment survive. These contain almost 2,000 names in Arabic and Greek that detail the local population, their families, villages, professions and even their nicknames. The Sicilian Arabic in which it was written has rare echoes of a lost dialect resembling modern North African Arabic and Maltese. These royal records are of immense academic, historical and cultural value, but there exists no critical edition with transcriptions, commentaries or indices. This project will publish both book and digital editions in forms that are easily accessible - not only to experts, but also to those with no knowledge of Arabic or Greek, as well as to a much wider public audience in a growing field of outstanding interest and importance for European, interfaith and intercultural history.
Moran, Dr Joseph Patrick
Reader in Cultural History, Liverpool John Moores University, English
History / Modern History
British Television: An Intimate History
Award value (80% FEC): £84,623
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 12 months
British Television: An Intimate History is a history of the British experience of watching television, from the first public demonstration of television in Selfridge’s in 1925 to the more fragmented, individualised audiences of the digital television era. It focuses on the everyday, ephemeral activity of television viewing, a practice that has received little attention from historians. It aims to convey the evanescent, low-intensity experience of watching television through richly contextualised readings of ephemeral, contemporary writings on it, from diaries and letters of viewers to archives detailing the responses of viewers such as Mass Observation and the BBC Written Archives. The project aims to demonstrate that, while the television public has always been a complex, elusive, transitory and fragmented community, watching television has always been in some sense a social activity and shared experience, one which sheds light on the shifting relationship between social democracy, consumer culture and the public sphere over the last century.
Murphy, Professor David
Professor of French and Postcolonial Studies, University of Stirling, School of Arts and Humanities
Modern Languages / Intellectual History (Modern Languages)
Struggles that Unite Us All: The Life and Work of Lamine Senghor
Award value (80% FEC): £99,039
Award Start Date: 1 January 2012, 12 months
This project will examine the life and writings of the unjustly neglected figure of Lamine Senghor, a man whose career as an activist spanned communism, anti-colonialism and pan-Africanism. Senghor was a former colonial soldier from Senegal who fought for France in the First World War, and who subsequently became a communist and anti-colonial activist until his early death in 1927. He and his fellow activists sought to give shape to new forms of global solidarity, and their radicalism acts as an intriguing early twentieth-century illustration of the excitement and potential but also the limitations of attempts at building transnational solidarities in the 1920s, as activists harnessed the class-based struggle of the socialist/communist internationals and attempted to wed it to a global front against colonial oppression. In our own increasingly interconnected world in which activists constantly seek to find new ways to marry local and global concerns, it is salutary to explore how radical movements in the early twentieth century sought to address similar issues.
Nicholls, Dr James
Senior Lecturer in Media Communications and Cultural Studies, Bath Spa University, Humanities and Cultural Industries
Sociology / Cultural Sociology
The altered state: public discourse on alcohol in England and Wales since 2000
Award value (80% FEC): £78,533
Award Start Date: 5 September 2011, 12 months
This project will investigate developments in public discourse on alcohol in England and Wales since 2000 - a period which has seen radical changes to licensing law, intensive media coverage of stories around youth drinking and health impacts, and the emergence of novel policy concepts such as drink banning orders and minimum unit pricing. The project will investigate the relationship between news reporting and policy activity, with a particular focus on the role of media advocacy - from both the drinks industry and public health - in shaping how drinking is represented, what concerns are emphasised, and which approaches to harm reduction are adopted. It will involve a systematic analysis of newspaper reporting and of policy material, including Select Committee reports, consultation documents and Parliamentary proceedings. It will also include interviews with key figures in current public debates on alcohol. The findings will give an insight into both how public discourse develops, but also how media coverage influences policy in a key area of public life.
O Maolalaigh, Professor Roibeard
Professor of Gaelic, University of Glasgow, Celtic and Gaelic
Modern Languages / Celtic languages and literatures
The Power of Numbers: Variation and Sound Change in Gaelic
Award value (80% FEC): £114,965
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 10 months
This project aims to provide the first extensive quantitative analysis of phonological variation and change in Scottish Gaelic dialects by unlocking the rich phonetic treasures of Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland (1994-7). The study is based on 14 variable features, which pose challenges for learners, students, teachers, researchers and language planners alike, and is thus of interest to a wide range of academic and public stakeholders. It focuses on structural aspects of sound variation and change, particularly on the effects of dialect contact and the creation of new dialects and innovative forms. It includes 6 case studies of systemic hyperdialectisms (hypercorrections) and so sheds important new light on socio-geographic factors in linguistic change. The new and enhanced scholarly insights into the nature of variation and historical change in Gaelic using quantitative methods will also enable the production of enhanced pedagogical materials, and provide specific policy recommendations for public language policy in Scotland and potentially Canada as well.
Odudu, Dr Okeoghene
Herchel Smith Lecturer in Law, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Faculty of Law
Law / European Union Law
The application of competition law to health care providers in the NHS in England
Award value (80% FEC): £87,842
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 12 months
Following a belief that in an appropriately regulated market, high quality health services can be provided by institutions that are neither owned nor operated by the State, in 2010 the Department of Health began consulting on reforms designed to promote competition between public and private (profit and non-profit) healthcare providers. Competition, enforced by the application of competition law, promises to increase efficiency at a time of pressure on public finances; increasing demand from citizens; and an increase in the range of treatments available. However, recent cases suggest competition law cannot be applied to institutions that are not motivated by profit and provide services free of charge. This highlights a need for an increased understanding of the ability to apply competition law and of how competition law applies to entities that are State owned and funded. The project aims to identify, develop, and articulate competition law standards that can be complied with by such entities, whilst ensuring services continue to be supplied in a socially desirable manner.
Page, Dr Joanna
University Lecturer in Latin American Cultural Studies, University of Cambridge, Centre of Latin American Studies and Department of Spanish & Portuguese
Modern Languages / Iberian and Latin American languages and literatures
How Newness Enters the World: Science and Creativity in Contemporary Argentine Literature
Award value (80% FEC): £89,639
Award Start Date: 1 January 2012, 12 months
Contemporary fiction and literary theory in Argentina consistently employ theories and models from mathematics and science to probe the nature of innovation and evolution in literature. Theories of incompleteness, uncertainty and chaos are often mobilized in European and North American literary and philosophical texts as metaphors for the inadequacy of our epistemological tools to probe the world’s complexity. My research has shown, however, that in recent Argentine fiction these tropes are put to very different uses: to map out the potential for artistic creativity and regeneration in times of crisis. The work I will publish focuses on texts by Ricardo Piglia, Guillermo Martínez and Marcelo Cohen, which draw on theories of formal systems, chaos, emergence and complexity to counter proclamations of the end of philosophy or the exhaustion of literature in the postmodern era. The alternative encounters these texts stage between science and literature throw light on some of the oversights and deficiences in existing debates on the subject in the European and North American academies.
Partridge, Professor Christopher
Professor of Religious Studies, Deputy Head of Department, Director of Research, Lancaster University, Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion
Music / History & Criticism of Music: Popular Music
Identifying Issues and Developing Approaches to the Study of Popular Music and Religion
Award value (80% FEC): £94,394
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 12 months
Increasingly, scholars of religion are appreciating the significance of popular music and vice versa. Although popular music plays a greater part in the everyday lives of more people than at any time in the past, largely as a result of the technological developments that have occurred in the last two decades, it is under-researched. Focusing on the spiritual and social significance of popular music as a fundamental channel of communication and an increasingly important factor in identity formation, this book is the first advanced attempt to map key issues and suggest a range of theoretical and methodological resources. Discussing a range of genres, sites of reception and artists, a principal feature of the project is the analysis of the relationship between music, emotion and religion. The rationale for this is that, whether we think of listening, performance or composition, music has a basic relationship with human emotionality, which is central to meaning-making and the construction of lifeworlds.
Paterson, Dr Kevin
Lecturer in Psychology, University of Leicester, School of Psychology
Psychology / Cognitive and Perceptual Psychology
Assessing Older Adults' Use of Basic Visual Cues During Reading
Award value (80% FEC): £93,725
Award Start Date: 3 October 2011, 12 months
The ability to read is of fundamental importance for people to function effectively and to meet everyday demands of living, working and citizenship. However, research suggests older readers (aged 65+ years) have significant difficulty in reading, even when their visual abilities appear normal. Little is known about the cause of this difficulty or how it should be combated. To address this issue, the proposed project will build on pilot research showing that young and older readers differ in their use of basic visual cues, and that older readers rely more heavily on coarse-scale cues about the length, shape and location of words, perhaps due to loss of sensitivity to fine-scale information associated with normal aging. The project involves a series of experiments that assess reading performance for text that has been digitally manipulated to enhance the salience of different visual cues at various locations around the readers’ point of gaze. The results promise to throw new light on the reading process and to reveal previously uncharted influences of normal aging on reading ability.
Peel, Dr Elizabeth
Senior Lecturer, Aston University, School of Life & Health Sciences
Sociology / Medical Sociology/Sociology of Health and Illness
Dementia Talking: Care, conversation and communication
Award value (80% FEC): £88,360
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 12 months
Care for people with dementia and their families is a growing social challenge. As the number of older people increases so too does the number of people living with this distressing disease. The “Dementia Talking” project focuses on communication as this aspect of dementia care is a significant problem for people with dementia and their carers. The aim is to understand how talk about and to people with dementia is constructed, with the goal of improving communication with people with dementia. Dementia is a challenging group of conditions often linked to decline, decay and deficiency. In contrast, this research has a positive focus on care, conversation and communication. This is a qualitative project using conversation and discourse analysis to investigate audio/video recordings of everyday dementia talk, interviews with carers and media representations of dementia. An extensive network of dementia organisations will be used to disseminate the findings, and a carer’s guide to communication will ensure the programme has an impact on the lives of carers and people with dementia.
Porter, Dr Joy
Senior Lecturer & Associate Dean, Swansea University, Department of Politics and Cultural Studies, College of Arts and Humanities
Politics / Politics of a specific area or region (specified by regional interest on the classification tab)
The American Presidency and Tribal Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century
Award value (80% FEC): £91,132
Award Start Date: 3 October 2011, 12 months
This research addresses the most important question in twentieth-century Native American politics- how decisive were personal tribal relationships with individual American presidents? The answer could alter fundamentally not only our existing understandings of the presidency but also how we conceptualise relationships between “small nations” and dominant powers more generally. This is work of profound interest to Native peoples and to anyone curious about how individual presidents functioned. The research is intended for publication as a monograph with Harvard University Press (editor Kathleen McDermott); for broadcast via podcast and 6 minute radio slot, as well as via a designated website and blog by American Indian Radio on Satellite and via a public television show produced by Native American Public TeleCommunications, Lincoln, Nebraska. This is a library group from which Public Service Broadcasting in the U.S. selects, meaning that whilst this research has a certain outlet to 4.3 million it has the potential to reach into almost every American home, some 76 million households.
Powers, Professor Alan
Professor of Architecture and Cultural History, University of Greenwich, School of Architecture and Construction
History of Art / History of architecture
Figurative Architecture in Britain in the time of Modernism
Award value (80% FEC): £99,726
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 12 months
The history of modern architecture is generally divorced from the simultaneous history of non-modernist architecture, the latter being less well known and interpreted. The project aims to write the first general history of non-modernist architecture (characterised as 'figurative') in Britain as a counterpart to the applicant's overview 'Britain' in the series Modern Architectures in History (part funded by a BA small grant). The principal outcome will be a book positioning styles in period and examining the definitions of 'modern' that have been used in architecture and other arts. While the main subject is Britain, this will be seen in an international context including USA, Scandinavia, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The book will cover the survival and continuity of figurative architecture and its re-emergence as revival from the post-modernist period to the present.
Probert, Dr Philomen
University Lecturer in Classical Philology and Linguistics, University of Oxford, (a) Classics and (b) Linguistics, Philology & Phonetics
Linguistics / Comparative Linguistics
Greek relative clauses from Mycenaean to Aristophanes
Award value (80% FEC): £66,743
Award Start Date: 1 January 2012, 9 months
I propose to write a book on early Greek relative clauses, to establish the Greek evidence bearing on Proto-Indo-European relative clauses; I have been collecting and analysing material for this project since 2006. In the development of Greek literature, and other early Indo-European literatures, relative clauses and other types of subordination become more prominent over time. If we extrapolate back in time, the obvious assumption about Proto-Indo-European is that it was comparatively poor in subordinate clauses. Yet it is now thought that a language as recent as Proto-Indo-European can hardly have been “primitive”. Proto-Indo-European relative clauses provide a test case for this problem, but there is more Greek evidence than has been recognised. Much useful work also predates massive advances in historical syntax and relative clause typology, which make it desirable to go back to primary evidence. My book would be based on a corpus of archaic and classical Greek, including both literature and inscriptions. I plan to make it clear and accessible to both linguists and classicists.
Ralph, Professor Jason
Professor of International Relations, University of Leeds, School of Politics and International Studies
Politics / International Relations
International law, the American Exception and British centre-left foreign policies before and after the Iraq War
Award value (80% FEC): £111,915
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 12 months
What should the UK do when the US challenges or violates international norms? This question lay behind the controversy surrounding the invasion of Iraq and it may be asked if the US attacks Iran. The realist argument that the UK’s American policy is dictated by power politics is unsatisfactory. Normative arguments did influence policy on Iraq. Blair argued, as he had on Kosovo, that the moral case for war was “obvious” from a centre-left perspective. The moral imperative to support the US was for him more important than the legal requirement to respect the outcome of multilateral deliberation. It is because the public, particularly on the centre-left, is uncomfortable with this that this research explores possible alternative approaches. It tests the view that regime change was “obvious” by examining the link between moral and legal imperatives in centre-left discourse, and it draws on normative IR theory to rethink the “special relationship” in ways that enable policymakers to square the UK’s commitment to international law with its interest in maintaining a strong bond with the US.
Shaw-Taylor, Dr Leigh
University lecturer, University of Cambridge, Faculty of History
History / Economic History
The occupational structure of Britain and its comparative context 1700-1911
Award value (80% FEC): £92,167
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 12 months
In 1500 Britain was a lightly populated, weakly urbanised, predominantly agricultural and backward part of Eurasia. By the late C19th it was the world’s most urbanised society and the first industrial nation. The rest of the world was beginning to follow suit. Historians are now well aware that the Industrial Revolution (1750-1850) had longer-term roots but we have no satisfactory long-term account of the rise and international divergence of the British economy. This is substantially because we lack any consistent body of data capable both of characterising the economy over long periods of time and of sustaining detailed quantitative comparisons. Over the last 8 years I have directed a project aimed at producing robust datasets of the occupational structure and population geography of Britain from the late middle ages to the First World War and at putting those results into a comparative perspective. This fellowship would allow me to publish the key findings, commence in-depth public engagement and to acquire some key new skills required to take the project forward.
Steel, Professor Catherine
Professor of Classics, University of Glasgow, Classics, School of Humanities
Classics and Ancient History / History of Rome, Italy and the Roman provinces
SPQR: the Roman Republican Senate in the 21st century
Award value (80% FEC): £113,044
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 12 months
The object of this Fellowship is to re-evaluate the function and operation of the Senate of Rome at the end of the Republic; and to investigate the impact of the Roman Senate as an exemplary model of an elected/upper chamber within modern representative democracies. It combines a programme of research by the PI into the Republican Senate with a public symposium on the legacy of the Senate in western political thought. The aim of the single-authored research is to re-assess the Senate in the light of the recent transformation in our understanding of other elements of the Republican state, including the citizen body as a whole and personal elite power. By so doing, the project will recast our assessment of the Senate’s role in the end of the Republic. The aim of the symposium is to bring together an international, interdisciplinary group of scholars to analyse the value of the Senate as a model in contemporary political action and theory and to share key elements of their debates with a wide public audience.
Stewart, Dr Donald William
Lecturer in Material Culture and the Environment, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, University of the Highlands and Islands; and Senior Researcher, Carmichael Watson Project, University of Edinburgh, Centre for Research Collections, Edinburgh University Library
Modern Languages / Celtic languages and literatures
Martin Martin: Hebridean Pausanias
Award value (80% FEC): £76,318
Award Start Date: 1 January 2012, 12 months
For six years Martin Martin (c. 1660-1718), a native of Skye, travelled the Hebrides collecting objects and information about island life, customs, beliefs, antiquities, and landscapes. He published two enormously influential books A Late Voyage to St Kilda (1698) and The Description of the Western Isles of Scotland (1703). As well as setting an ethnographic agenda for later travellers, they are still read by islanders today, as foundational texts for regional identity. Despite posthumous fame, and despite his voluminous manuscript correspondence, Martin remains mysterious. The project will for the first time place his achievements in full context, in a time of war, famine, and religious strife offering opportunities for ambitious islanders to put their knowledge and talents at the service of metropolitan institutions. A bilingual website will allow us to follow in Martin’s footsteps, read his writings, and investigate the curiosities he collected. Two articles will elucidate the creation of his books, while a lecture series will encourage islanders to rediscover Martin Martin.
Thornton, Dr Patricia
University Lecturer in the Politics of China, and Tutorial Fellow, University of Oxford, and Merton College, Department of Politics and International Relations
Politics / Comparative Politics
History’s Rearview Mirror: Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Award value (80% FEC): £108,177
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 12 months
Despite the Chinese Party-state’s aggressive campaign to “thoroughly negate the Cultural Revolution,”the ferment that characterized the last decade of Mao’s rule continues to shape the present. Both official and unofficial accounts emphasize the violence and destruction that sporadically erupted from 1966-76. Yet these searing indictments are squarely at odds with the popular nostalgia for the period that is rife in China today, and the Party-state’s continuing attempts to use culture as a means for political and social transformation. I argue against the widely held view that the Cultural Revolution represents a tragic detour on China’s path to development. Instead, as I will demonstrate, the dominant narrative masks the genuinely radical critiques of Party dictatorship that circulated widely at the grassroots, inspiring collective political action that aimed to topple Communist Party rule. Likewise, the party’s disavowal of the Maoist project obscures the Party’s persistent domination over the realm of culture, as well as the continuing popular resistance that it provokes.
Varma, Dr Rashmi
Associate Professor, University of Warwick, English and Comparative Literary Studies
English Language and Literature / Cultural studies - English Language and Literature
Modern Tribal: Representations of Indigeneity in Postcolonial India
Award value (80% FEC): £97,559
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 12 months
I propose a study of the representations of indigenous ("tribal") culture in postcolonial India. I will examine how the figure of the tribal re-appears, from the traces of the colonial archive (where s/he is cast as savage, primitive, and backward), into postcolonial discourses of modernity. After independence, nationalist state projects attempted to integrate the tribal as a national citizen, even as tribals continue to be seen as uncivilized and exotic in mainstream culture. This project explores these complex and contradictory representations in literature and literary studies, painting, photography and cinema, national and ethnographic museums, and state projects of language preservation and cultural development. My research suggests that the figure of the tribal is constitutive of how modernity may be grasped in contemporary India, especially in the context of economic and cultural globalization in which indigenous cultures struggle to survive. I plan to publish this research as a monograph, co-write a film script, organise an exhibition, a workshop and set up a digital archive.
Vickers, Dr Neil
Reader in English Literature and the Medical Humanities, King's College London, Department of English Language and Literature and the Centre for the Humanities and Health
English Language and Literature / Critical and cultural theory - English Language and Literature
New Foundations for the Study of Illness Narrative
Award value (80% FEC): £96,714
Award Start Date: 1 September 2011, 12 months
This project is part of a book about illness experience and its impact on autobiographical selfhood. Taking my theoretical bearings from contemporary psychosomatics, I present readings of three autobiographies in which illness plays a large part: Martin Amis’s Experience (2000); Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up the Ghost (2003) and Jonathan Caouette’s documentary film Tarnation (2003). Psychosomatics is one of the most vibrant domains in psychiatry and psychoanalysis today. It is no longer merely the study of conversion phenomena. It considers the effects of relational experiences on mind and body alike. In the 3 autobiographical works I discuss, this “relational” dimension is especially prominent. Psychophysical phenomena are placed in the context of the authors’ human (especially family) relationships. The approach developed could provide a critical tool in our understanding of the mental and physical status of individuals confronting their own or their family’s illnesses. Findings will be presented to groups of patients and carers as well as to scholarly audiences.
Wakefield, Dr Jill
Associate Professor, University of Warwick, School of Law
Law / European Union Law
From process to outcome: achieving sustainability in fisheries
Award value (80% FEC): £96,156
Award Start Date: 1 January 2012, 12 months
The highly regulated EU fisheries regime has not delivered a sustainable resource despite this being the central objective of the policy. The problem of over-fishing has been well-documented but a solution has been elusive. The terms of scientific advice do not translate into effective legislation because they lack proper, enforceable legal meaning. Although the EU has adopted an integrated martime policy to overcome the inability of the different sectors to produce sustainability, fisheries policy falls outside its application. I propose writing a book that will explain these problems and argue for the harmonisation of the fisheries policy with the integrated maritime policy. Where scientific advice is uncertain so that risk of damage to ecosystems and fish stocks may arise, the responsibility for any subsequent damage should not be borne by the public but by those exploiting the seas. I will advocate the shift from a process-driven mode of regulation to an outcome-based regime in which the risk of damage is transferred from public responsibility to the industrial fisheries sector
Williams, Dr Abigail
Fellow in English and University Lecturer, St Peter's College, University of Oxford, Faculty of English
English Language and Literature / Historical studies of language and literature - English Language and Literature
Bringing books home: the domestication of literary culture, 1750-1850
Award value (80% FEC): £105,567
Award Start Date: 1 January 2012, 12 months
Reading was a sociable activity in eighteenth-century Britain, and a range of print forms evolved in this period to promote the domestic consumption and performance of literature. These important and popular forms have been largely neglected, and this project will explore for the first time the ways in which literature was packaged for, and enjoyed in, the middle-class home in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I will explore and display this tradition of home-made entertainment, focussing on collections of verse, prose and drama published for parlour performances and family entertainment. I will disseminate the findings of this archival work in both academic and public contexts. The academic output will take the form of scholarly articles and a conference. The public facing output will consist of broadcast media (Radio 3 and 4 programmes and ItunesU podcast) and library and museum collaboration (Geffrye Museum, Bodleian library). The project offers a long view on key contemporary debates over culture, community, literacy and education.
Willis, Dr David
Senior lecturer, University of Cambridge, Linguistics
Linguistics / Sociolinguistics
Syntactic variation in contemporary Welsh [LQS]
Award value (80% FEC): £102,324
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 12 months
The Welsh language is currently undergoing significant change. Some of these changes, such as the loss of extreme dialect variation and the emergence of spoken regional standards, are common to other western European languages, while some are due to the specific circumstances of language maintenance and revitalisation found in Wales. The proposed programme of research investigates ongoing change in grammatical patterns in contemporary Welsh by looking at variation due to age, geographical location and language background in three contrasting communities (Cardiff, Neath Valley and east Carmarthenshire). Variation and change will be analysed both in terms of a formal account of reanalysis and microvariation, accounting for structured patterns of variation between speakers, and within a language-contact framework, testing the hypothesis that changing social conditions and patterns of acquisition are leading to the loss of traditional dialect features and the imposition of English-style patterns by sequential bilinguals who acquired first English then Welsh.
Woodford, Dr Charlotte
Fellow and College Lecturer in German, Selwyn College, Cambridge, Department of German and Dutch
Modern Languages / Women's writing - Modern Languages
Women and Protest in German Fiction (1866-1914)
Award value (80% FEC): £57,133
Award Start Date: 1 October 2011, 12 months
This study argues that German women writers were important as authors of novels of protest, which they modelled on the English novel, as well as the work of Zola. However, women's novels play no part in the German national tradition of literature, and this body of literature has therefore been neglected. Women protested against abuses of power, they defended the working classes, and treated themes such as women's right to education, sexual expression and divorce. This study will look at why the novel was the genre of choice for such women, and will examine novels as cultural products alongside letters and essays on subjects of topical political relevance. It will examine the aesthetic strategies, particularly sentimentality and naturalism, through which women challenged the depiction of women in bourgeois fiction, and the positions which they occupied in response to other women's works. Writing novels was an important way for women to participate in the public sphere, while reading them offered women new ways of understanding their lives in a period of rapid social change.
Wright, Dr Scott
Lecturer in Political Communication, University of East Anglia, School of Political, Social and International Studies
Politics / Comparative Politics
Blogging the political
Award value (80% FEC): £90,840
Award Start Date: 1 January 2012, 12 months
This project is an innovative investigation into a hitherto under-researched, but increasingly important, subject: how the general public communicates and discusses everyday, life politics through blogs. With 22% of UK Internet users writing blogs (OXIS, 2009), they can be seen as a Third Space: a non-political forum where political talk emerges (Wright, forthcoming). Following a broader trend in e-deliberation research, blog analysis has focused narrowly, on the Westminster Village - ignoring the vast majority of communication which takes place elsewhere, and with much greater frequency. For Davis (2009: 39), this is “disturbing” because “common blogs...reflect the democratic elements of the blogosphere touted by pundits and journalists”. This study will help to fill this gap in the literature, informing academic, policy and broader debates through the publication of a monograph, article, policy brief and blog.