British Academy Early Career Researcher Network Seed Fund Awards 2025-26
East of England Cluster
Lei Song
Independent Scholar
Value Awarded: £4,980
'Semi-Colonial Sanitation: Making Sino-British Water Infrastructure (1842-1950s)'
Between 1842 and the 1950s, semi-colonial Chinese cities became infrastructural laboratories where British imperial actors, semi-colonial municipalities, engineers, and investors introduced systems that promised hygiene and ‘modernity’ yet entrenched social and racial divisions. Semi-Colonial Sanitation investigates how water infrastructure was built, financed, and experienced, tracing the technical, socio-political, and human dimensions of their construction—from cast-iron pipes and domestic taps to the multi-stakeholder negotiations and the local labour of Chinese artisans, women, and migrant workers. Drawing on understudied sources in the National Archives and the Second Historical Archives of China, the project will uncover three British-involved water companies and demonstrate how their construction in Shanghai, Wuhan, and Hong Kong operated as sites of negotiation rather than simple imperial imposition, revealing new entanglements between British and Chinese urban modernisation. Using GIS mapping and 3D modelling, it will reconstruct the water and sanitation infrastructure to illuminate the embedded power relations and environmental afterlives.
Paulo Pepe
University of East Anglia
Value Awarded: £4,591
'Amplifying Indigenous LGBTQIA+ Voices through Arts, Education, and Policy'
ORIGEM is an arts-based participatory research project with LGBTQIA+ communities in northeastern Brazil, particularly the Pankararu and Tupinambá peoples. Despite facing intersecting forms of discrimination, marginalisation, and climate crisis, their perspectives remain largely absent from education, cultural representation, and public policy. ORIGEM responds by co-producing video testimonies through decolonial and collaborative methods that centre Indigenous LGBTQIA+ voices as knowledge-producers.
This British Academy Seed Fund will support a nine-month research phase (1 March–30 November 2026) to co-create, edit, and bilingually subtitle a 20–30 minute documentary as the primary output. The documentary will examine participatory filmmaking as a method for self-representation, empowerment, and cross-cultural knowledge exchange. This phase will also strengthen the applicant’s development as an early-career researcher working with arts-based and decolonial methodologies.
The film will provide the foundation for future educational, cultural, and digital engagement, enabling wider dissemination of Indigenous LGBTQIA+ perspectives in Brazil, the UK, and internationally.
Samet Mor
Independent Scholar
Value Awarded: £4,824
'Curating Grey Literature: An Iconoclastic Reappraisal of the British Art Archives via Hidden Actors'
This project interweaves curatorial practice and academic research to challenge the entrenched narrative centred on canonical “masters” in British art history. Using the networks surrounding Henry Moore (1898–1986) as an analytical framework—rather than simply a biographical subject—it reconstructs this narrative by foregrounding overlooked materials produced by the often-invisible collaborators who shaped both Moore’s practice and the wider trajectory of modern British art. In doing so, it reframes art-historical inquiry through the agency of hidden actors and establishes a transferable model at the intersection of curating and scholarship.
Treating research itself as a curatorial act, the project assembles non-artistic archival fragments—technical diagrams, architectural drawings, foundry records, and board minutes—generated by peripheral figures. By mobilising these neglected forms of “grey literature,” it transforms disregarded archival remnants into dialogical, iconoclastic documents that reveal the collective, material, and institutional foundations of British modernism. Ultimately, it unites academic and curatorial methods within a coherent framework.
Xin Wang
University of East Anglia
'Administrative Bank Rescue in China: Legal Ambiguity, Executive Discretion, and Lessons for Global Banking Governance'
Value awarded: £4,606
This study is the first empirical investigation of China’s administrative bank rescue practices, revealing legal ambiguities in early-stage rescue and restructuring and the marginalisation of judicial involvement. Amid China’s real estate crisis and economic slowdown, the banking sector has seen a surge in non-performing assets. Under the ordinary insolvency standards of the cash flow and balance sheet tests, some banks are effectively ‘insolvent’, yet the state intervenes through administrative measures rather than formal insolvency proceedings. While such intervention is globally common, China’s approach is highly case-specific and reliant on substantial government bailouts, raising concerns over misuse and sustainability. Moreover, significant legal gaps also persist in the framework governing bank restructuring. Drawing on 38 publicly reported cases, this study uses doctrinal and empirical methods to map intervention patterns and reveal how bank rescue and restructuring operate in practice, offering comparative insights into regulatory design and crisis management in global financial governance.
London Cluster
Ariane Agunsoye
Goldsmiths, University of London
Value awarded: £3,752.5
Co-applicant name: Dr Lin Jiang
'Understanding how UK and Chinese Start-Ups adopt GenAI: A cross-country study of institutional influence'
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is transforming the skill sets organisations require, reshaping how work is organised and managed. While GenAI holds significant promise for improving productivity, many start-ups struggle to generate value from AI integration due to resource constraints, limited governance structures, and uncertain regulatory environments. Existing research predominantly centres on large firms, leaving the dynamics of start-up AI adoption underexamined. Drawing on institutional theory and behavioural reasoning theory, this study will investigate how start-ups interpret formal and informal institutional signals, such as regulation, legitimacy pressures, and cultural expectations, and how these shape their pathways of GenAI adoption. Through interviews and focus groups with start-up founders and executives in the UK and China, the project will generate insights into the contextual factors influencing adoption. The findings will advance future theoretical development, lay the groundwork for a broader comparative research agenda, and offer practical guidance for start-up leaders, investors and policymakers.
Feride Kumbasar
Independent Scholar
Value awarded: £5,000
'Tracing the Unseen City: Migrant Women’s Political Footprints in Hackney, London'
This study creates an everyday archive documenting Turkish and Kurdish women’s activist geographies and community organising in London borough of Hackney through feminist and decolonial critical cartography. It examines how migrant women have shaped the borough’s political and policy landscape through campaigns, mutual aid, cultural organising, and everyday advocacy that remain largely absent from official narratives. Using oral history, participatory mapping, and creative community-led documentation, it traces women’s routes, meeting places, solidarities, and engagements with local governance that have sustained migrant political life and reshaped the civic landscape. Situated within migration studies, feminist geography, and critical urban sociology, the project advances debates on spatial and political agency by centring a hitherto understudied group. As Hackney rapidly gentrifies, this memory work becomes urgent for recognising and valuing women’s contributions before they are obscured. The outcome will be a community-generated archive revealing alternative political histories of Hackney.
Irtiza Qureshi
University of Greenwich
Value awarded: £4,732
'Breaking the Silence: Co-Producing Pathways to Psychodynamic Counselling for Boys and Young Men'
This project will foster the development of a new research initiative lead by an early career researcher. It partners a university and third sector counselling organisation, to understand and reduce barriers preventing boys and young men from accessing psychodynamic counselling. This project has societal significance as suicide is the leading cause of death for young people aged 10 - 19 in the UK and men under 50 remain disproportionately affected by poor mental health, yet young males are underrepresented in therapy referrals. Working with schools, the project will co-design future research activities, run participatory workshops, and host a knowledge-exchange event with stakeholders. Activities will identify practical enablers and produce clear recommendations to improve service access. Outputs will include a report, dissemination materials, and guidance to inform local and national practice. This project will build partnership capacity, shape future collaborative research, and create scalable impact for more inclusive pathways to services.
Leah Mwainyekule
University of Westminster
Value awarded: £4,950
'Tanzania’s Fourth Estate: The Media, the State and the People'
This project supports the development of my forthcoming monograph, accepted by Routledge for publication in 2027. The study investigates the relationship between the Tanzanian state, media institutions, and the public from the colonial era to the present, focusing on how press freedom, transparency, and expression have evolved under successive governments.
Fieldwork was done looking at the previous governments. Additional fieldwork is required, including interviews with journalists, editors, and regulators. This will inform an extra chapter analysing President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s administration (2021 to date). Furthermore, the project will interview about 15-20 participants at the 2026 East African Communication Association Conference, and contact has already been established. This will help gather cross-regional perspectives, and build collaborative networks with African media scholars. I will also visit the British Library archives on Tanganyika/Tanzania press. Through this research, the project aims to extend debates on media-state relations, democratisation, and communication ethics in contemporary Africa.
Lyubomira Gramcheva
Independent Scholar
Co-applicant: Vesco Paskalev
Value awarded: £5,000
'Evaluating ChatGPT’s Impact on Performance and Marking Practices in the Law School'
The rise of generative AI has raised concerns about the integrity of academic assessments. Although studies have tested ChatGPT in university settings, the AI-generated outputs were usually produced by researchers, not students. There is also limited evidence about ChatGPT’s effect on marking behaviour and judgement. This project aims to engage both students and educators in exploring whether ChatGPT helps students improve their performance and ChatGPT’s detectability. Experiments will be conducted with law students from three UK universities, writing assessments with and without ChatGPT-5. After completing different types of assessments, students will participate in focus groups to share how they make sense of their experiences. Submissions will be blind-marked, and assessors will flag suspected AI use, followed by interviews. This study follows up on a pilot, conducted in 2024, and is part of a larger research agenda of the lead applicant, which envisages expansion to other subjects, universities and AI tools.
Ugo Gaudino
University of Sussex
Value awarded: £5,000
'Freedom of Religion or Belief in the Age of Religious Nationalism and Civilizational Politics'
I plan to organise a conference in September 2026 at the University of Sussex to gather scholars working on Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB). The conference will shed light on two relevant challenges to FoRB: 1. the appropriation of religion by xenophobic actors for exclusionary purposes; 2. the restrictions imposed upon FoRB in the name of national security reasons. It will consist of five panels taking place over two days. As the conference aims to be the starting point for the submission of a special issue, I will publish a call for papers in advance; accepted speakers will be required to send a draft paper two weeks before the conference and to finalise their contribution by September 30, 2026. I am applying for the seed fund to ensure enough financial resources to cover travel and accommodation expenses for my speakers and to book the conference centre and catering.
Midlands and Mid Wales Cluster
Aideen O'Shaughnessy
University of Lincoln
Value awarded: £4,835.6
'Pills, Procedures, and Reproductive Autonomy: Exploring Irish Women’s Perspectives on Abortion Method Choice'
Following the legalisation of abortion in Ireland in 2018, the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act established that women seeking abortion care should be offered a choice between medical and surgical methods. However, a 2023 Independent Review found that this choice is often not provided in practice and identified the need to expand surgical abortion provision as a policy priority. This study explores Irish women’s experiences of abortion method choice through qualitative interviews with service users. It examines whether, how, and why method choice matters to Irish abortion-seekers, the factors influencing their decisions, and their experiences navigating or advocating for their preferred treatment option in the clinical setting. Findings will offer critical insight into how abortion method choice intersects with issues of reproductive autonomy and provides an evidence-based regarding barriers and facilitators of equitable access to medical and surgical abortion, advancing policy analysis in Ireland and other post-legalisation contexts.
Henry Price
University of Lincoln
Value awarded: £1,526.22
Co-applicant name: Dr. Robert Bolton
'“I mean literally nuke them. Fry them. Fry their children, fry everything”: Exploring responses to the September 11th 2001 (9/11) terrorist attacks through The Howard Stern Show radio broadcasts'
Approaching the 25th anniversary of the 2001 September 11th (9/11) terrorist attacks, this timely project examines how the American public responded to the attacks and how these responses inform our understandings of subsequent support for both the “War on Terror” and sweeping domestic national security apparatus. These responses are accessed via a highly unique dataset: the two unfiltered live radio broadcasts of the New York based The Howard Stern Show on both 9/11 and 9/12. Transcripts of these broadcasts, which include listeners “calling in” during and in the aftermath of the attacks, provide insights into the immediate reaction and narration of 9/11. Our analysis will therefore develop existing accounts of the “manufacture” of public consent for post-9/11 government policy by recognising the significance of cultural norms and associated emotions, as displayed in The Howard Stern Show broadcasts.
Hind Elhinnawy
Nottingham Trent University
Value awarded: £4,049
Co-applicant name: Dr Pamela Jabbar
'Intersectional Dialogues: Religion, Race, and Feminism'
This pilot project emerges from growing ideological fragmentation within UK Muslim feminist thought, where secular and faith-based perspectives often operate in parallel but rarely intersect, despite shared commitments to gender justice. It addresses entrenched tensions and mistrust between secular and faith-based Muslim feminist communities, which inhibit coalition-building, inclusive praxis, and the development of intersectional feminist leadership. The project aims to foster structured, critical dialogue between Muslim feminist thinkers and activists across ideological lines, exploring possibilities for solidarity across difference. Activities include an in-person roundtable at the British Academy and a series of online interviews with contributors from both secular and faith-based backgrounds, supported by co-applicant Dr Pamela Jabbar’s expertise on institutional gender justice frameworks. Outputs include a report capturing key insights, tensions, and opportunities for inclusive feminist dialogue, laying the foundation for a multi-institutional research network and scalable models for policy engagement and activist scholarship.
Liam Cahill
Nottingham Trent University
Value awarded: £3,583.04
Co-applicant name: Dr Bethany (Beth) Alice Jones
'Co-designing Functionality Appreciation Approaches to Support Body Image and Well-being in Binary Trans People'
Body dissatisfaction affects 90% of young trans people, highlighting a critical gap in support and research (The Trevor Project, 2023). One promising concept is functionality appreciation, valuing the body for what it can do rather than how it looks, which improves wellbeing in cisgender women (people whose gender matches their sex assigned at birth). Its relevance for trans people who identify as men or women (binary trans people) is unknown. Valuing the body for its abilities may be especially supportive for binary trans people, whose body image concerns are shaped by societal cisnormative pressures. This participatory project will work alongside binary trans people to explore what functionality appreciation means in their lives and how it might support body image and wellbeing. Through workshops and interviews, the study will refine the functionality appreciation framework to reflect trans perspectives, strengthening the theory of functionality appreciation and informing future affirming interventions.
Rachael Blakey
University of Warwick
Value awarded: £4,344
'Connecting Family Mediation Practice and Research'
This project will contribute to future collaborative grant proposals relating to family mediation by establishing working relationships between researchers and practitioners. Working in collaboration with the Family Mediation Council, the regulatory body for family mediators in England and Wales, it will identify gaps in our current understanding of the mediation process where research is urgently needed. The project comprises two strands. First, it will involve a collaborative workshop between the Family Mediation Council and researchers, particularly Early Career Scholars, to establish reciprocal access across practitioner and research communities. Second, a post-workshop briefing to highlight the identified research gaps will be published. Both objectives are hugely topical given mediation’s increasing importance in the family justice system, and will improve currently underdeveloped or negative relationships between the family mediator profession and family law researchers.
North East and Northern Ireland Cluster
Ana-Maria Cirstea
Newcastle University
Value awarded: £3,334.2
'Exploring the role of Southeast Asian migrant workers in the aged care industry in Romania'
As a country of out-migration, Romania lacks the workers required to care for its ageing population. These gaps have been filled by Southeast Asian immigrants, an emerging and unresearched phenomenon that challenges established models of labour migration. The Romanian case provides a unique context where migration and care connect two peripheral spaces: Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. By bridging these spaces, this project can contribute to decolonial perspectives in migration and ageing studies. Through pilot interviews and knowledge exchange activities in Romania, this project aims to understand the role of recent migrant workers in the aged care industry. The findings will be used to inform public perspectives on migration through an article and a podcast episode, as well as to shape a future grant application. By collaborating with relevant stakeholders in Romania, this research will address two pressing areas of interest for academics and policymakers alike – migration and ageing.
Joseph Charles Van Matre
University of Ulster
Value awarded: £4,200
'Angels and Devils in Policy Debate: How Character-Based Narratives Shape Public Opinion'
"Political advocates often portray themselves as heroes while characterizing opponents as villains. While these strategies are common in policy debates, we lack experimental evidence of whether they actually change public attitudes. This research tests how character-based narratives influence policy preferences through online survey experiments with UK participants.
Using a policy debate about employment programmes for different age groups, we expose participants to narratives drawing on four character-based strategies from the Narrative Policy Framework: portraying advocates as empowered heroes (angel shift), vulnerable victims (angel in distress), empowered villains (devil shift), or diminished burdens (devil diminished). Crucially, we test whether message sequence matters: does encountering a positive self-portrayal first make people more or less receptive to subsequent negative opponent portrayals?
This two-stage study (pilot followed by pre-registered representative sample) establishes whether narrative sequencing experiments can reliably detect persuasion effects, providing methodological foundations for future research and practical insights for advocacy organizations."
Meng Xing
Northumbria University
Value awarded: £4.909.03
Co-applicant name: Dr Rui HOU
'Reconfiguring China’s Development Finance in Africa: Geopolitical Shifts and Sectoral and Geographical Allocation Dynamics'
This proposed study builds on an ongoing project that analyses how China’s policy-bank lending to Africa has evolved amid changing geopolitical and financial dynamics. Using secondary datasets such as AidData, Engineering News-Record, and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s Investment and Country Guide, the research employs fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to examine how geopolitical rivalry, credit risk, and governance factors influence the shifting sectoral and geographical distribution of Chinese finance across African countries. Preliminary findings suggest that tightening overseas lending reflects both rising credit concerns and increasing competition from Western and multilateral financiers. The Seed Fund will support an extension of this work through fieldwork in China, focusing on supplementary interviews with key policy banks to enrich and validate the quantitative findings, providing deeper insight into how institutional and geopolitical considerations shape China’s evolving role in Africa’s development finance.
Nick Gibbs
Northumbria University
Value awarded: £1,542.5
'Get big and try buying: A criminological investigation of the use and supply of image and performance enhancing drugs in UK strongman'
Scholarship on gym culture and image and performance enhancing drugs (IPEDs) has proliferated in recent years, with investigations into gym work, bodybuilding, and sports doping providing an empirical basis for the rise in IPED consumption nationally. However, one group of IPED users have not yet been specifically studied: 'Strongman' athletes. Despite the sport's growing popularity and extreme physical demands, this project represents the first attempt to understand: (1) the motivations for strongman competitors to consume IPEDs, (2) the most prevalent substances consumed and how any IPED harm reduction practices are performed, and (3) how IPEDs are supplied to these men. The project will employ semi-structured ethnographic interviews with a sample of 15 competitive strongmen in North East England. Particular attention will be given to the construction of strongman masculinities, the role of IPEDs in sculpting spectacular instrumental and visual physiques, and the illicit market that underpins this activity.
Thuy Luyen
University of Sunderland
Value awarded: £3,193
'Entrepreneurial Co-Creation for Healthy, Sustainable, and Affordable Food Consumption (Co-Food)'
Food innovations that simultaneously support inclusivity, health, and environmental sustainability are a global priority, aligning with the UK government’s vision for a modern food system. Such innovations require value co-creation, a process where food organisations and stakeholders jointly address societal challenges. Yet, food organisations face a fundamental challenge of navigating the diverse needs and trade-offs of multiple stakeholders, an area where research remains limited.
This six-month pilot project, in partnership with Sunderland City Council, address this gap by investigating how three exemplar entrepreneurial ventures in the North East of England co-create with diverse stakeholders (consumers, local authorities, industry partners) to balance these trade-offs and enhance shared value.
Funding will support interviews, case studies, a participatory workshop with these ventures and stakeholders, also dissemination activities (e.g., publications). This pilot lays the groundwork for a larger, inclusive programme to scale cross-sector value co-creation with the potential to enrich outcomes for all stakeholders.
North West and North Wales Cluster
Anna Mariguddi
Edge Hill University
Value awarded: £3,687.54
'Exploring the culture and of music education in primary schools: teacher and school leader perceptions'
The benefits of engagement with music and music education are well documented within the research literature, yet music education in England faces an abundance of barriers and challenges (e.g. lack of funding, limited curriculum time, damaging wider policy documents). This research will act as a form of advocacy for music education and will inform the next steps for wider partnership, collaboration and action.
The study will explore the culture and value of primary music education, focused upon two case study schools. Data will be generated through: use of photographic methods, semi-structured interviews, observations, and reflective diaries. Data will be analysed thematically and presented through arts-based dissemination. Findings will be shared and used as a catalyst to stimulate debate at a symposium event, where key stakeholders will be invited to contribute to a discussion and plan the next steps to explore, support and enhance primary music education as a collective pursuit.
Cunqiang Shi
Bangor University
Value awarded: £4,236
Co-applicant name: Dr Qi Cao
'Navigating the Uncertainty: Labour Market Participation of COVID-AI Generation'
This project investigates how the “Covid–AI generation” — young adults whose education and early career trajectories were disrupted by both the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence — navigate transitions into the labour market. Drawing on a mixed-methods design, the study combines secondary analysis of Understanding Society (UKHLS) data with qualitative focus groups and interviews across Wales and England. It examines how pandemic legacies, AI-driven workplace changes, and mental health intersect to shape employability, aspirations, and perceived fairness of opportunities. Preliminary analysis suggests that unemployment and inactivity remain disproportionately high among those reporting mental health difficulties and from minority backgrounds. By integrating statistical patterns with lived experiences, the project aims to identify who needs what support, and under what conditions. Findings will inform policy interventions in careers guidance, AI-skills development, and mental-health-informed employability support, ensuring that the Covid–AI generation is not left behind in the post-pandemic.
Jing Wang
Manchester Metropolitan University
Value awarded: £1,980
'From Principles to Practice: An Assessment Framework for Organisational AI adoption for Responsible Innovation'
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming how businesses create new products, services, and ways of working. Although numerous AI governance principles exist, such as the EU AI Act, the UK AI Framework, and ISO standards, many organisations still struggle to translate these high-level guidelines into practical actions for responsible AI adoption. Existing studies focus mainly on AI system design and development, with limited attention to implementation across diverse stakeholders. This project brings together government bodies, AI assurance institutions, technology developers, and business organisations to co-design an assessment framework that supports responsible and trustworthy AI-driven innovation. Working with partners including Manchester Digital, Advai, Check Point Software, and Manchester City Council, this project will gather insights through mixed-method research (interviews, surveys, collaborative workshops). The resulting framework will help organisations evaluate whether their AI practices are ethical, transparent, and sustainable, while also fostering a long-term partnership among the researcher, business and policy communities.
Morolake Dairo
Manchester Metropolitan University
Value awarded: £3,290
Co-applicant name: Dr Sharon Nunoo
'Sustaining International Creatives in the UK: Insights from International Fashion Designers'
Given the global competition for highly skilled talent, understanding how to attract and sustain international creatives is crucial for the UK. This study asks – How do international fashion designers navigate a new creative landscape (UK), and what resources/ opportunities are available to support them?
Adopting a multi-level qualitative approach, the study begins with content analysis to map institutional support and sector-specific opportunities across the UK (meso level). Followed by interviews with international fashion designers to explore their integration within the UK creative landscape (micro level). Workshops will validate findings and gather additional insights in collaboration with British Fashion Council and Creative UK.
The pilot will generate a resource list of support structures and a thematic analysis of international fashion designer experiences. Findings will also lay the groundwork for a larger study aimed at informing policy and practice to support the integration of international creatives in the UK creative sector.
Nicole Bulawa
Lancaster University
Value awarded: £4,892
'Mapping Hidden Infrastructures in the Cultural Webcomics Market: Comparing Methods'
Nowadays, most webcomics published on official platforms are also available on grey markets, reducing consumers’ reliance on official outlets. These grey markets are unofficial and often illegal, relying on piracy and fan translations, as well as a hidden infrastructure — i.e. the systems and tools needed for markets to operate. As research thus far has focused solely on official market infrastructures, clear methods for examining these grey infrastructures and their hidden parts, are lacking. Taking webcomics as the research context, this project will apply four distinct research methods (in-depth interviews, document analysis, artefact analysis, qualitative content analysis of online forums) to the mapping of these infrastructures, undertake a comparison of resultant insights, and provide method recommendations for future grey market infrastructure research. The resulting knowledge and visual outputs will inform policies to safeguard cultural heritage and encourage responsible consumption of digital content.
Nitish Kumar Singh
Liverpool Hope University
Value awarded: £3,001
'Bridging the Sustainability Gap: Behavioral Reasoning Behind Plastic Packaging Choices in the UK FMCG Sector'
Plastic packaging is one of the biggest environmental problems facing the UK today. Although many people want to reduce waste and support recycling, most products are still sold in packaging made from fossil-based plastics. At the same time, manufacturers often struggle to switch to greener materials because of higher costs, limited supply, and uncertainty about whether customers will buy these products. This study explores why these gaps exist by looking closely at how both consumers and manufacturers make decisions about packaging. Using interactive decision tasks and short surveys, the research will test how price, clear information, taxes, and availability affect people’s choices. It will also explore the reasons people give for choosing or avoiding sustainable packaging. The findings will help identify what genuinely encourages sustainable decisions and what holds people back. The results aim to support better policies, guide manufacturers, and help the UK move toward more environmentally friendly packaging.
Scotland Cluster
Adrianna Zabrzewska
Edinburgh Napier University
Value awarded: £4,900
'Pump Priming For Collaborative International Research On Friendship, Vulnerability, And Resilience In A Polarised World'
This pump priming project is a foundational step for an international, interdisciplinary study on friendship as resilience amid rising social fragmentation and political polarisation. The BA ECRN Seed Fund will support online team meetings and a one-week writing retreat to facilitate collaborative project design and strengthen its relevance for civil society and policymaking. The developed project will seek to redefine the traditional view of vulnerability and resilience as opposing concepts by examining the interplay of dependence and strength in friendship relations, positioning platonic models of relationality as blueprints for social resilience during times of crisis. Drawing on diverse lived experiences of precarity, it will focus on relational bonds beyond heteronormative nuclear family structures, investigating patterns of friendship formation in the UK, Italy, and Poland. This pump priming grant is crucial for laying the groundwork for the larger study, fuelling the collaborative preparation of an ESRC grant application.
Angus Sutherland
Independent Scholar
Value awarded: £2,439.6
'Reimagining rural transformation on the ground: Unearthing James Hogg’s agricultural works'
Ettrick in the Scottish Southern Uplands has been misunderstood since the early modern period as a laggard backwater. In fact, it has borne witness to extraordinary socio-economic, intellectual and aesthetic experiments, especially around the turn of the nineteenth century. James Hogg (1770-1835), often known as the Ettrick Shepherd, was someone in whom these trends coalesced, working as a farm labourer, shepherd and farmer whilst producing some of British Romanticism’s most important works of literature, most notably The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824). Still, Hogg’s agricultural labours—practical and intellectual—remain very partially researched. This project will consist of visits to private and estate archives in the neighbourhood of Hogg’s Ettrick. The findings will be disseminated in the form of a peer-reviewed journal article, a talk at a local agricultural show, and a reading group open to farmers and shepherds from Ettrick and the surrounding area.
Fay Niker
University of Stirling
Value awarded: £4,873.33
Co-applicant name: Dr Hannah Carnegy-Arbuthnott
'Investigating the Relationality of Consent: Childbirth, Consensuality, and Birthing Agency'
There is a growing recognition of the systemic mistreatment of women and birthing people during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Traumatic and negative birth experiences standardly involve failures to respect the agency of the birthing person. Moreover, women often report feeling undermined in their agency even in cases where institutional standards of informed consent have been met. To make progress on this critical and unresolved ethical challenge, this project brings together a multidisciplinary team—composed of philosophers, midwives, and birth researchers, in partnership with the Pregnancy and Parents Centre in Edinburgh—to interrogate the limitations of the dominant model of informed consent and to start developing a new, relational approach to understanding consent in the context of birthing agency. The project lays the groundwork for a larger research programme on birthing agency that stands to change the conversation about consent and agency in birthing, and to influence real change in maternity care settings.
Guanyu Ran
Edinburgh Napier University
Value awarded: £4,945.1
'Towards Inclusive Climate Action (TICA): Understanding and Promoting Ethnic Minority Communities’ Public Engagement in Scotland’s Net Zero Transition'
Towards Inclusive Climate Action” (TICA) project addresses the lack of understanding, practical strategies, and interventions for promoting ethnic minorities’ public engagement in Scotland’s Net Zero transition. By working with community organisations, local/central governments, and academics across Scotland, through an integrated two-step approach (Step-One: a collaborative networking event; Step-Two: three participatory drama workshops), the 9-month project aims to: 1) establish a sustained and collaborative network of key Scottish stakeholders to support the future public engagement of ethnic minorities in climate and environmental initiatives; 2) develop a better understanding of the current landscape of Scottish ethnic minorities’ engagement in climate and environmental action, to identify research gaps and inform the future research agenda on ethnic climate action in Scotland and beyond. Ultimately, this project paves the way for Scotland to become a leader in practising inclusive public engagement on climate and environmental issues, thereby facilitating its successful transition to Net Zero.
Khristin Fabian
Edinburgh Napier University
Value awarded: £4,716
'In The Age Of AI: Investigating Filipino And UK Pre-service Teachers Perspectives On The Future Of Education'
Society’s expectation of education is changing. As such, it is important to predict and prepare for future scenarios by engaging future teachers in what they perceive the possible distant future of education to be and where they position themselves in these possible futures. This study aims to answer these questions through a speculative research approach. Working in partnership with teacher education providers, pre-service teachers from the UK and the Philippines will participate workshops where they will engage with speculative fictions of education to imagine what education looks like in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Following the workshops, interviews will be conducted with participants to discuss further their views on the topic. By drawing on participants from the UK and the Philippines, the project will generate cross-cultural perspective on how pre-service teachers from a lower middle-income country and a high-income country imagine the future of education with AI.
Verda Munir
Robert Gordon University
Value awarded: £4,290
'Harbouring Heritage: Interactive Narratives and AI in Northeast Scottish Fishing Villages'
This pilot study explores how immersive, community-led storytelling can more authentically preserve and represent the cultural heritage of Buchanhaven, a historic fishing village in northeast Scotland. Through participatory workshops and digital co-creation, the project will document oral histories and digitally preserve key artefacts and locations using 3D scanning. The study contributes to digital heritage, participatory design, and community-led research by examining the role of lived experience in shaping cultural memory. Outcomes include a set of digitised heritage assets, a community showcase, and internal evaluation. The project aims to demonstrate how inclusive, co-designed digital tools can support the preservation of intangible heritage in ways that are emotionally resonant and historically grounded, while laying the foundation for future interactive storytelling and AI-based narrative comparison.
South East Cluster
Barasha Borthakur
University of Southampton
Value awarded: £4,770
'Grounding The Patent Map: A Post-Patent Landscape Study of Climate Adaptation Technologies (CCAT) in India'
Climate change presents profound and uneven challenges for India, from the intensifying heat and air pollution of Delhi NCR to recurrent flooding in Assam and growing water scarcity in Karnataka. This project investigates how legal, institutional, and social factors shape the development and circulation of climate change adaptation technologies (CCAT) across India’s agriculture, water, and health sectors. Building on my previous research mapping global patent landscapes, it integrates patent analysis with region-specific case studies to explore how inventors, firms, and research institutions navigate intellectual property systems within diverse socio-ecological contexts. The study also examines how state innovation agencies and support institutions enable or constrain collaboration and technology diffusion. By connecting patent law to the lived realities of climate adaptation, the project advances a socio-legal framework for inclusive innovation governance, offering evidence-based insights to make India’s IP regime more responsive to regional needs and climate resilience imperatives.
Bhumika Billa
University of Cambridge
Value awarded: £4,975
'Silences, Silencing, and Stickiness of Law: a case of (re)coding gender'
There is a growing hostility towards vulnerable identity groups in the UK. Yet, the law is proving increasingly ill-equipped to respond. In ‘For Women Scotland v. The Scottish Ministers [2025]’, the Supreme Court (re)coded the Equality Act’s silence on a precise definition of ‘woman’ to mean ‘biological’ woman. This interpretation significantly impacts the ability of non-binary and trans women to claim anti-discrimination protections, leading to further marginalisation. Through a case study of ‘For Women Scotland’, my project investigates the processes of legal coding and underlying mechanisms that reinforce injustice. Examining how statutory silences are selectively (re)coded, whose voices are silenced, and what kind of information sticks easily, I will understand and address the socio-legal challenge of classifying identities accurately. Ultimately, I will introduce an information-theoretical approach to facilitate inclusion of previously silenced voices, rendering them legible for future coding by information systems (such as law and digital identity systems).
Inja Stanovic
University of Surrey
Value awarded: £5,000
'Orchestral Echoes: Reconstructing, Relearning, Reflecting'
Orchestral Echoes: Reconstructing, Relearning, Reflecting is a nine-month pilot project exploring the sonic and cultural history of early orchestral recordings. Combining historical performance, mechanical recording technologies, advanced digital analysis and musicological research, the project will test methods for reconstructing early recordings using period instruments and historically informed techniques. Seed funding will support experimental recording sessions and collaborative workshops in which musicians and researchers relearn and reimagine early orchestral sound worlds. These activities will produce preliminary data on interpretative practice, ensemble interaction, and the influence of recording technology, shaping the design of a larger research proposal. By integrating creative practice with reflective analysis, Orchestral Echoes seeks to demonstrate the feasibility and value of reconstructing early orchestral sound as a research method. The project will also develop prototype engagement materials to connect historical sound practices with contemporary audiences, highlighting how early recordings continue to inform and inspire orchestral performance today.
Sarah-Jane Stewart
University of Surrey
Value awarded: £3,804
'The stigma and treatment experiences of GLP-1 weight loss injection users'
New injectable weight-management medications, such as Mounjaro and Wegovy, represent a major shift in obesity treatment but have also generated moralised and stigmatising narratives. Early evidence suggests that people using these treatments may experience unique stigma, such as being perceived as taking the “easy way out”. However, little is known about how this stigma affects their wellbeing, healthcare engagement, and treatment decisions. This seed project will explore the lived experiences of stigma among adults using GLP-1 weight-loss injections through qualitative interviews analysed using reflexive thematic analysis within a critical health psychology framework. Conducted in collaboration with Obesity UK, this project embeds Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) to ensure sensitivity to lived experience and co-development of future research priorities. Findings will inform stigma-sensitive obesity communication and care, resulting in an open-access peer-reviewed publication and a conference presentation, and will provide the foundation for a subsequent large-scale collaborative funding application (e.g. ESRC).
Serena Tomlinson
University of Kent
Value awarded: £4,973
Co-applicant name: Dr Aida Malovic
'Exploring experiences of early parenthood for parents with an intellectual disability'
In the UK, early parenthood among parents with an intellectual disability (ID) remains under-researched and largely invisible, despite this period representing a significant transition for all parents. As a result, this limits the extent to which support can be tailored to individual needs. This project, in collaboration with local charities and a parent with ID as an expert by experience, aims to explore experiences of early parenting for parents with an ID through a series of innovative workshops, each focusing on a specific aspect of early parenting. Utilising participant-led discussion and creative arts-based methods, results will provide both a thematic account and a co-created visual representation of parenting experiences, highlighting what makes parenting support feel accessible, affirming, and practically useful for parents with ID. This will enable the creation of tailored supports and inform future work in this significantly under-researched area.
South West and South Wales Cluster
Eliana Osorio
Independent Scholar
Value awarded: £4,990
'TRUE - Through RUral Eyes: Rural Childhoods and the Future of AI Literacy'
TRUE–Through Rural Eyes investigates how children, teachers, and families in rural England and Colombia understand, experience, and imagine artificial intelligence (AI) in their everyday lives. Working in partnership with schools in both countries, the project explores how rurality, culture, and educational infrastructures shape AI literacy and digital engagement.
Using a hybrid ethnographic approach (participatory storytelling, photography, interviews, and hands-on AI literacy workshops), the project captures the diverse ways rural communities make sense of AI. Participants will co-curate images and narratives into a bilingual online photography exhibition. As a seed project, TRUE is designed to establish a sustainable international collaboration and generate comparative pilot data that will underpin larger future projects examining AI engagement across the Global North–Global South. It will support a bilingual online photography exhibition and the development of a monograph for the Qualitative and Visual Methodologies in Educational Research series.
Ilias Gerogiannis
University of the West of England, Bristol
Value awarded: £4,240
'Exploring LGBTQ+ inclusive sourcing in the UK'
This research project aims to explore the current landscape of LGBTQ+ supplier inclusion initiatives in the UK. The focus will be on identifying best practices to promote inclusivity in procurement, uncovering potential barriers that LGBTQ+ -owned businesses may face in accessing supply chain opportunities, and examining the role of the national LGBTQ+ chamber of commerce in promoting inclusive sourcing in the UK. The ultimate goal is to highlight best practices and offer recommendations to improve supplier diversity and inclusion for LGBTQ+ businesses in the UK. The findings will contribute to a broader research agenda and inform future collaborative funding proposals.
Na Young Ahn
Bournemouth University
Value awarded: £5,000
'From bicycles to cycles: Exploring sociocultural meanings and practices of the cycling shift in South Korea with cross-cultural insights'
This project investigates South Korea’s emerging shift from bicycles as practical transport to cycles as a lifestyle, identity, and meaning-making practice shaped by fitness cultures, youth subcultures, and SNS-based communities. While cycling in the UK is associated with sustainability agendas and middle-class consumption, South Korean cycling cultures remain underexplored, particularly regarding class, age, and policy contexts. Through cross-cultural comparison with the UK, this pilot study employs a qualitative case study design using semi-structured interviews, observations, and policy document analysis to examine how social structures and policy frameworks influence cyclists' motivations, experiences, identities, and cultural meanings. Funding will support fieldwork, translation and transcription, and the development of collaborative links with cycling organisations. The project will generate novel sociocultural insights into cycling practices in South Korea and provide policy-relevant recommendations for cycling, sport, youth leisure, health, and urban mobility development.
Suwita Hani Randhawa
University of the West of England, Bristol
Value awarded: £4,929
'Ecocide Research Network'
This application builds upon the outcomes of the ‘Ecocide in Global Politics’ workshop, a two-day research I organized at UWE Bristol in June 2025 with support from a British Academy ECRN Development Fund. Seizing on the intellectual momentum and collaborative energy fostered by the workshop, this proposal is aimed at the establishment of a new UK-wide research network: the Ecocide Research Network. Given ecocide’s growing significance in contemporary global politics, this initiative seeks to formalize emerging scholarly interest and collaboration on this topic, as well as to lay the foundations for sustained and impactful exchange between researchers, policy makers, and activists within the field of ecological/climate justice. To that end, the application is directed at supporting the proposed network’s formative stages, namely: establishment of its overarching vision, scope and strategic objectives; development of its digital infrastructure and presence; and organization of an inaugural event to formally launch the new network.
Yorkshire and the Humber Cluster
Diana Peel
University of Leeds
Value awarded: £3,275
'Empire States of Mind: Law, Psychiatry and Criminal Responsibility in Colonial Kenya'
This project investigates the emergence, interpretation, and application of the insanity plea in colonial Kenya between 1930 and 1963. Combining legal history with histories of psychiatry and empire, it examines how colonial courts understood “insanity,” how African defendants and communities navigated psychiatric classification, and how such cases shaped broader debates about criminal responsibility and “native” subjecthood. Through archival research in the Kenya National Archives and the UK National Archives, the project will reconstruct case histories, assess medico-legal practices, and analyse the intersections between race, mental health, and colonial governance. The project is timely, as Kenya reforms colonial-era mental health governance with the decriminalisation of assisted suicide in January 2025, making archival insights into colonial precedent particularly relevant. The project will produce the first systematic study of insanity defences in East Africa’s colonial courts and provides a pilot dataset for a larger grant on colonial psychiatry and criminal law.
Kelly Donegan
University of York
Value awarded: £4,956
Co-applicant name: Dr. Alexandra Pike
'Understanding the dynamics of control in eating disorders'
At least 4 million people in the UK are affected by an eating disorder. These are serious mental health conditions with some of the highest rates of mortality. Many people with an eating disorder describe feeling a lack of control in their lives and try to regain this through extreme control over food, weight, or exercise. Yet there is little scientific evidence explaining how these patterns of control develop or are maintained. This project aims to explore how people’s sense of control, and their need to exert control, relates to eating disorders, and how these patterns may vary over time. It also aims to explore whether control-related experiences are unique to eating disorders or are shared with other mental health conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder. By understanding the dynamics of control, we hope to find better ways to support and improve treatment for eating disorders.
Laura Fearnley
University of York
Value awarded: £3,569.7
Co-applicant name: Nathan Hughes
'Rethinking the Conceptual and Normative Foundations of AI Safety'
The field of AI safety has attracted major public, political, and financial attention, yet no consensus has emerged about its scope and aims. Indeed, the field is increasingly defined as much by internal disagreements over its priorities as by its subject matter. This conceptual discordancy has resulted in inconsistent safety benchmarks, regulatory gaps, and fragmented governance.
This project addresses these problems by treating AI safety itself as an object of conceptual analysis. Through a series of workshops, it will bring together experts from philosophy, psychology, computer science, industry, and policy to examine which conception of AI safety best serves scientific, regulatory, and ethical aims. The outcome will be a collaboratively developed conceptual framework for AI safety, supporting a more coherent research agenda and establishing a lasting interdisciplinary network to sustain future cross-sector collaboration.
Tian Ye
Leeds Beckett University
Value awarded: £4,880
'Trust in AI Transparency: Investigating Public Perceptions and Responses to Government and Platform Labelling Initiatives'
With the rise of generative AI, users increasingly encounter images, videos, and text created or altered by algorithms, raising concerns about trust, misinformation, and transparency. In response, governments and digital platforms have begun to propose or implement AI content labelling, yet little is known about how the public perceive and respond to such labels. Understanding public perceptions and reactions is critical: clear and credible labelling can enhance trust, support informed engagement, and promote responsible content sharing, while misinterpretation or mistrust may reduce effectiveness or spread confusion. This project adopts a two-stage approach. First, public online discussions will be analysed to identify opinions, concerns, and expectations regarding AI labelling. Second, a survey-based experiment with UK participants will test how labelling authority and disclosure mechanisms influence trust and engagement. Findings will provide insights for policymakers and platforms into designing AI transparency measures that are effective, socially inclusive, and evidence based.
Please note: Awards are arranged alphabetically by surname of the grant recipient. The institution is that given at the time of application.