Postdoctoral Fellowship Awards 2024-25

Dr Tahir Abass

PFSS25\250026

‘Custodial Citizenship and Parental Imprisonment: British Muslim children’s experiences of inequality, identity and belonging.’

University of Oxford

£387,187.29

A substantial body of international research has consistently documented a host of harmful and enduring outcomes associated with parental imprisonment. Yet in England and Wales, minoritised children’s experiences are largely absent within this scholarship, despite stark racial and religious disparities in the prison estate. This study focuses on the parental imprisonment of Muslim children, as this community has been increasingly criminalised in recent years and currently accounts for 18% of the prison population (or 1 in 6 prisoners). The project will use participatory methods and combine focus groups and narrative interviews with young Muslim adults to reflect on their experiences as children of prisoners. By integrating citizenship and punishment theories, this study will examine how parental imprisonment shapes this group’s sense of belonging and identity and their civic and political participation in society. This will include exploring how the unequal distribution of parental imprisonment converges with pre-existing inequality and marginalisation.

Dr Lucia Akard

PFSS25\250022

‘Sex Workers and Community in Dijon, 1400-1500'

University of York

£326,247.68

Dijon, a city in Burgundy, had a bustling sex trade in the fifteenth century. Sex work was legalized in public brothels that were run by the city, but it was also practiced illicitly by women of varying status and means. Sex workers lived and worked in the same areas, and built connections and community with one another. They were one another’s closest collaborators, and often, fiercest rivals. They were embedded in the municipality and in civic life, as the city of Dijon and its residents recognised sex work as an economic powerhouse. However, they were also viewed as second-class citizens. They were subject to abuse, abduction, and rape in their line of work, and frequently interrogated by the city’s criminal justice. This project will explore the complexities of such a community, which was both marginal and central, oppressed and powerful, marked by shame and yet flourishing.

Dr Kristen Baker

PFSS25\250014

‘Understanding forensic face matching through collaborative decision-making'

University of Kent

£382,271.00

In forensic face matching, pairs of face images are compared to establish whether they show the same person. This task is performed by personnel in border and police settings, either directly or through supervision of automatic systems. This task is surprisingly difficult and the underpinning cognitive processes remain little understood. Progress has been hampered as this task is normally investigated as a solitary process, in which individuals work in isolation. The aim of this project is to understand face matching through collaborative social interactions between observers. Joint problem-solving elicits complex verbal and nonverbal behaviours that can reveal the information used for identification decisions. I will study this using paradigms that elicit varying degrees of information sharing, with lay observers and forensic experts, and combine measures of accuracy, dialogue, attention, nonverbal gestures, and data from automatic face recognition systems. This will inform a model that captures the processes underpinning face matching.

Dr Marcus Bell

PFSS25\250101

‘Extinction, Tragedy: Queer Dance and the Transformation of the Tragic’

University College London

£385,346.22

For the last thirty years, theatre practitioners from Simon McBurney to Akram Khan have addressed the terrible reality of climate catastrophe by embracing choreography, decoloniality, and queer theory. But what role has queer dance played in the development of these contemporary forms of ecological performance? Providing a ground-breaking new narrative of tragedy and climate change, my project analyses the neglected contribution of ten queer artists who bring dance-theatre strategies developed during the HIV/AIDS crisis to bear on species extinction. Arguing that their return to the experience of annihilation engendered by HIV/AIDS redefines our understanding of agency, collectivity, and embodiment—troubled by ongoing waves of extinction—, I recover dance’s striking centrality. Combining Classical Reception, Performance and Queer Studies, an 85,000-word monograph will establish queer dance as an important site for re-figuring tragedy as a more-than-human, viral, and ecological force generating novel understandings of the tragic and its capacity to articulate socio-political critique.

Dr Emma Bird

PFSS25\250020

‘Reconstructing Hand Use and the Division of Labour in Living, Historic, and Prehistoric Populations.’

Natural History Museum

£321,331.12

The extraordinary dexterity of the human hand enables diverse cultural practices through the use of specialised tools and technology. The division of labour is a common feature of human societies, which is often differently stratified by factors such as sex, age, and economic structure. However, whether this is a unique aspect of our culture is uncertain as reconstructions of Neanderthal manual behaviour have produced mixed results. Even in archaeological Homo sapiens populations, it is often unclear how labour was divided. This project addresses this gap by developing a framework to infer manual behaviour from human remains via the novel integration of a grip pressure study with an osteological analysis of a known-occupation historic collection. In parallel, the project will shed light on the evolution of tool-use culture via new insights into the divisions of labour in 18th–19th century London, Later Stone Age Morocco, and Palaeolithic H. sapiens and Neanderthals.

Dr Lauren Bouttell

PFSS25\250117

‘Recognising the informal learning of sanctuary seekers in the East of England’

University of East Anglia

£320,442.75

This project will explore how the informal learning of sanctuary seekers is currently perceived, how it can be better recognised, and develop a much-needed framework to acknowledge such learning in community contexts. Building on the findings of my doctoral research, which has revealed the extent of informal learning of refugees in the UK, the proposed project moves to answer the question of how this learning can be acknowledged through a methodological intervention that prioritises the consultation of refugees in concert with other community stakeholders in Norwich and the East of England. Improvement to the recognition of the informal, everyday learning of refugees has the potential to enhance social connections by highlighting skills for local employers, and will contribute to the conceptualisation and value of informal learning of refugees, a much-neglected area of research in education.

Dr Phoebe Braithwaite

PFSS25\250104

‘The End of Man is Death: Black-Jewish Dialogues in Secular Redemption’

University College London

£383,034.14

This project explores the relationships both real and intellectual between black and Jewish thinkers in the twentieth century, delineating continuities in the depictions of 'secular redemption' that emerge from their bodies of thought. It reconstructs signal dialogues between figures from these rich traditions, attending to points at which their bodies of thought diverge and coincide. The idea that suffering has redemptive value has been a staple in both communities: this project excavates the ‘trauma’ bequeathed by conjoint histories of minoritisation to consider dialogues between them. Assessing thinkers in pairs, it weighs the value of love, repair and intellectual friendship against the salience of 'critique'. Analysing the work of: W.E.B. Du Bois and Joel Spingarn; June Jordan and Adrienne Rich; Frantz Fanon and Jean Améry; Achille Mbembe and Franz Rosenzweig; and Toni Morrison and Primo Levi, it inspects these pairings to limn the contours of a composite counter-canon in Black-Jewish thought.

Dr Fred Carter

PFSS25\250060

‘Maintenance Costs: On the Refuse, Refusal, & Repair of Infrastructure’

University of Glasgow

£325,082.00

Amid the escalating breakdown of infrastructural and environmental systems, addressing contemporary crises requires renewed attention to maintenance. Who performs the work of repair? What kind of systems are sustained or reproduced by infrastructure? And what are the social and ecological costs of maintaining the status quo? Focusing on the political and aesthetic dimensions of infrastructure, this project reframes maintenance as a practice that exceeds technical repair. While waste, water, and other often-unseen infrastructures sustain conditions for the reproduction of everyday life, "Maintenance Costs" reveals how material systems also come to shape social relations. Examining these processes together, feminist theories of social reproduction offer an alternative to limited paradigms of either solutionism or broken-world thinking. Assembling an archive that stretches from Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s maintenance art and June Jordan’s infrastructural interventions to contemporary feminist poetics, this project looks beyond the reproduction of broken systems to imagine worlds built and maintained otherwise.

Dr Xunchang Cheng

PFSS25\250068

‘A critical examination of Chinese typeface design: dilemmas in the Mechanical Age and opportunities in the Digital Age, 1940s–1990s’

University of Reading

£294,790.00

This project conducts a multi-dimensional academic evaluation of Chinese typeface design from the 1940s to the 1990s, focusing on its transformation in the context of technological, cultural and political changes in China. The transition from mechanical movable type to phototypesetting, followed by a swift move to digital fonts, required continuous adjustments in the Chinese typeface design to align with evolving technological capabilities and governmental policies. As the visual representation of Chinese characters, Chinese typefaces sought to maintain a delicate balance between functionality and aesthetic tradition. This project, the first to be conducted in English, utilises original archival materials from China, the UK and other countries to reshape this history from the typographic perspective, providing a systematic framework for studying Chinese typeface design. By situating typeface design within the larger narrative of China’s modernisation, this project offers new insights into its role in shaping modern Chinese cultural identity.

Dr Christopher Cooper-Davies

PFSS25\250027

‘The Making of Global Shi'ism: Scholars, Migrants, and Migrating Ideologies c. 1900 – 1979'

SOAS University of London

£432,756.55

This research project analyses the global dimensions of Shi’i Islam in the twentieth century. It posits an innovative micro-historical methodology for the study of transnational religious phenomena by reconstructing the movements, activities and networks of mobile Arab Shi’i actors across the Middle East, North America, South Asia and beyond. Using scattered family, institutional and state archives in Iraq, Lebanon, the UK and USA, the project draws together working-class histories of labour migration and intellectual histories of Islamic political thought. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Shi’ism has played a central role in the politics of the Middle East. By pushing back the history of global Shi’ism to the early twentieth century and resituating it in the Arab world and its diasporas, the project challenges narratives of Shi’i sectarianism and radicalisation, offering an alternative genealogy for the emergence of Shi’ism as an assertive global religious movement today.

Dr Jun Feng

PFSS25\250106

‘Creative Economies and Female Musicians of Rural China at the Interstices of State Policy’

SOAS University of London

£424,473.09

This project challenges mainstream definitions of musical creativity in English-language scholarship, often framed within models of individual talent, by investigating the creativity of ordinary people in community-based music-making contexts. Through ethnographic research in rural China, the study explores the contexts, motivations, and inspirations driving the musical creativity of female musicians, who have become new forces in local music-making—a space traditionally dominated by male villagers. Drawing on scholarly critiques of heritage initiatives, which frequently fail to sustain cultural traditions within their communities, the research examines the autonomy and vitality of grassroots musicians, operating beyond China’s national cultural policies, to inspire innovative cultural preservation strategies. This research emphasises the intersection of musical creativity and micro-economies, investigating how creative music-making as economic strategies enhances rural economic development, women’s social engagement and gender relations within local communities.

Dr Eduardo Fernández Guerrero

PFSS25\250045

‘European Translations of African Christianity: Ethiopian Religion through Humanist Writings’

School of Advanced Study, University of London

£292,548.00

This project investigates the production and dissemination of knowledge about African Christianity in Europe during the sixteenth century, focusing on Ethiopian Christianity and its representation by European authors. Central to this research is the examination of texts by African Christians, their European translations and adaptations, and the dynamics of their readership: more especifically, the main case study revolves around the Ethiopian writings by Damião de Góis and Ṣägga Zäᵓab on Ethiopian religious practices as a key site for negotiating early modern genealogies of Christian and European identities. Unlike most previous scholarship, which has often focused on diplomatic and geopolitical aspects or individual Ethiopian figures, this project uses religion and ethnography as lenses to explore the transcontinental co-production of knowledge, particularly in the context of the Protestant Reformation and Iberian colonial expansion, thus aiming to recenter African agency in European early modern intellectual history.

Dr Rosamund Fitzmaurice

PFSS25\250093

‘Labour, power, and control in Precolonial Mesoamerica, 600-1521 CE University of Glasgow’

£321,145.00

Labour, power, and control determined patterns of dependency and hierarchy within the highly stratified societies of Precolumbian Mesoamerica. In this fellowship I will explore the understudied topic of dependency and labour exploitation in Mesoamerica before the Spanish invasion, as previous work on dependency has been limited to the Colonial period. My research is interdisciplinary, using sources and methodologies from history, archaeology and art history. Through three case studies over three years I will uncover where and when the diverse peoples of Mesoamerica (now central and southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, western Honduras), experienced elite co-option of collective labour and labour taxation (corvée). Additionally, I will explore how elites used others’ labour for self-aggrandisement and how local leaders performed specific labours demonstrating their own reliance upon those they governed. My case studies reflect the nuance among the cultures of Mesoamerica, while understanding their shared societies, politics, and cosmos.

Dr Gonzalo Garcia-Campo

PFSS25\250023

‘Everyday Security Practices in a Rising Crime Setting: The Case of Neoliberal Chile’

University of Oxford

£378,505.46

Security dominates 21st-century politics, permeating all aspects of governance. However, criminology has underexplored this concept and its impacts on people's daily lives. This study addresses this gap by examining how residents of two marginalised Chilean neighbourhoods, facing acute safety threats, navigate their environments, enacting practices of care and solidarity while excluding those perceived as threatening. Chile provides a compelling case study, where deep-seated neoliberalism and resultant individualism intersect with rising crime rates and institutional detachment, creating a complex landscape for security governance. Through an integrated approach combining immersive fieldwork, interviews, focus groups, and participatory methods, I explore how people conceptualise security, identify allies and threats, and interact with state security programmes. The project promises significant theoretical contributions by uncovering novel practices of care and solidarity mobilised around security, potentially informing more democratic crime control politics. It brings vital perspectives from the Global South to emerging everyday security studies.

Dr Clementina Giulia Maria Gentile Fusillo

PFSS25\250057

‘(RE)DISCOVERING ALDO MORO AS A POLITICAL THEORIST’

Goldsmiths, University of London

£303,881.28

The kidnap and murder in 1978 of Aldo Moro, five-times Christian Democrat Prime Minister of Italy, is widely recognized as a key political event of the twentieth century. Yet, the focus on the tragic and obscure circumstances of his death have overshadowed Moro’s importance not only as a major political actor, but also and especially as a complex political thinker, one who remained Professor of Law throughout his political career. This project provides the first comprehensive account of Moro’s political theory, investigating this across three dimensions: a contextual dimension, looking at the intellectual and political context of his work and his specific contribution to Christian Democratic ideology; a conceptual dimension, exploring the key concepts and central themes of his political thought; and a normative dimension, revealing the relevance of Moro’s radical view of Centre politics in addressing the challenges that populism and growing political polarisation pose for representative democracies today.

Dr Mariagiulia Grassilli

PFSS25\250125

‘African Film Archives: collaborative practices of restoration and preservation of film heritage’

University of East Anglia

£317,900.06

With cultural institutions and film archives engaging in global restoration projects in world cinema, it is important to investigate the ethical issues that surround public (and private) audiovisual archiving in an age of wider decolonisation processes: those include aspects of inclusivity, socio-economic conditions, geographical divides and transoceanic connectivity. This research focuses on African Film Archives and questions of restitution and agency that arise in the attempt to archive, restore, preserve and relaunch African films. Developing the first comprehensive and comparative analysis of large scale archive restoration projects relating to African film – both African postcolonial cinema and the visuals of colonial film production – I will critically assess the complex dynamics of international archiving and restoration: how is ownership negotiated when restoring African film? What different collaborative strategies are developed to engage with different archive organisations? How have projects addressed unequal Global North/South archive power relations beyond misappropriation and misrepresentation?

Dr Katie Harling-Lee

PFSS25\250103

‘Quiet Literary Listening: Quaker Silence in the Novels of Dorothy Canfield Fisher’

University of Edinburgh

£320,209.56

Must silence signify the disempowering absence of voice? This project explores silence in the out-of-print fiction of neglected twentieth-century author Dorothy Canfield Fisher, using archival research to consider her literary strategies for conveying silence as a source of power. I argue that Canfield Fisher’s writing was influenced by her personal experience of Quakerism, a religious practice in which communal silent worship is foundational. By analysing techniques of literary silence in her work, I ask how a Quaker perspective transforms our understanding of silence, rendering it a positive force when understood as a shared experience of attentive, embodied listening with therapeutic potential. I thereby bring necessary nuance to contemporary discussions of silence in literature and wider sonic studies, by countering the assumption that silence must always indicate suppression. In re-assessing Canfield Fisher, I revise her place in modernist scholarship, and consider the wider cultural significance of silence in the suffrage age.

Dr Mary Brenda Herbert

PFSS25\250044

‘It's never too late for a happy childhood: The (un)making of happy childhoods’

University College London

£401,118.00

There is a growing moral panic both in the UK and internationally about the unhappiness of children and young people, yet what constitutes happiness is often taken-for-granted, with the desirability of uninterrupted happiness simply assumed. To date, there has been limited interrogation of how this call for happiness affects children from marginalised communities, including its unintended potential to exclude and pathologise - a lacuna that this project seeks to address. Using multimodal ethnography, including art groups, participant observation, photography, walking, and other creative methods, I will explore with children and their parents/carers what is ‘happiness’, who gets to be happy and the unintended consequences of valorising perpetual happiness. The participants will be drawn from communities marginalised through poverty, race, disability, and insecure immigration status. My research will widen the discourse on happiness by interrogating the trope of the ‘happy child’ and create a nuanced conceptualisation of happiness.

Dr Joris Hoste

PFSS25\250115

‘On the causes and consequences of market integration through transportation’

University of Cambridge

£365,941.07

I propose three projects that aim to advance our understanding of the causes and consequences of market fragmentation. These projects will address two key challenges in international economics: (1) quantifying non-trade-policy barriers that fragment markets and (2) providing evidence on the dynamic gains from market integration. One project will assess how regulatory changes increased EU-UK transport costs after the UK’s departure from the EU. Two other projects will investigate whether high-speed rail investments reduce informational frictions and generate economic growth by making supply chains more efficient and fostering knowledge diffusion. This research should also appeal to policymakers in Europe by offering fresh insights into how Brexit has fragmented European markets and high-speed rail investments promote regional integration. In an era where policymakers are increasingly inward-looking, providing evidence on the causes and consequences of market fragmentation is essential for informing the public debate on integration versus fragmentation.

Dr Toby Huelin

PFSS25\250013

‘Using Big Music Data to Understand Small-Screen Soundtracks’

Newcastle University

£308,213.00

Television music represents one of the most ubiquitous aspects of mass-media culture. Often neglected in scholarship, I argue that television music provides an important frame for examining shifting media-production practices in an increasingly fragmented audiovisual landscape. Using an innovative, data-driven methodology combining large-scale quantitative approaches (‘Big Music Data’) with expert practitioner testimony, the project maps three critical areas of industrial change: diversification of musical styles, evolving patterns of cultural representation, and heightened convergence between popular and screen music. In doing so, the project offers an original synthesis of 'distant' (over the long term, what has changed?) and 'close' reading (in specific instances, why have these changes occurred?), establishing interdisciplinary links between screen-music studies, digital musicology, and media studies. Consequently, this research answers an urgent need for scholarship to build a comprehensive understanding of the functions of television music, delivering novel analytical tools that significantly advance research on music and media.

Dr Ceri Hughes

PFSS25\250110

‘More or less: can low-wage workers benefit from voluntary working time initiatives?’

University of Manchester

£361,501.03

The UK’s working time agenda relies on individual workers negotiating working time adjustments with their employer to the disadvantage of lower paid workers, who tend to be in less stable employment relationships, facing work schedules shaped by employer needs, and unlikely to benefit from voluntary working time initiatives like the four-day week, or the ‘living hours’ campaign. This research will examine how a voluntarist, firm-level approach to negotiating better working hours can disadvantage low-wage workers, and will consult with workers, unions and policymakers to understand how the working time concerns of low wage workers could be addressed more fully. It will analyse how employers engage, or not, with voluntary working time initiatives and whether and how they include lower wage workers. It will also explore the views of workers in lower paid service industries on the implications of working time changes and their priorities for a fairer working time agenda.

Dr Paul Kitching

PFSS25\250058

‘Maritime powerscapes: reconnecting late-Roman littoral infrastructure in northwest Europe.’

Durham University

£359,130.82

Roman frontiers are typically pictured cutting across landscapes, but frontier works were also built along the coastlines of the northern provinces. This littoral cultural heritage remains underexplored and under-theorised. The proposed project seeks to address this research gap through a historiographic and archaeological analysis of late-Roman coastal infrastructure in Britain and northwest Europe, examining how the physical reworking of the coast reinforces imperial power through the creation of a ‘maritime powerscape’. Hitherto, the forts, watchtowers, camps, and other monuments that testify to this reworking have invariably been interpreted as: preclusive defences against invasion; constabulary efforts for combatting piracy; or economic systems for controlling trade. Developed in research silos and shaped by land-centric perspectives, these interpretations are ripe for revision. By harnessing legacy data, reconnecting sites previously viewed in isolation and studying them in their maritime context, the research re-evaluates the Roman approach to maritime frontiers and the broader Atlantic world.

Dr Xuan Li

PFSS25\250006

‘The development of second language (L2) learners’ comprehension and production of online sarcasm’

University of Bristol

£353,107.63

Sarcasm, a complex form of irony, often creates significant comprehension challenges for English learners, leading to misunderstandings in intercultural communication. This study, based on relevance theory, investigates the teachability of sarcasm comprehension (SC) and production (SP) among Chinese adult English learners. Using a SC model including linguistic cues and six types of contextual cues developed from my PhD study, this research explores whether systematic instruction can improve SC and SP in online contexts like Twitter (now called X). Key questions focus on how much L2 learners improve, what factors influence their progress, and how instruction helps in their SC and SP. This study will determine the extent to which seven selected prototypical cues, and the use of computer-mediated platforms like X, lead to effective sarcasm instruction from both psychological and educational perspectives. The resulting publications will provide future insights for sarcasm research, and clear lesson plans for educators.

Dr Aileen Lichtenstein

PFSS25\250066

‘Feeling political: how emotions shaped German exile political activism, 1840–1945’

Northumbria University

£331,884.22

This project aims to study experiences of political exile through the history of emotions, showing how feelings and their expressions helped to shape the activism of exiles just as much as ideology did. Taking a long-durée approach by drawing on the experiences of German political refugees between 1840 and 1945, the project assesses the role of emotions such as love and friendship, longing for liberty, hope, loyalty, ambition, anger, jealousy, belonging and loss in the complex, narrow environment of exile participatory politics. It assesses the ‘emotional templates’ that exile associations or clubs and publications created, instrumentalised and manipulated to shape refugee activism and their sense of belonging. Linking the history of emotions with polycentric approaches to German history, this project seeks to understand the larger social and political implications that emotions held for German political refugees finding their way to new forms of activisms, mobilisation, group dynamics and identities.

Dr Lilith Mace

PFSS25\250017

‘Dangerous Doubts: Defects of Doubting in Epistemology, Psychology, and Politics’

University of Glasgow

£337,433.00

The orthodox view in Philosophy is that doubting is always epistemically permissible: permissible from the perspective of acquiring and maintaining knowledge. Recent societal developments have shown this picture to be dangerously naïve. We face a global information crisis that the United Nations has declared an existential threat to humanity. Misinformation and disinformation have engendered widespread doubts about vaccine safety, scientific expertise, and the legitimacy of democratic institutions amid a worldwide pandemic. In this project, I argue that such doubts are not only practically harmful, but epistemically flawed. I develop a novel theory of the normativity of doubt that explains the epistemic defect involved in these doubts, while illuminating the role doubt plays in guiding thought and action at the individual, group, and societal level. Norms governing doubt are understood in terms of doubt’s function within cognition, which I argue is to protect against epistemic risk: the risk of believing erroneously.

Dr Catherine McAllister

PFSS25\250072

‘Chronic Pain and the Modern British Welfare State c.1850-1990’

University of Sheffield

£320,384.00

This project provides a transformative history of chronic pain in modern Britain. During the industrial revolution, chronic pain was linked to bodily inflammation and seen as common in male workers. By the late twentieth century however, this condition had become seen as a sensory and emotional experience common in women. This project explores the connections between chronic pain, the economics of industrial Britain and the modern welfare state. Focusing on the archetypal industrial city of Sheffield, it traces the emergence of three concepts of chronic pain between 1850 and 1990. Each concept was shaped by shifting economic priorities around health provision and placed responsibility with industry, the state or the individual. Exploring the relationship between ideas of chronic pain, the state and the economy in the past helps understand the inequalities which guide how women and their bodies are treated in the present and to imagine a more equitable future.

Dr Harry Parker

PFSS25\250048

‘Ecology, interdisciplinarity, and the uses of landscape history in Britain’s twentieth century’

University of Leeds

£378,913.46

Arguments about the impact of humans on the natural world often involve arguments about the past: about how the world would have looked, or did look, before humans came along. This research project investigates why ecological history came to be so important in debates about the environment in twentieth-century Britain. It does so by tracking the fate of an influential genre of scholarly and popular writing – ‘landscape history’ – that sprang up across the science-humanities divide and which exerted an important influence on debates about environmental conservation. Surprisingly, historians have paid the genre little attention. This project, however, will show that studying it can: (i) further our understanding of environmental politics by revealing the varied ideological and political uses to which knowledge about the ecological past was put; and (ii) shed light on the development, dynamics, and limits of interdisciplinary collaboration between the humanities and sciences.

Dr Angelica Puzio Ferrara

PFSS25\250113

‘Understanding Individual, Relational and Structural Consequences of Male Social Network Decline’

London School of Economics and Political Science

£397,397.42

Social isolation and loneliness are increasingly recognised as gendered social phenomena, particularly in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. While loneliness is rising for all genders, research shows that men in particular struggle to form emotionally supportive relationships beyond romantic ties with women. A decline in participation in public spaces and negative features of masculine norms can limit men’s ability to build close friendships with other men, often increasing the emotional labour women provide in support of men’s networks. In three studies, this research examines (a) the extent to which women bolster men’s social networks without equal reciprocity, (b) how women enact and understand this role and (c) its subsequent effects on individuals and their relationships. Findings will characterise the impact of men’s changing social networks on gender inequality at large and generate practical strategies to reduce women’s emotional work while enhancing the strength of men’s social support systems.

Dr Paulina Rodriguez Anaiz

PFSS25\250031

‘From Access to Inclusion: Cross-Class Dynamics in Academically Selective Institutions’

University of Oxford

£385,769.47

Social class—or socioeconomic status—is one of the most powerful social structures shaping students' outcomes and experiences within education. This is especially relevant in “gateway institutions” like elite universities, where social interactions can have long-term consequences for life outcomes. While these institutions increasingly focus on diversity and inclusion, the everyday dynamics that sustain—or potentially challenge—social divisions remain underexplored. This project investigates cross-class encounters within an Oxbridge college, where students from diverse backgrounds share daily life. Using an innovative multi-method approach—including naturalistic observations, surveys, and interviews—it will generate new insights into how physical space, cultural schemas and social hierarchies shape these interactions. By focusing on cross-class encounters, this research promises to generate new knowledge on how everyday interactions can impact broader societal outcomes, from social inclusion to elite reproduction, engaging with larger debates of social cohesion. It will also offer practical recommendations to foster more inclusive academic environments.

Dr Eléonore Rolland

PFSS25\250088

‘How does maternal care shape the offspring’s future life in chacma baboons (Papio ursinus)?’

University College London

£383,532.64

How do mothers shape their child’s life? Maternal care in most mammals is crucial for offspring survival and development, and caregiving style can significantly shape the behavior and sociality of offspring. Despite this, the long-term effects of maternal care remain poorly understood, particularly into adulthood. Building on parent-offspring conflict theory and integrating evolutionary biology and social science perspectives, this study examines how maternal behaviors—ranging from protectiveness to rejection—influence offspring independence, sociality, and personality traits. Drawing on existing long-term behavioral data and a new dataset on wild chacma baboons (Papio ursinus), a species closely related to humans with shorter maternal dependency, I aim to determine how maternal care shapes the future lives of offspring. The findings will enhance our knowledge of the maternal role in shaping the emergent properties of primate social lives, and provide insights relevant to human parenting and social development.

Dr Anita Sethi

PFSS25\250121

‘I Am Not An Object’

School of Advanced Study, University of London

£294,352.00

How does it feel to be objectified? This is a question I explore through a creative place-based approach to history. As a woman of colour descended from indentured labourers, I have been objectified and dehumanised throughout my life. This project mobilises the lived experience of racist abuse and colonial exploitation to interrogate the relationship between people, place and the natural world.  It is organised around a reflexive journey through slices of familial history, moving from contemporary and twentieth-century racist violence to the indentured servitude of humans toiling on sugarcane plantations. At each stage I look outwards to formal and informal archives, including the colonial archives of natural history collections. I assess and interrogate archival gaps and explore creative ways of filling them.  My methodology creates a research pathway to demonstrate the causes and effects of the objectification of both people of colour and the natural world.

Dr Michal Shimonovich

PFSS25\250016

‘Harnessing linked address-level property and individual-level health datasets to explore the relationship between homes, households and health’

University of Glasgow

£356,905.00

Government-backed energy efficiency measures (EEMs) are typically used to reduce carbon emissions and fuel poverty. However, EEMs such as new insulation, upgraded heating systems, and renewable appliances are increasingly tied to health improvements, though evidence on their impacts remains mixed. This project will assess the health effects of EEMs on children <​5 and adults >65 years, groups particularly vulnerable to poor housing conditions and spending significant time at home. The focus will be on outcomes influenced by psychosocial and safety factors, such as child development, cardiovascular health, and unintentional injuries, which remain underexplored in the research. Using natural experimental methods and leveraging recent advancements in Scottish administrative data, this evaluation aims to overcome key methodological limitations in existing research. Underpinning this evaluation will be a health and housing research network, ensuring that the findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the links between homes, households, and health.

Dr Aristel Skrbic

PFSS25\250024

‘The price of “Fortress Europe”: Or, how the EU’s migration policies undermine its constitutional imaginary’

University of Cambridge

£357,220.34

Ever since the 2015 “migration crisis"", the EU has pursued a wide range of aggressive migration policies which can be described as the construction of ""Fortress Europe"". While most analysis has focused on the implications that these policies have for the human rights of migrants and refugees, this project investigates how Fortress Europe undermines the constitutional nature of European integration. The hypothesis is that the methods (informalisation) and the locations (internally to Schengen and in third countries) of migration policy compromise two core ideas that organise the project of European constitutionalisation. The first is that the EU should be integrated through law, and the second that it should pursue the ideal of territorial integrity. This project analyses these concepts and their interaction with Fortress Europe through the lens of constitutional theory and argues these migration policies deform the project of European integration.

Dr Martine Skumlien

PFSS25\250034

‘Promoting safer cannabis use: a mixed-methods exploration of the role of legal frameworks and effectiveness of a co-produced psychoeducational intervention’

King's College London

£473,197.46

Cannabis use is associated with physical and mental health risks. As cannabis policies change globally, it is crucial to develop pragmatic approaches to reduce harm. However, little research has explored harm reduction among people who use cannabis (PWUC). This fellowship will address three key questions: (1) whether harm reduction behaviours are linked to cannabis legalisation, (2) whether a brief psychoeducational intervention can encourage safer cannabis use, and (3) how PWUC view harm reduction. Using the International Cannabis Policy Study, the project will first explore whether key cannabis harm reduction behaviours vary between countries with differing cannabis laws. It will then test the effectiveness of a psychoeducational harm reduction intervention, co-produced with PWUC and stakeholders, in a randomised controlled trial. Finally, qualitative interviews with PWUC will provide insights into their views on harm reduction. This research will have societal benefits by informing public health strategy and policy development.

Dr Daniel Sutton

PFSS25\250084

‘Voting Against Democracy: The Athenian Revolution of 411’

University of Cambridge

£350,371.60

This project is a history of the collapse of the Athenian democracy in 411BCE. It seeks to explain how the democracy ended, and above all why the democratic assembly decided to vote in favour of oligarchy. It explores the events of 411 using six different kinds of source-material, from epigraphy to philosophy to historiography, to examine why the democracy ended from a variety of contemporary perspectives. Combining these perspectives tells a different story about the end of democracy to the ones offered by recent accounts based on modern case-studies. Rather than democracy ending through a violent conflict, or through the imperceptible erosion of institutions, it ends publicly, in a panic, and—at least initially—through democratic choice. This ancient story is fascinating in its own right. But understanding it will also help us grasp the variety of ways in which democracies can end, and how momentary decisions can make all the difference.

Dr Alex Traves

PFSS25\250064

‘Fatherhood in Early Medieval England, AD 600 – 1050’

University of Leicester

£307,591.07

Early medieval society was inherently patriarchal, but fatherhood, especially in the early English kingdoms, has escaped critical attention, even though language of fatherhood appears frequently in scripture, where God was both Father and Son, and was deployed often by secular and religious authorities. Increasingly, scholars in other fields are using fatherhood as a category of analysis, recognising its potential to reveal new insights into men’s lives, masculinity, gender, socio-economic status, and the foundations of temporal power. Yet, despite a vibrant historiography on motherhood and childhood, the early Middle Ages remains absent from the debate on fathers and fatherhood as a focus of socio-cultural investigation. This project will provide the first comprehensive assessment of fatherhood in early medieval England, moving the debate from assumption to evidence-based analysis by deploying qualitative and quantitative methods to a broad range of textual evidence including legal material, letters, genealogies, glossaries, hagiography, biblical commentaries, and poetry.

Dr Jonathon Turnbull

PFSS25\250122

‘Nightlife in the more-than-human city’

Durham University

£395,267.64

This project offers the first conceptualisation of the more-than-human nightscape, a distinct yet chronically understudied urban spacetime. The urban night is home to an array of natures and naturalists of ecological, cultural, and political-economic importance. But contra the enlightened daytime, these nocturnal natures are frequently cast as shady, deviant, and dangerous. New science shows how wildlife finds refuge in the nocturnal city due to peri-urban persecution and daytime sensory overload, and that nocturnal urban ecologies suffer urbanisation more intensely than their diurnal counterparts. Nocturnal organisms remain mysterious to all but a few marginal enthusiasts. This project deploys innovative etho-geographical, digital, and citizen-scientific methods to ask how the more-than-human nightscape is known, experienced, and governed in London. It rescues the nightscape from tropes of darkness, miscreancy, and emptiness, recasting it as a vulnerable and lively ecology under threat as a ‘temporal frontier’ for capitalist expansion.

Dr Sarah Turner

PFSS25\250036

‘From home to classroom and beyond: investigating young people's entanglements with generative AI and its implications for AI literacy’

University College London

£408,807.25

Generative AI technologies, including text and multimedia generation tools, have become increasingly accessible, with young people being at the forefront of their adoption. This accessibility necessitates a nuanced understanding of AI literacy, as young people navigate not only the tools themselves but also the complex social dynamics and institutional contexts that shape their use. Employing a sociomaterial perspective and a longitudinal ethnographic methodology involving young people and those adults around them, this research will examine the complex interplay of social relationships, environmental factors, and technological influences on AI literacy. The research aims to propose adaptations to the current perceptions of what AI literacy is that reflect the multifaceted realities of young people's digital lives. Ultimately, the findings will inform strategies to reconsider AI literacy, fostering a more informed and critical engagement with generative AI technologies among young people and those that live with and teach them.

Dr Daniel Whitehouse

PFSS25\250102

‘Networks of Power: Schools, Elites, and Colonial Legacy in Contemporary Thailand’

SOAS University of London

£441,839.28

This project critically examines how elite educational institutions shape political outcomes in post-colonial Thailand. It proposes that a small cluster of elite schools established during the colonial period have evolved into powerful ‘network institutions’ that influence the political landscape by fostering intense fraternal bonds that span the military, bureaucracy, and commercial sectors. Focussing on Suan Kularb, Thailand’s oldest state school and alma mater to eight prime ministers, the project combines ethnographic fieldwork and archival analysis to illuminate the mechanisms by which the school cultivates political syndicates that steer domestic politics and frequently frustrate democratic processes. The insights gained will inform new theoretical and methodological frameworks for investigating how similar ‘network institutions’ shape governance and perpetuate elite authority across post-colonial contexts. This will contribute innovative approaches for political anthropology, the sociology of education, and Southeast Asian studies, offering a bold rethinking of how institutional networks underpin political power.

Dr Verna Yu

PFSS25\250105

‘Vision shattered? A Chinese Communist revolutionary couple’s divergent intellectual transformation from the 1930s to 2000s’

Birkbeck, University of London

£364,694.52

This project will examine the contrasting lives of a Chinese Communist revolutionary couple who were both attracted by the underground party’s promises of a utopia with democracy, freedoms, social and gender equality as students in the 1930s. Analysing the couple’s personal writings, the project will unpack the processes through which one of them transformed into a “democrat within the party” while the other turned into an orthodox party loyalist. This study will seek to understand why intellectuals took opposite trajectories during the Mao era (1949-1976) and complicate existing narratives of the state's relationship with intellectuals, the individual's subjectivity and gender politics in the People’s Republic. It will reveal fresh perspectives of 20th century intellectuals and revolutionary women, whose resistance and compliance shaped the political, social and gender history of China.

Please note: Awards are arranged alphabetically by surname of the grant recipient. The institution is that given at the time of application.