Kathryn Abrams
VF3\102051
Organized Activism and Legal Change: Lessons from Abortion Law Reform in Northern/Ireland
University of Birmingham
£24,881.00
For decades, pro-choice activism in the US centered on law and litigation. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, it empowered individual states to decide whether and when abortion is legal. Since then, it has become clear that professional lawyering is insufficient to secure access to abortion; but the organized activism that could support access and fuel legal change has emerged only sporadically. The fellowship builds new links between US-based abortion scholarship, and academics and activists in UK/Ireland, where innovative mobilizations have produced meaningful access and abortion law reform. It will produce original socio-legal scholarship that moves beyond established work on professional lawyering and contemplates the emergence of what de Londras et al call ‘feminist law work’ in the US. It fosters the developing intellectual collaboration between Abrams (fellow) and de Londras (host), established abortion law and social movement experts in the US and the UK and Ireland respectively.
Zayna Ango
VF3\100646
The Return of the Repressed: Sexuality Discourse in Hausa Digital Prose Fiction
University of Leeds
£33,575.00
There is a general stereotype of African cultures as being conservative on matters of sexuality. This stereotype is particularly associated with Hausa culture in Northern Nigeria which for centuries has been shaped by Islamic traditions. Yet, this representation is problematic and needs nuancing. This project examines the creative, and at times explicit, depiction of sex acts and diverse sexual orientations in contemporary digital Hausa literature. It contends that digital publishing challenges the conservative thrust of mainstream Hausa literature which has been subjected to religious censorship. It argues that online media allow for new forms of self-assertion and self-affirmation that challenge traditional religio-cultural norms and values. Through a detailed analysis of form and content of online Hausa prose fiction, the project shows that Hausa literature and culture is much more diverse than often is acknowledged, and it reveals online publishing platforms as liberating spaces and archives for non-normative literature.
Mia Bennett
VF3\102221
Orbital Underworlds: Satellite Cultures and Infrastructures in the New Space Era
University College London
£36,750.00
While orbiting satellites seem a world apart, their operations affect people and places on Earth. In the New Space era dominated by commercial companies, a growing number of satellites are supporting services like global broadband internet and Earth observation. Satellites’ impacts are keenly felt where the ground segment, which comprises infrastructure including antennas and spaceports, is developing. In the UK, such infrastructure is being built in remote regions like Cornwall, where radiocommunication facilities emerged during the Space Age. Now, the expanding commercial ground segment is altering local land use, while the satellites they support pollute the night sky. Peripheral regions may benefit from satellite services like Starlink internet, but they may also change cultures of connectivity and residents' sense of place. Through ethnography and remote sensing, this research will critique the cultural and environmental impacts of the emerging satellite sector in Cornwall, contributing to outer space social studies and policymaking.
Melina Antonia Buns
VF3\101528
Nuclear Waste Disposal and the Hidden Stories of Extractivism
University of Bristol
£23,440.00
The disposal of radioactive material not only presents a technological challenge but also environmental and societal challenges. As the removal of nuclear infrastructures in one place creates new nuclear installations and landscapes in another, nuclear waste disposal depends on spatial, mineral, and social resources. While it is first and foremost uranium mining that is associated with the extractive industry, the growing burden of nuclear disposal requires a critical turn towards the extractive histories and dependencies of the back-end of the nuclear fuel chain. The ‘Nuclear Waste Disposal and the Hidden Stories of Extractivism’ project approaches nuclear waste storage through an extractivist lens. Exploring the connections between disposal and extractive activities through materials, spaces, and more-than-humans, this project adds new perspectives on the continuities of extractive dependencies in the disposal of nuclear materials.
Lois Burke
VF3\100459
Investigating Irish and Scottish Women Writers of Children’s Literature, c. 1750-1940
University of Edinburgh
£28,684.00
This project will examine and compare the Irish and Scottish women who wrote for children during the early years and first Golden Age of commercial children's literature production, c. 1750-1940. The work of many women writers from this period is still unexamined, yet Irish and Scottish women writers produced a range of literature, including plays, novels, fairy tales, and periodical literature for young people. The time period of this project saw various social, cultural and political changes during this developmental period of children's literature, and collaborators on this project will explore Celtic languages, national and regional identities, and major genres in children's literature written by Irish and Scottish women. Writers who will be examined together for the first time in this project will include Jessie Saxby, Annie S. Swan, Ethel Forster Heddle, Jane Helen Findlater, L. T. Meade, Rosa and Clara Mulholland, Lady Gregory, and Maria Edgeworth.
Antara Chatterjee
VF3\101930
Reading Disease, Illness and Trauma in the 1947 Partition of India
Queen's University Belfast
£27,301.00
This research fellowship examines representations of disease in the 1947 Partition of Bengal, across different forms including literature, film, memoir, autobiography, non-fiction, oral history and media reports, to uncover how disease added another dimension to the losses and trauma of the Partition. I will analyse how disease was constructed discursively in the context of the newly formed nation, by analytically situating and braiding connotations of illness, sickness, trauma and the body within the larger contexts of nascent nation and community formation, borders, belonging and exclusion/inclusion in Bengal. While utilising historical references to disease during the Partition, I will particularly focus on its representation(s) in Partition narratives, examining disease as a representational trope, deepening understanding of how it intersected with gender, caste, class, religion during the subcontinental bifurcation. My fellowship will thus revisit Partition history from a literary medical humanities perspective adding a vital new dimension to existing Partition scholarship.
Anirvan Chowdhury
VF3\102300
Domesticating Politics: How Religiously Conservative Parties Mobilize Women in India
King's College London
£38,000.00
How do religiously conservative parties mobilize women despite espousing traditional gender norms relegating them to the private sphere. I develop a theory of norm-abiding mobilization to explain this paradox. Grounded in the context of patriarchal societies, this theory proposes that framing participation as aligned with women’s traditional roles can, perhaps counter-intuitively, facilitate their political entry. Drawing on the case of India, where women increasingly mobilize for a religiously conservative party, I demonstrate how framing politics in terms of descriptively gendered norms of service, publicly validates women’s domestic roles, connecting the private and public spheres, and circumventing opposition from male gatekeepers. Focusing on India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the project offers new insights into how conservative ideologies can paradoxically facilitate women’s inclusion in political life, and how parties can expand their reach without disrupting existing social hierarchies. The research draws on papers and an in-progress book manuscript, which I plan to revise for publication during the fellowship. I also hope to collaborate with scholars at King’s India Institute on related themes and develop comparative research by engaging with the broader academic community.
Maria Ana Correia
VF3\100015
Breastfeeding and weaning in the European Meso-Neolithic transition
University of Oxford
£24,730.00
Agriculture irreversibly changed human culture and biology. Increased food supply led to higher birth rates, resulting in the Neolithic population growth. Higher birth rates imply shorter intervals between births and earlier weaning. Although ethnographic evidence supports a change in weaning practices with the adoption of farming, we lack direct evidence in the past. Recently, the UK host institution refined a technique that tracks weaning through the chemical signals left behind on teeth during that process.
During the fellowship, the applicant will apply this technique to study weaning behaviour in a Meso-Neolithic cemetery in Portugal, Muge. The results will be compared to those produced by the UK host institution on another Meso-Neolithic cemetery in Latvia, Zvejnieki. Fitting with the UK host institution’s research focus on Societal challenges past and present, studying weaning patterns may elucidate the development of modern-day gender inequality, as more offspring may have contributed to starker labour division.
Claire Debucquois
VF3\102742
Net Zeroing in on the Forest: Legal and Epistemological Insights into Green Finance in Brazil
London School of Economics and Political Science
£40,000
How do climate policies, notably those currently implemented in Europe, affect countries and communities across borders? I attempt to answer this question by looking at how various infrastructural and agricultural projects are developed with instruments of ‘green finance’ in Latin America, and with what social and ecological consequences. I pay particular attention to two elements underlying these policies: first, the epistemological assumptions – upon what and whose knowledge green finance is based – and second, the normative power – who makes the law and who is accountable to it. By bringing rather obscure financial mechanisms to light, I hope to support the work of social and environmental movements in the area and to help inform public policy.
My project includes participating in COP 30 and the People’s Summit, which will take place in Belém in November 2025, and conducting various outreach activities on the subject, notably for the LSE community.
Rosemond Desir
VF3\100732
Current Practices in Accounting and Reporting Research and Development (R&D) Expenditures: A Comparative Study of the U.S. and U.K.
University of Bristol
£33,102.00
U.S. corporate R&D spending is projected to exceed $452 billion in 2024 (IBISWorld), making Research and Development (R&D) costs a critical area for accounting practices and disclosure standards. However, R&D expenditures in the UK have seen a slight decline, dropping by 0.4% between 2021 and 2022, as reported by the Office of National Statistics. This project will provide a comparative analysis of R&D expenditure reporting in both countries, addressing key questions about its prominence in financial statements, narrative disclosures, and correlations with firm profitability. By conducting a detailed, multi-dimensional analysis, I plan for this research to offer actionable insights that can guide the standard-setting process. The findings will be instrumental in providing empirical support for ongoing and future efforts to refine R&D reporting requirements in the U.S. and the U.K., ensuring that financial statements offer greater transparency and decision-usefulness.
Samba Diarra
VF3\100624
Stakeholder engagement with gene drive mosquitoes for malaria control in Mali
University of Exeter
£30,995.00
The African Union recently prioritized gene drive mosquitoes to contribute to eliminating malaria, which remains a major public health problem in Mali and sub-Saharan Africa. Gene drive is a high-risk technology that requires public and stakeholder input for success testing and deployment. I currently hold an African Fellowship to understand stakeholder views on gene drive technology and how they might shape developmental and governance decisions in Mali. This BA Visiting Fellowship will enable me to spend five months in the UK with Professor Hartley, who is a world-leader on gene drive governance, to further our existing collaboration that began in 2018. To date, Hartley and I have not met in person. The Visiting Fellowship will enhance my skills and capacity to become a world-class social scientist in Mali through training, networking, and mentoring, and enhance University of Exeter’s research collaborations and networks with USTTB and Malian social scientists.
Edoardo Di Porto
VF3\102485
Rising Inequality: A Closer Look at the Firm Dynamics Behind Earnings Disparities
Heriot-Watt University
£35,250.00
Earnings inequality has reached unprecedented levels across OECD countries. This project aims to unravel the multifaceted growth of earnings inequality, focusing on the roles of firm dynamics and sectoral changes in shaping earnings distributions. Utilizing rich administrative datasets, we will create harmonized metrics that allow for robust cross-country comparisons between the UK and Italy.
Further, we will analyse how the life cycle of firms and their dynamics influence the evolution of earnings inequality. By examining the dispersion of earnings across firm cohorts, we will identify whether newer firms contribute to widening inequalities and how these patterns vary across sectors. The findings will provide critical insights into the driving forces behind rising inequality, challenging the perception that earnings disparities are solely worker-centric. Ultimately, this research aims to formulate targeted policy recommendations addressing the firm-level drivers of inequality, contributing to ongoing discussions about economic disparity in contemporary societies.
Kevan Edinborough
VF3\102632
Truth-telling in Southeast Australia using archaeology
Bournemouth University
£36,295.00
Recent research suggests that the effect of massacres and disease on indigenous populations during colonisation by Europeans are underestimated in Australia. In a unique collaboration Bournemouth University (BU) will upskill the applicant who will in turn help build BU and First Nations research capacity in the state of Victoria, Australia. New radiocarbon data will be statistically analysed to reexamine the tempo and likely underestimated fatal outcomes of colonisation in Southeast Australia. Twelve First Nations' Registered Aboriginal Parties and First Peoples State Relations (Australian Government) from Victoria will be consulted about our results, and new radiocarbon measurements will be offered to date relevant sites and organic artefacts. It is anticipated that by forging new and ongoing Australian/UK collaborations this project will empower communities effectively silenced by colonisation. Together we will positively contribute to the vital ongoing process of truth-telling between colonizers, and the First Peoples who still suffer the consequences.
Nezih Erdogan
VF3\101137
A Forced Encounter of Modernity: British-Ottoman Relations Through Cinema in Occupied Istanbul (1918-1923)
King's College London
£31,060.00
The proposed study seeks to examine cinema as a cultural, social, and commercial institution, as well as a popular form of entertainment, within the context of the post-war Allied occupation of Istanbul from 1918 to 1923. The research will explore the conditions of film exhibition, reception, and cinemagoing in Istanbul during this period. What regulations could the Allied forces impose on cinema? How did their interventions influence entertainment life in Istanbul amid such unprecedented circumstances? Furthermore, how can cinema be understood as a site of forced encounter of modernity? The proposed research aims to trace these lines of inquiry and more in the hope that an examination of this period in the history of cinema in Turkey may cast light on the broader issue of Turkey’s “modernisation” project.
Aarjen Glas
VF3\101208
Power and Practice in Southeast Asian Community-Building
London School of Economics and Political Science
£21,674.00
The rising power of China is upending the US-led liberal world order and drastically altering the paths of socio-economic and political development for states across the globe. Nowhere is this more acute than in Southeast Asia. My research draws on more than 150 interviews to trace how growing great power competition influences the governance practices of ASEAN, the central regional organization here, as it attempts to expand both its mandate towards human security issues, including migration and climate change, and its governance activities into the broader Indo-Pacific region. Through a collaborative three-month Fellowship in the Department of International Relations at the LSE, I will be supported by two senior faculty mentors, join two interdisciplinary research clusters uniting students and scholars, co-host a workshop, and offer four presentations. I will produce a major research article and LSE blog publication and start work on two collaborative publications with my LSE mentors.
Khaled Hassan
VF3\101192
Itineraries of Ancestors: ancient Egyptian Graffiti in the Rock Tombs of Meir
University of Oxford
£27,896.25
Graffiti of ancient Egyptian visitors in the public areas of funerary structures, like private tomb chapels, are an essential part of communication in the ancient society. The project addresses the ancestral connections mobilised by graffiti in rock tombs of Meir (Middle Egypt).Graffiti in Meir are unusually diverse, displaying remarkable and intense activity during Egypt’s Old Kingdom (2649–2130 B.C.). The project aims to survey, document, analyse, and publish graffiti from Meir. I will work closely with Oxford University experts in graffiti studies to establish the work methods, including imaging technologies, and research questions. My expertise as an epigrapher will contribute productively to their projects. Therefore, there is a mutual benefit to receiving this scholarship. I will publish an article in a peer-reviewed journal presenting the different types of graffiti found at Meir, and the corpora will be included in the online platform established by Hana Navratilova (Harris Manchester).
Michal Heneise
VF3\102014
Medical Pluralism in Highland Asia
University of Edinburgh
£39,199.78
This project advances understanding of medical pluralism in Highland Asia, focusing on the ethno-linguistically diverse regions of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar. Local health workers are critical intermediaries, bridging scarce biomedical care with long-established traditional systems. The fellowship will support a workshop at the University of Edinburgh, co-organised by the Centre for South Asian Studies and the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology, bringing together 20 leading scholars to examine resilient healthcare systems and the integration of traditional and biomedical practices to improve maternal and child health outcomes. The event will also lay the foundation for the Handbook of Medical Pluralism in Highland Asia and initiate a long-term network on medical pluralism in the Himalaya, with a digital platform for collaboration. This project contributes to anthropological and global health scholarship by addressing the complex dynamics between local knowledge systems and formal healthcare interventions in a critical yet underexplored region.
Naved Iqbal
VF3\101766
Understanding the support available to refugee children and their families in India and the UK
University of Bath
£35,750.00
Child refugees frequently experience mental health problems, relating to pre-, during, and post-migration trauma. One major factor that can protect against trauma-related psychopathology is strong social support. However, refugee children experience persistent disruption in their support structures due to; caregivers coping with poor mental health and major resettlement challenges; loss of wider social networks (e.g., peers, teachers, extended family); and experiences of exclusion by their host community, including due to racism. We aim to develop an international framework for studying the support available to refugee children, to identify key barriers to accessing support and achieving good mental health outcomes in this group in India and the UK, and to compare them with available data from Iran and South Africa.
Hafsa Kanjwal
VF3\102486
Islam, Decolonization, and the Question of Kashmir
Queen Mary University of London
£40,000.00
Across the academy, there has been renewed interest in anti-colonial thought and decolonial theories and praxis. This research will examine the intersections between Islam and decolonization in the context of Kashmir, culminating into a book project. In particular, it engages with the writings of a number of Kashmiri Muslim thinkers in order to situate Kashmir as an important case study for examining contestations over sovereignty, nationalism, indigeneity, and secularism in a rapidly changing global order in a moment of historic and ongoing decolonization. The proposed host institution for the Visiting Fellowship is Queen Mary University of London, where I also plan to co-organize a workshop with affiliated faculty that will bring together other scholars examining decolonization through the prism of Islam. QMUL is the ideal institution for me to conduct this study due to a number of interdisciplinary schools and centers and potential collaborators that are invested in similar questions.
Rachael King
VF3\100918
Diasporic Archives: Race, Gender, and Religion in English and Irish Quaker Networks
University of York
£34,774.00
This project combines archival and digital techniques to reveal new perspectives on early feminist and anti-racist thought through an investigation of 18th- and 19th-century Quaker letters, journals, and other materials. It will both support my individual research into the intersection of race, gender, class, and disability as revealed in Quaker archives, and create opportunities for collaborative research for staff and students at the University of York, who will contribute to a digital database of archival documents. In individual and collaborative work, Diasporic Archives embodies an archival justice and data justice perspective in its attention to the gaps and erasures of both traditional archival and new computational methodologies. The project uncovers new knowledge about not only Quaker history but also, and more broadly, the spread of progressive politics through local networks in this critical period.
Gema Kloppe-Santamaria
VF3\102880
Violence, Religion and the Politics of Secularism in Twentieth Century Mexico
University College London
£26,025.00
The aim of this project is to examine why and under what historical conditions religion contributed to legitimate the use of violence across Mexico’s twentieth century. To achieve this goal, I intend to analyse the complex and contentious relationship between religion and violence during this period drawing on the examination of periodicals, ecclesiastical and official sources, and audiovisual materials. The project addresses two main questions: 1) What are the theological, political, and cultural drivers that shaped Catholics’ diverse and at times conflicted understanding of the legitimacy of violence? 2) How did the secularist policies promoted by the Mexican state impact the escalation or de-escalation of religious conflict? The examination of primary sources and collections at the UK National Archives, next to my collaboration and dialogue with UK researchers, will strengthen the transnational, comparative, and interdisciplinary breadth of this project and place Mexico’s history of religious conflict in a global perspective.
Shekhar Kumar
VF3\102234
Kullu Diaspora (KD): The role of colonial era settler family archives in reconnecting and communicating societal knowledge of Hazards, Disasters and Climate Change in the Indian Himalaya
University of Cumbria
£36,035.54
Kullu Diaspora (KD) investigates the unassessed records of a colonial era family (the ‘Donald’s) who lived and worked in the Kullu District (Indian Himalayan Region) during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These family archive materials (i.e., diaries, photographs, business records etc) provide a first-hand insight into socio-environmental conditions impacting the Donald orchards (and wider environs) at Dobhi-Naggar, in the Phojal Nalla catchment- a hotspot location for historical floods and landslides. KD aims to: (1) explore the contribution of settler family archive materials to contemporary hazard/ disaster management and climate change management debates; (2) consider how colonial era knowledge can be effectively communicated with local agencies; and (3) explore resharing copies of archive materials in the UK and India. The project builds on strong international networks with the Donald family, key partners (RGS-IBG, Kullu District government), and cross-disciplinary (Geography, climate change communication) academics in India, UK and USA.
Michelle Liu
VF3\101117
Word Meanings and Ad Hoc Concepts: Applications in Philosophy
University College London
£33,950.00
Word meanings are flexible. A speaker often uses a word to communicate what linguists call an ‘ad hoc concept’ – an occasion-specific meaning – that is different from the word’s stable meaning. Appreciating this linguistic insight can shed significant light on a wide range of issues in both philosophical and public discourse. In close collaboration with Prof Robyn Carston at UCL, I will investigate the prevalence of ad hoc concepts in communication and apply the notion to diagnose philosophical debates and to understand the phenomenon of verbal disputes. Expected outcomes include a framework for advancing many philosophical disputes, and for improving our understanding of disputes in ordinary discourse that hang on word usage. The proposed research marks the beginning of an ambitious interdisciplinary research programme, promising significant new knowledge to both linguistics and philosophy, and promoting future research collaboration between the two disciplines.
Valeria Llobt
VF3\102941
Children´s rights regimes, gender-based violence and the ruins of the welfare state: is Argentina’s development a warning tale?
University of Bristol
£35,955.28
This project investigates the intersection of children's rights, gender-based violence, and the (ultra)neoliberal transformation of welfare regimes in Argentina. By examining how feminist activism, legal frameworks, and social protection policies shape both gender and children's rights, the study reveals the tensions between these rights in the context of welfare reforms. The research focuses on how institutional practices and rights governance influence the redefinition of public and private spheres, often undermining women's agency and limiting welfare regimes legitimacy. Through the analysis of primary and secondary data from state agents, family courts, and archives, the project explores how discourses on violence—whether against women or children—are mobilized to contest or legitimize rights. This study aims to shed light on the evolving dynamics of rights regimes, contributing to current debates on social protection, welfare, and the political implications of children’s and gender rights.
Lucia Lopez-Polin
VF3\101562
New reconstructions of the Shanidar Z, A and B Neanderthals
University of Cambridge
£21,370.00
Shanidar Cave (Iraqi Kurdistan) is a key Palaeolithic site because of the remains of at least 10 Neanderthal individuals recovered in 1951-1960. New excavations since 2015 by a Cambridge University-led team recovered new Neanderthal remains, including the relatively complete upper body of an adult (“Shanidar Z”) and the partial remains of 2 other associated individuals (A and B), which are on temporary loan to Cambridge from the Kurdish authorities.
This project focuses on refining the reconstruction and a detailed study of the new remains, using a combination of new physical and virtual reconstructions and comparisons with other Neanderthal skeletons, in collaboration with members of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology. The work will permit a more accurate reconstruction of the anatomy, behaviour and depositional history of the Shanidar Neanderthals, contributing to major debates about Neanderthal treatment of the dead, evolution in physical characteristics, population dynamics, health and behaviour.
Julian McKoy Davis
VF3\101814
The Financing of Later Life among Older Caribbean Migrants in Manchester, UK
University of Manchester
£28,780.00
Migration in the Caribbean is often considered an economic imperative for personal and family advancement. Many persons migrate intending to return to their country of origin, however the decision to relocate post-retirement requires a cost benefit analysis of the profitability and social value of relocation, in comparison to ageing-in-place.
This study will utilize qualitative approaches to understand financial preparations for later life and social care among older Caribbean migrants (65 years and older) residing in Manchester, England. The study will explore accessibility to and utilization of pension, social protection and social care. These are questions of considerable sociological and policy interest in the Caribbean and more widely. Data will be collected via in-depth interviews and analyzed with the aid of Nvivo. Stakeholder consultations, presentations and publications will facilitate dissemination of key findings.
Anne Murphy
VF3\101345
Excavating Punjabi histories from UK archives: Texts from Punjab in print and manuscript
Royal Holloway, University of London
£38,279.00
The Punjab region was partitioned at decolonization in 1947, and the early modern history of Punjab does not map easily to current geo-political realities: the cultural, linguistic, and literary traditions of the region as a whole represent an integrated culture, where diverse religious communities lived in contact and conversation. The research to be undertaken on this Fellowship seeks to recover the integrated cultural field of pre-modern and pre-Partition Punjab, and to embrace the diverse languages and scripts represented in its manuscript traditions, and in early print texts. By allowing access to UK archives, this Fellowship will constitute the foundation of the Applicant's research program for the next five years. It allows the Applicant to engage in a comprehensive analysis of existing archival collections in the UK - building on already completed work along such lines -- to recover the complexity of Punjab's past, beyond the divisions of Partition.
Ahd Othman
VF3\102489
The 'Peel Report' in Arabic translation: British accounts of Arab Gulf responses to the White Papers on Palestine (1937-1939)
Queen's University Belfast
£21,600.00
This project investigates British government attempts to identify and manage the reactions of Arab Gulf rulers and populations to a series of British reports and policy papers on Mandatory Palestine (1920-1948). The study conducts, for the first time, a close textual analysis of digitised and freely accessible archival records held at the British Library. These Arabic/English bilingual and translated reports and letters, including correspondence between British representatives in the Gulf, discuss the responses of Gulf rulers to the ‘Peel Report’ (1937) and the ‘White Papers on Palestine’ (1937-1939). Continuing to shape the Arab region to this day, these documents set political and legal precedents around national rights, legitimacy and self-determination. By focusing on both Arabic and English texts, the study also seeks to determine the role of translation in the British government’s efforts to mitigate potential tensions and threats arising in the Arab Gulf owing to divergent stances on Palestine.
Julio Cesar Gonzales Oviedo
VF3\102249
Vinegared Images, Disappearing Histories: Safeguarding the Peruvian Newsreels Archive
University of St Andrews
£34,620.00
Peru is a country with no national film institute or any public structure to support film preservation. This has severe implications for the safeguarding of the moving images that constitute the cultural and political memory of the country. Between 1973 and 1983, under three different regimes, nonfiction filmmaker Bertha Saldaña directed 117 newsreels, which are currently deposited at the cinematheque of a private university, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), in a critical situation of physical deterioration. This programme aims to design a preservation strategy to digitise, restore, and make these instrumental films available to researchers, filmmakers, curators, and the general public. To facilitate the design of a comprehensive research project, we propose the visit of Julio Gonzales, a lecturer, archivist and researcher at PUCP, to the Department of Film Studies of the University of St Andrews, to work with Isabel Seguí, an expert in Peruvian women´s nonfiction filmmaking.
Ployjai Pintobang
VF3\101935
Bentham and Siam: British Utilitarianism in the Siamese Age of Reform c. 1800- c. 1880
University of Sussex
£12,411.88
This research explores the global story of nineteenth-century British utilitarianism through a study of Anglo-Siamese intellectual encounters and exchanges. In doing so, it weaves together ideas of transnational treaty-making, free trade and property rights, and legal and constitutional reform in both Europe and South-East Asia. This project is unique among global intellectual history scholarship in examining utilitarianism and Siam from both British and Siamese perspectives. It both uncovers the representation of Siam in British utilitarian philosophy from Jeremy Bentham to John Bowring and examines the influence of utilitarian ideas upon Siamese political and economic reform debates, as exemplified by Prince Pichit Preechakorn's work. By placing this dynamic encounter in the context of nineteenth-century diplomacy, empire-building, and cultural and intellectual exchange, this project ultimately provides a critical perspective on the formation of the current economic and political world order.
Eshbal Ratzon
VF3\102042
Cosmology, Astronomy, and Theology in the Dead Sea Scrolls
University College London
£38,747.41
The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), a major archaeological discovery of the twentieth century, contain early Jewish responses to what we now consider scientific questions. This project will analyze the cosmological, astronomical, and theological aspects of this corpus, expanding our understanding of the Qumran community and Second Temple Judaism. Starting with individual scroll fragments, the research subsequently adopts an interdisciplinary approach. The first phase, almost completed, offers new reconstructions of the astronomical and calendrical scrolls using both classical, digital, and computational methods. Once reconstruction is finished, a monograph will synthesize the data, focusing on themes of time, space, and luminaries' course over a 400-year period. The findings will be compared to similar literatures from surrounding cultures and examined in light of historical, theological, and social questions in Jewish Studies and assessed using methods from the History and Philosophy of Science.
Rowena Robinson
VF3\102869
‘Faithful’ Mothers and the Politics of Nurturing Future Secular Citizens
Coventry University
£24,488.00
Mothering remains highly understudied, particularly in relation to non-mainstream models of mothering. In a world ridden with inter-communal conflict, this fellowship will build a body of scholarship and a research network to explore the significant but unrecognised roles that mothers play in the formation of citizens and state-building, during and beyond times of conflict. By exploring how mothers navigate everyday faith and the pushes and pulls of the largely secular contemporary state, this project will forefront their socio-political agency, reinstating them as influential actors and not just victims of conflict. In a cutting-edge move, the project brings together mothering practices among minority faiths from the global south, to reflect on their analytical, social and political relevance for diasporic communities in the global north, thereby laying the ground for future, expansible collaborative engagements around fathering and non-normative parenting.
Jonathan Schiesaro
VF3\102320
Genealogy as Historiography: Family Memoirs, Private Archives, and Strategies for Celebrating and Preserving Memory in Grand-Ducal Florence (16th-17th Centuries)
University of Oxford
£16,015.00
The decline of civic history writing in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Florence led to a shift towards less formal historical narratives, such as the paratexts (rubrics, prologues, and epilogues) in Florentine "prioristi" and "sepoltuari", as well as the private writings preserved in the archives of patrician families. In the absence of a comprehensive study on this subject, the project aims to examine these overlooked texts to better investigate their conception of genealogical practice and historiographical reflection. Through a study of select manuscripts housed at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, i.e. three Florentine prioristi (Mss. Ital. b. 2, Ital. d. 25, Add. D. 2) and a copy of Bernardo Segni’s "Storie fiorentine" with annotations by the historian and genealogist Scipione Ammirato (Ms. Add. D. 3), the main goal is to contribute to a revision of the prevailing critical perspective that identifies in seventeenth-century Florence a moment of stagnation of historiography.
Rachel Silberstein
VF3\102676
International Diplomacy and Industrial Collecting: Charting Qing Dynasty Chinese Dress and Textile History in the Collections of National Museums Scotland
National Museums Scotland
£20,145.00
This project is a collaboration between National Museums Scotland (NMS) and Dr Rachel Silberstein, a specialist in Chinese dress and textiles. It aims to survey and study a selection of 19th-century textiles and costumes from China in the museum’s permanent and loan collections. Acquired and displayed to improve Scotland’s industry and trade, their historical associations with empire and colonialism require a rethinking of their relevance in the 21st century. Applying her established method of garment scholarship, Dr Silberstein will combine an in-depth analysis of selected objects with archival and literature research to reinterpret these artefacts as documents of cultural and social transformations in 19th-century China and Great Britain. Knowledge sharing and skills transfer are integral to Dr Silberstein’s collaboration with NMS. The results of her research will be communicated to specialist and general audiences through hands-on museum sessions, talks, upgraded museum object records, and publications.
Debora Swistun
VF3\102478
Environmental suffering and petrochemical legacies: a collaborative project for sensing air between the UK and Argentina
Royal Holloway, University of London
£32,370.00
The collection of environmental data has become a key focus for human geographers and social scientists alike. However, monitoring the environment, including with ‘citizen science’ methods, does not come hand in hand with equity and justice. Building on a pilot project developed by myself and RHUL cultural geographer Sasha Engelmann, the proposed fellowship will advance our collaboration and develop knowledge on the value of air quality data for underserved communities in Argentina. This will include: i) working with RHUL scholars to evolve air sensing tools and practices; ii) examining UK-Argentina colonial relations and their relevance for contemporary environmental management; iii) honing arts and humanities approaches for engaging audiences with air quality and narratives of environmental suffering. This fellowship meets a key strategic objective of the RHUL Centre for the Geohumanities to foster research collaborations and build a ‘global geohumanities’ network through partnerships with scholars and institutions in South America.
Shanmugapriya T
VF3\100616
AI-Driven Standardization of British Colonial South Indian Place Names
Lancaster University
£12,150.00
This project addresses the challenge of studying South India’s colonial history by employing artificial intelligence technologies to standardize inconsistently spelled place names, or fuzzy toponyms, found in colonial records. These inconsistencies hinder tracking geographic and environmental changes over time, particularly given the extensive toponymic categories produced by colonial textual cultures, including land, waterbodies, forests, species, agriculture, and pastoral practices. By employing natural language processing models rooted in the Transformers architecture, such as those behind ChatGPT, this research will extract and standardize these fuzzy toponyms. The aim is to develop a prototype historical gazetteer for British South India (1799–1947), which will serve as an essential tool for researchers investigating the region’s environmental history, facilitating the analysis of long-term trends in geography, land use, and ecological transformations. Furthermore, this study will lay the groundwork for a broader, long-term collaboration with leading experts at Lancaster University and UK institutions.
Ntina Tzouvala
VF3\101449
A State Theory in Disguise? Sovereign Immunity through a Political Economy Lens
University of Cambridge
£31,057.00
From industrial policy to the resurgence of inter-state conflicts and from the rise of the Chinese state capitalism to the role of the state in the 'green transition', the state is back, assuming a central role in economic affairs both within and beyond the West. However, consensus around the renewed importance of the state is not accompanied by conceptual or doctrinal clarity about what is a state for the purposes of international law. This project will focus on the rules of sovereign state immunity in order to challenge the commonly held position that international law is agnostic about the political or economic system of a state insofar as it is effective. Adopting a political economy lens, I will examine how the UK, US and China interpret the rules of state immunity differently and, in so doing, they attached important legal consequences to different demarcations between the state and the market.
Dimitrios Xefteris
VF3\101858
Information Aggregation with Vote Delegation
King's College London
£26,900.00
In this project, we aim to study the extent to which institutional reforms that allow the redistribution of voting power among voters can assist in the achievement of efficient outcomes in elections. In specific, we aim to study particular interventions such as vote delegation and voting by proxy (also known as liquid democracy), and assess their performance in contexts in which agents wish to aggregate dispersed information, as well as compare them with other tools suggested by the literature. We focus on schemes permitting vote transfers because of their prevalence as decision-making processes in multiple environments (national/local elections, blockchain governance, shareholder voting, etc.), and also because of their intuitive appeal in settings in which different voters are specialized in different issues (e.g. when a university department wants to hire two new researchers in distinct academic fields).
Wubin Zhuang
VF3\102434
Salon Photography and the Making of the Nation: Malay(si)a, Singapore, and Burma (Myanmar) in the 1950s and the 1960s
University of Westminster
£37,334.00
This project examines the role of salon photography (or Pictorialism) in making and visualising the nations of Malay(si)a, Singapore, and Burma (Myanmar) during the 1950s and the 1960s. It focuses on the salon photographers and resurfaces their interactions with patrons, politicians, state officials and other cultural workers. I contend that their connections shaped the praxis of salon photography and implicated it within the political projects of making the nation during decolonisation and the Cold War. I also aim to tease out their desires in the nation-building projects. In this project, I pursue a close reading of archival materials at the National Archives, British Library, and the Royal Photographic Society (RPS). The outcome of the fellowship includes a journal publication, a feature article on CREAM Stories, an online interview for RPS YouTube channel, a public talk in London and a sharing session with the network institutions of Global Photographies.
Dan Zhu
VF3\100386
Efficient Bayesian Markov chain Monte-Carlo for Ultra-High-Dimensional Time Series
University of Kent
£28,050.00
Macroeconomic dynamics are vast and complex, making Bayesian Vector Autoregressions (BVAR) and their diverse extensions indispensable models for understanding the dynamic interactions within multidimensional time series data. These models are routinely implemented in various statistical software packages such as Matlab, R, and Python. However, current algorithms encounter substantial computational bottlenecks when dealing with ultra-high-dimensional data, i.e., well beyond 100 variables. This limitation stems from a somewhat naive construction within the multivariate linear regression framework, often failing to harness specific features of the models. This project will develop a suite of efficient algorithms tailored for conditionally Gaussian space VARs, with the aim of addressing these computational challenges and unlocking the model's full potential. In collaboration with Dr Aubrey Poon and Dr Alfred Duncan at the University of Kent, I will apply this innovative framework to widely used macroeconomic and time-series models, providing policymakers and practitioners with powerful new tools for analysis.
Please note: Awards are arranged alphabetically by surname of the grant recipient. The institution is that given at the time of application.