Over £1.7 million in British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grants awarded to support SHAPE researchers

This round, the British Academy has awarded 188 British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants worth over £1.7 million to support primary research in the SHAPE disciplines.

Worth up to £10,000 over a period of up to two years, the awards will support academics working at universities and research institutions across the UK – as well as independent scholars – by covering the cost of expenses arising from a particular research project. Funding for the Small Research Grants programme is provided by the Leverhulme Trust, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Wellcome, the Journal of Moral Education Trust, the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies, the Sino-British Fellowship Trust, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Research projects funded this round include those looking at identifying early signals of diabetes from online social footprints, the anti-plastics movement, and epistemic injustices of silencing the voices on those in the prison system.

The 2024 British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants awardees are:

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

Camilla Affleck

SRG24\242028

What’s Our Name? Migrant Communities, Identity and Football in Latin America. Decolonising the British informal Empire in Chile and beyond.

Liverpool John Moores University

Value Awarded: £9,997.00

In the late 19th century, merchants and labourers from Liverpool took to the high seas, setting their compass for the unchartered lands of Latin America. With them were precious cargos of steam trains, forged in the furnaces of North West England to serve the railways spreading their tentacles across this new world. In the bustling Chilean port of Valparaiso, the Merseyside Foxley family founded a new football club and called it Everton - and so began a unique association between two clubs bearing that same name, separated by 8000 miles of Atlantic ocean and Andean mountains. This participatory interactive documentary charts the social and ethnographic history of Chile and the spread of the beautiful game by migrant communities across the Latin American continent, empowering diverse audiences to also upload their own stories, personal reflections and media to build a unique living resource of local history and enhanced cultural understanding.

Professor Dionisius Agius

SRG24\241004

Capture of the vessel Sultana: Ahmad Hoca, the clerk and the Roman Inquisition 1704

University of Exeter

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

This is a study of an Inquisition trial against Ahmad Hoca, a clerk of the Ottoman vessel - Sultana, captured by the Knights Hospitallers in 1700, as protectors of the state of Malta against Muslim maritime attacks. Following Ahmad's imprisonment, oral reports reached the Inquisition that he was a Muslim convert and subsequently accused of apostasy. In this project, the focus is on one person, a micro-study based on the trial but from this snapshot of life in Early Modern Malta we will gain valuable information on Christian-Muslim relations, the Roman Inquisition, and tension between the Church, State and Inquisition. There are two objects related to Ahmad's case: a) a 1700 painting of the Capture of the Sultana, and b) ship and name graffiti on a prison wall. An international team will examine the relation between the text and the material culture and what symbolism and significance the objects carry.

Professor Yunus Aksoy

SRG24\241277

Aging Populations, Income/Wealth Inequalities and Macroeconomic Outcomes

Birkbeck, University of London

Value Awarded: £9,947.78

Two of the most important trends facing global societies today are ageing demographics and income and wealth disparities which are both extreme and increasing. We argue that these two major trends are not independent, but in fact interact with each other and affect macroeconomic outcomes via multiple complex channels. This project will provide rigorous statistical and conceptual (theoretical) analysis on the interactions between aging populations and income and wealth disparities to inform macroeconomic policymaking across various areas including pension reforms to fiscal and monetary policies.

Dr Lilija Alijeva

Co-Applicants: Professor Tawhida Ahmed & Dr Isilay Taban-McQuade

SRG24\241572

Mainstreaming Inclusivity and Decolonisation in International Minority Rights Legal Norms: reflecting on past UN-level negotiations and current civil society needs for reform through a mixed methods approach

City, University of London

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

The question of how to better protect minorities and accommodate their rights has grasped the attention of scholars and practitioners since the 1990s. This exploration led to the adoption of normative frameworks and promotion of minority rights protection processes. However, today, these norms and processes are seldom visible to minorities on the ground, many of whom remain discriminated against and marginalised around the world. Practitioners working in the field are currently shaping the momentum that demands a reformed international framework for minority protection (UN Reports A/HRC/52/27; A/77/246). However, there is no consensus on how to achieve these changes in practice. The project builds on this momentum and proposes that the answer lies in the decolonisation scholarship (Shahabuddin, 2023). Through mixed data analysis techniques and a planned workshop programme, this research reflects on past UN-level negotiations and impactfully supports stakeholders in promoting the inclusivity of non-European-focused minority perspectives in the momentum.

Dr Anne Alwis

SRG24\241661

Secret Sanctity: Deciphering Concealment, Disguise, and Hidden Knowledge in Late-Antique and Byzantine Hagiography

University of Kent

Value Awarded: £8,120.00

Secret sanctity was instrumental in attaining sainthood in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, facilitating the growth of Christianity, and helping devotees construct an identity. In the modern imagination, ‘byzantine’ often negatively equates to conspiracy, treacherous secrecy, and complexity. Conversely, I redefine secrecy as a positive force. Ideas that secrecy defined holiness pervaded early Christianity, proliferating in hagiography (stories of saints, and edifying narratives), the period’s most popular genre. By analysing an array of texts spanning eight centuries, this project establishes new perceptions of Late Antiquity and Byzantium, showing secrecy as a tool for power, and faith itself as dependent on hidden knowledge, disguise, and concealment. Secrecy also creates an interior invisible to outsiders, generating space for self-expression. The ensuing monograph thus provides major new perspectives on early Christian selfhood and society, illuminates how secrecy inspired and sustained conviction in believers, and rewrites prevalent opinions on Byzantium.

Dr Payam Ansari

Co-Applicant: Dr Keith Parry

SRG24\241250

Beyond the Sidelines: Exploring the Fan Journey in Women’s Football

Bournemouth University

Value Awarded: £9,597.00

The rise of women’s football in England presents a unique opportunity to explore fan engagement in a sporting context that has historically received less attention and support compared to men’s sports. Despite the growing popularity of women’s football, there are significant gaps in our understanding of the holistic fan journey throughout their entire experience. To bridge these critical gaps, our research will employ a qualitative methodology to intricately ‘map’ the fan journey, emphasising the identification of key touchpoints that significantly influence fan decisions. Utilising text-based and video participant observation diaries, this study will provide in-depth insights into fan experiences, directly contributing to both academic knowledge and practical fan engagement strategies, aiming to identify barriers to engagement and promote inclusivity. By linking theoretical insights with practical applications, we seek to enhance fan experiences, broaden the impact of women’s football, and contribute significantly to both academic literature and practical engagement strategies.

Dr Victor Araujo Silva

SRG24\241786

Religious fundamentalism and anti-democratic civic participation

University of Reading

Value Awarded: £9,945.00

Globally, democratic erosion is on the rise. Episodes such as the invasion of the Capitol in the aftermath of the 2020 US presidential elections and an almost identical insurrection in Brazil to contest the elections held in 2022 reveal that ordinary citizens are contributing to democratic backsliding. The factors underpinning this behaviour, however, have remained underexplored. This project asks: What explains ordinary citizens’ efforts to undermine democratic institutions? Building on insights from political and religious psychology and employing national surveys in the US and Brazil, the two largest democracies in the Americas, this project will assess the impact of religious fundamentalism on anti-democratic civic participation. Unlike previous contributions in the literature focused on the role played by elected elites to erode democratic institutions endogenously, this project emphasizes ordinary citizens' voluntary civic engagement to challenge democracy and the virtue of the established representative principles.

Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster

SRG24\240938

The National Childbirth Trust and the Margins of Medicine in Modern Britain

University of Edinburgh

Value Awarded: £8,402.35

This project investigates the history of the National Childbirth Trust, from its foundation as the Natural Childbirth Association in 1956 to the present. Established to provide women with an alternative to hospital-based, medicalised maternity care, the NCT has sat adjacent to the National Health Service for almost seventy years. The charity (since

1961) has proven profoundly influential; not only shaping the experience of pregnancy, labour, and early parenthood for millions of families, it has also shifted the national dialogue on childbirth and women’s health and reshaped NHS policy and practice. This small project is one part of my larger research programme at the University of Edinburgh that explores the twentieth-century history of health scepticism and the margins of British medicine. With this grant’s support, I will consult the NCT’s archive at the Wellcome Collection, conduct and transcribe oral history interviews, and organise two workshops with Scottish midwives and NCT practitioners.

Dr Sergio Ascencio Bonfil

Co-Applicant: Professor Rodrigo Castro Cornejo

SRG24\241712

Party system institutionalization, trust in government, and democratic backsliding

University of Essex

Value Awarded: £9,941.00

It is well established that weak party system institutionalization impedes democratic accountability and contributes to poor policy outcomes. Yet, very little is known about whether weak party system institutionalization erodes public trust in government and support for democratic principles and institutions. This project answers three main questions: Do weak party systems undermine citizen satisfaction with democracy? Does frequent party switching among elected officials—a key feature of weakly institutionalized party systems—decrease public trust in government, institutions, and political elites? And, if so, what do these changes in public opinion imply for the stability and survival of democracy? We address these questions by analyzing existing public opinion data from Latin America and by conducting a survey experiment in Mexico. This project has important implications for many developing countries currently at risk of democratic backsliding.

Dr Edidiong Bassey

Co-Applicant: Dr Elizabeth Cookingham Bailey

SRG24\240581

The role of Civil Society Organisations in influencing domestic tax fairness in tax administration

Cardiff University

Value Awarded: £9,990.28

There is an increasing recognition of the need for developing countries to enhance domestic revenue mobilization to fund sustainable development goals (SDGs) as demonstrated by the recently launched UN Tax for SDGs Initiative. The role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in addressing this need has gained increasing attention. However, while the role of CSOs in shaping international tax fairness (such as combating tax avoidance by multinational companies) is well-documented, their impact on promoting domestic tax fairness (with regard to both individuals and businesses) is unclear. This is significant as they have the potential to act as impartial mediators in a domestic context where trust between taxpayers and tax authorities is low and tax evasion is a problem. This study will use Gioia analysis to examine the perspectives of 37 Nigerian CSO representatives on how they are shaping domestic tax fairness. Implications will be drawn for policy and practice.

Dr Ruth Beecher

SRG24\241457

Writing Difficult Subjects: Towards the development of creative writing as a self-care tool kit for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) of gender-based violence (GBV)

Birkbeck, University of London

Value Awarded: £9,965.20

This project will pilot, develop and evaluate a trauma-informed creative writing pedagogy for ECRs working on gender-based violence research in the arts and humanities or the social sciences. Through a series of six in-person creative writing workshops, participants will process harms associated with their research and develop self-care skills by exploring approaches to narrative construction. Facilitation will be sensitively delivered and trauma-informed. Participants will experiment with writing forms that encourage the use of imaginative symbolic language, moving beyond a dominant ‘master narrative’ of trauma to centre everyday survival and strength. Building on health sciences’ research that indicates positive outcomes for victim-survivors of sexual violence through writing personal narratives, the workshops will identify techniques and strategies that will be documented in a digital trauma-informed creative writing ‘toolkit’ that will be widely disseminated as a resource for other researchers working on sensitive and complex subjects.

Dr Yael Benn

Co-Applicant: Professor Rosemary Varley

SRG24\241839

The role of language in deductive reasoning: evidence from global aphasia

Manchester Metropolitan University

Value Awarded: £9,305.90

The human species is marked by sophisticated cognitive capacities and by the possession of language. Within the philosophical and cognitive sciences there is a debate regarding the role of language in human reasoning. One claim states that grammar (combinatorial rules) is necessary for various forms of reasoning; as a result, significant language impairment is expected to disrupt logical reasoning. This project will provide new evidence to the debate by exploring performance in a unique sample of people – those with severe/global aphasia (language impairment following brain-injury), and examining whether a human mind, with little access to language resources, can apply deductive reasoning rules. To this end, we will be using complex Sudoku grids, which require the application of deduction rules (e.g. modus ponens). To address potential criticism that retention of these abilities is a result of functional reorganisation, we will utilise fMRI, comparing brain activations of aphasic and neurotypical participants.

Dr Saurabh Bhattacharya

Co-Applicant: Dr Arpita Agnihotri

SRG24\240510

Perceived Credibility and Sharing of Deepfake Videos: A Cognitive and Ethical Perspective on Aging vs. Young Population

Newcastle University

Value Awarded: £9,915.00

The deepfake, an artificial tool replacing an individual in an existing media, like a video, voice, or image, with another individual's traits and likeliness, is creating havoc in the post-truth world by threatening individuals' and society's security and privacy. However, research on the deepfake's impact on individuals' behaviour has primarily focused on the younger generation and ignored older adults (65 years of age or more). Both the UK and the US are witnessing an ageing society. Therefore, this study proposes to investigate how seniors engage with deepfakes compared to real news. Through five experiments with UK and US older adults, we propose to investigate how non-political deepfakes influence older adults' sharing intentions when mediated by the perceived credibility of such deepfakes. We also suggest that cognitive ability, digital literacy, and ethical position influence older individuals' acceptance of deepfakes. The study would contribute to the fields of psychology and digital literacy.

Dr Sarah Bloomfield

Co-Applicant: Dr Norah Almubarak

SRG24\240061

Exploring the lived experience of female angel investors in the Saudi Arabian context

Open University

Value Awarded: £9,994.99

The research project will explore female angel investing in Saudi Arabia. Despite economic and socio-cultural differences across the world, most research into female entrepreneurial activity has been conducted within a Western context. The proposed research will address this gap through a focus on entrepreneurial action within an economically wealthy country with restrictive social and cultural practices. To guide our research, we will focus on what constrains and enables the practices of female angel investing in the Saudi Arabian context. We will use an interpretive phenomenological approach based on qualitative data gained primarily through interviews and observations. We will focus on the angel investors and the angel investing support network around them to provide a rich picture of how women in Saudi Arabia are drawn to invest, learn to invest, and invest, as well as the impact of angel investing networks on female angel investing in the context, and visa versa.

Dr Camille Boudot-Reddy

Co-Applicant: Dr Andre Butler

SRG24\240550

Carats or Carrots: Labour Supply Shocks in Agriculture from Exposure to Gold Mining in Mali

Birkbeck, University of London

Value Awarded: £9,920.00

In the past 20 years, the international price of gold has increased close to tenfold. Alongside this a growing population of artisanal miners has emerged, extracting up to 20 percent of the global gold supply. This low-tech, labour intensive, and informal activity is receiving increasing policy interest. Established among poor rural communities, artisanal mining is often the only option to diversify income outside of agriculture. How such a transition of labour will affect the agricultural sector is a key concern. In the context of Mali, we propose to use remote sensing techniques to geolocate small informal mines, alongside quasi-experimental methods to evaluate the impact of artisanal mining on labour allocation across sectors of the rural economy and assess the consequences of this on agricultural production.

Dr Kathryn Bould

Co-Applicant: Dr Clare Maxwell

SRG24\240371

The Breast Bottle in the World? Exploring the impact of the marketing of bottles and teats designed to replicate breastfeeding on decisions and practices around breastfeeding in the UK

Liverpool John Moores University

Value Awarded: £8,521.77

Breastfeeding has associated health benefits for mothers and babies, yet the UK has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world. Marketing of bottles and teats designed to replicate breastfeeding encourages mothers to combine breastfeeding with bottle-feeding (combi-feeding). However, the introduction of a bottle to a breastfed baby is known to reduce duration of breastfeeding, diminishing associated health benefits. Our aim is to explore the impact of the marketing of bottles and teats designed to replicate breastfeeding on decisions and practices around breastfeeding in the UK. Our method is a two-stage qualitative study analysed using Thematic Analysis. Online focus groups with those intending to/who are breastfeeding and considering/undertaking combi-feeding. Online data capture from social media platforms and forum discussions and comments about bottles for breastfed babies. The findings will help develop objective information on the impact of advertising of bottle for those planning to breastfeed/combi-feed and for health professionals working in antenatal/postpartum care.

Dr Fabian Braesemann

SRG24\241588

The Science of Startups Initiative's interactive survey: "What is your founder personality?"

University of Oxford

Value Awarded: £9,975.81

This grant proposal seeks funding to develop an interactive online survey asking participants about their personality traits, career backgrounds and entrepreneurial activity. Building on our prior work analysing the Big Five personality traits of over 25,000 startup founders (McCarthy et al. 2023), we plan to develop the survey as a novel data collection device to generate unique data to extend our understanding of how personality relates to entrepreneurship and career choices. The survey will also be an informative tool to help diverse audiences understand their personality traits and how these relate to occupations and entrepreneurial activity. Thus, the tool will collect research data for further analysis and studies, and it will educate participants about their ‘founder personality’ and about jobs with a high occupation-personality fit.

Professor Robert Brown

Co-Applicants: Dr Zoe Latham & Dr John Martin

SRG24\240717

Lost and Found: Exploring the capacity for the transformative resilience of everyday ritualised performances and co-joined connectivity to place and identity in the context of future climate change

University of Plymouth

Value Awarded: £4,601.20

Coming climate change is projected to impact significantly on place (and our connectivity to it), with further reverberation on our performances (what we do in everyday, meaningful, ritualised acts of live, work, and play) and our identity (our sense of who we are). In response to such challenges, what potential do our ritualised performances have for transformative resilience that simultaneously afford greater resilience to a co-joined connectivity to place and sense of identity? Distinguishing this study is its forward-looking perspective on ritualised performance’s transformative and connective capacity; equally significant is the creative, participatory, digitally-generated mapping of place and generation of narratives of future identity, performance, and place. Situated in a rural-urban riverscape, this cross-generational study investigates co-joined identity, performance, and place: as existing; as impacted on by climate change; as a potential future transformation. Emergent will be an enhanced view of their transformative capacity in the face of future change.

Dr Ricardo Buendia

SRG24\241433

What kind of freedom at work?

University of Manchester

Value Awarded: £8,192.00

The world of work is moving from typical to atypical forms of work under the promise of more freedom for workers. However, this promise is based on one kind of freedom, freedom as non-interference, which is based on free choice and tends to favour employers as they hold the power to write terms and conditions of work. Workers can usually only accept or leave work. Freedom as non-domination would be a suitable alternative as freedom would not just be a choice; it would also be about whether workers have the tools to challenge the power of employers. This interview-led research clarifies what kind of freedom employers, workers, and governments have in mind when talking about freedom of contract and freedom of association – the backbone of freedoms in employment law – for atypical workers in the UK.

Professor Simon Burnett

SRG24\241726

Defining Dark Knowledge

Robert Gordon University

Value Awarded: £9,980.52

Dark Knowledge (DK) is an emergent but significant research area which is attracting attention from a diverse range of subject fields. However, the domain lacks cohesion due to the multiplicity of competing definitions. Extant definitions from various disciplines vary considerably, suggesting illicit, unknown or unmeasurable knowledge. In the field of information management, dark knowledge is viewed as a form of dis-normative information practice. These divergences highlight the need for the first systematic literature review of DK to resolve terminological confusion. The proposed work will undertake a structured literature review which clarify the extant definitions of DK; disambiguate the use of the term between and across subject disciplines; and develop a theoretical framework to aid in the classification of DK types and forms. The proposed research will serve as a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers seeking to investigate the complexities of hidden and forbidden knowledge.

Dr Claudia Cerrone

Co-Applicants: Professor Yoan Hermstrüwer & Dr Josué Ortega

SRG24\240562

Unpacking happiness in school choice: An experiment on admissions appeals

City, University of London

Value Awarded: £8,580.00

School admissions appeals have remained largely unexplored in economics – even within the growing market design literature on school choice, whose core mission is to design and evaluate mechanisms to assign students to schools. Yet, appeals are a key indicator of parental dissatisfaction with admissions outcomes. To comprehensively evaluate a mechanism, it is essential to also consider its susceptibility to appeals and parental discontent. Moreover, recent data from the Department for Education in England indicate high appeals rates, and a low and declining percentage of successful appeals. This is concerning, as appeals are costly for the government, stressful for families and disruptive for schools. In this project, we will study what drives appeals and how appeals can be reduced.

Professor Giovanni Cespa

Co-Applicants: Mr Mark Murray & Dr Junli Zhao

SRG24\241535

A Mispriced and Fundamental Decomposition of the Value Premium

City, University of London

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

There is evidence that stocks displaying a high accounting-to-market (book-to-market) ratio earn a premium relative to stocks with the opposite characteristic. This evidence is termed the 'Value Premium' (VP). In efficient markets there must be an economic reason explaining why book-to-market is a priced risk-factor. Morningstar data shows that as of Q3 2023, 17% of US mutual fund and ETF capital is allocated to portfolios exploiting this regularity. Yet, despite its popularity, the question of whether VP reflects risk-compensation or irrational biases yielding stock-mispricings, remains open. We decompose the Value Premium into a mispriced and a fundamental component. Between 1963-2022, we document a positive correlation between book-to-market and average stocks returns among small stocks, which are also most likely to be mispriced. The extent to which this is due to shorting costs is unknown. We intend to address this question accessing shorting cost data from IHS Securities Finance.

Dr James Chamberlain

SRG24\241193

Prison Voices: Voices Inside

University of Sheffield

Value Awarded: £7,800.00

The project will involve leading an eleven-week philosophy course in a prison, with approximately 15 participants. The aims are to (a) engage prisoners in philosophical conversation, which has demonstrable wellbeing, social and educational benefits, and (b) maximise the impact of a pre-existing research project, ‘Prison Voices’, which has the strong potential to effect significant and far-reaching impacts on prison policy, prisoners’ well-being, and academic research concerning prisons. Prison Voices aims to explore how the criminal justice system may silence the voices of those in and around the prison system, and how and why this constitutes an 'epistemic injustice'. I will lead a philosophy course in a prison to address the topic of epistemic injustice, and to evaluate how philosophical conversations in prisons can mitigate this injustice. With input from prisoners, I will then develop a report or other record of its findings to feed into the Prison Voices project.

Dr Tania Cheng-Davies

SRG24\241367

Western Classical Music and Copyright

University of Bristol

Value Awarded: £9,397.00

This project investigates how copyright and moral rights, which safeguard reputation, govern the use and exploitation of western classical musical (WCM) compositions and performances. The project, involving empirical research engaging with WCM musicians and composers, is underpinned by an interdisciplinary approach, guided by understandings from copyright law and legal interpretive theory, and from music scholarship, including musicology, ethnomusicology and music history. The research is limited to aspects of copyright and moral rights as they relate to WCM specifically, to serve as an initial small-scale pilot study which, is hoped, will springboard in future to a larger project studying the interaction of copyright and music generally, including AI generative music, popular music and traditional folk practices. This project aims to clarify the interaction between copyright, moral rights and WCM; raise awareness among these artistes of their rights and obligations; and to address issues which impact upon classical musicians.

Dr Katherine Collins

Co-Applicant: Professor Elleke Boehmer

SRG24\240086

Extractivism and Antarctica: making a 'more-than-human' story

University of Oxford

Value Awarded: £9,647.00

Extractivism is the exploitation of physical and intellectual resources. Among the consequences are climate change, soil degradation, water crises, and loss of biodiversity, as well as repercussions for the health, lands, livelihoods, and cultures of Indigenous peoples. Antarctica presents a valuable provocation for extractivism and resistances to it: while there is no local human community to bear the brunt, there is also no community to resist. Therefore, our aim is to explore how non-human elements such as ice, water, rock, scientific data and equipment, animal lives, and historical artefacts can partner with humans to make 'more-than-human' stories of Antarctica. Story-making is a method of creative practice as research; stories may be told through writing, visuals, sounds, movements, or objects, both digital and tactile. As well as 'more-than-human' stories, the programme will lead to a book proposal, methodological journal article, two major grant applications, and a symposium in 2025.

Dr Matthew Coneys

SRG24\240003

Manuscript Travel Compilations in Renaissance Venice

School of Advanced Study, University of London

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

As the undisputed capital of the sixteenth-century European book trade, Venice played a pivotal role in disseminating new reports of Asia and the Americas. A singular feature of this ‘Venetian moment’ is the printed compilation of travel accounts: a new kind of scholarly geography based on rigorous editing and comparison of eyewitness authorities. The development has traditionally been associated with the city's intellectual class, yet a focus on the printed medium has obscured the contemporary flourishing of manuscript travel compilations, produced in the vernacular by Venetians of varied social backgrounds and reflecting their diverse interests and concerns. Through primary research in Italian libraries, this research will uncover and interrogate a new corpus of handwritten travel compilations. It will reveal the vitality of the manuscript phenomenon and explore its implications for our understanding of both early modern geographical knowledge and the persistence of manuscript culture in the age of print.

Dr Dominic Davies

SRG24\241142

Power Grids: Researching Community Energy Infrastructures Through Comics

City, University of London

Value Awarded: £9,967.00

Community energy projects (CEPs) present an efficient and cost-effective way of rolling out green energy infrastructure across the UK. From rooftop solar to rural heat networks, CEPs produce clean energy and keep costs low for vulnerable users. They also empower communities by bringing people together and giving them control over the essential infrastructure they need to live their lives. Yet uptake in England has been relatively slow, and research into the challenges has hitherto centred on government policy. By contrast, this project will research the lived dimensions and firsthand experiences of those involved in delivering community energy through the medium of comics. By hosting two comics co-creation workshops with participants in CEPs and enabling co-production through collaborative research methods, this project will generate a digital graphic narrative designed to reveal existing obstacles to CEPs and provide a practical, human-centred guide for communities that are interested in starting new projects.

Dr Debashree De

Co-Applicant: Dr Peyman Akhavan

SRG24\241466

HRM Systems and Carbon Neutrality: Unravelling the Role of Resilience in SME Settings

University of Essex

Value Awarded: £9,062.00

This study examines the critical role of Human Resource Management (HRM) in promoting carbon neutrality among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Sri Lanka. We argue that well-designed HRM systems can foster resilience, which is crucial for SMEs to navigate the challenges of achieving carbon neutrality. Our research aims to address the knowledge gap on how HRM influences carbon neutrality in SMEs, with a specific focus on the mediating role of resilience and the boundary conditions of digital technologies. We will test our model using a two-round survey of approximately 220 SMEs in Sri Lanka, measuring HRM systems, resilience, carbon neutrality, and digital technologies. The findings will offer practical insights for SMEs to leverage HRM practices and digital technologies to enhance their resilience and progress towards carbon neutrality amidst economic uncertainties.

Dr Elsa Devienne

SRG24\240616

The War on Plastics: A History of the Anti-Plastics Movement

Northumbria University

Value Awarded: £7,641.70

Amidst negotiations for a global treaty on plastic pollution slated for signature in 2025, anti-plastics initiatives are regularly making headlines. But anti-plastics campaigning has a long history. While scholars have examined the 1960s perception shift that saw plastics go from miraculous material to a despised symbol of conformism and artificiality, the scholarship is sparse on what happened afterwards as the ecological sensitivities of the first Earth Day in 1970 subsided. This project examines the origins of today’s anti-plastics movement since the 1970s until today, focusing on its role in shaping mainstream environmentalist rhetoric and tactics and its relationships with connected fights, such as climate change, and environmental justice demands. The grant will support two chapters of a scholarly monograph, an academic symposium, and a series of episodes for the Plastisphere podcast and associated essays to engage the public with this long tradition of questioning plastic’s ubiquitous presence in our lives.

Dr Lisa Di Lemma

SRG24\241471

Assessing the need for tailored Alcohol Guidance for Breastfeeding women: Insights from breastfeeding mothers in England and Wales.

Liverpool Hope University

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

Hazardous alcohol consumption is a public health issue. UK guidelines recommend less than 14 weekly units and abstinence during pregnancy. However, misconceptions persist, with many, including pregnant women and mothers, exceeding recommendations. This behaviour poses risks, such as caregiving issues, developmental delays, and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. While the impact of alcohol during pregnancy is known, its impact during breastfeeding remains less understood, with varying recommendations contributing to inconsistent advice. The study aims to address this issue, aligning with national health priorities to support breastfeeding and promote healthier choices. Using an Explanatory Sequential mixed-method design, the study will investigate alcohol consumption and knowledge among breastfeeding women in England and Wales, across socio-economic groups. Over two years, a survey will firstly identify patterns, followed by focus groups exploring perceptions and experiences. By integrating these methods, the study aims to develop tailored recommendations for interventions and research to mitigate maternal drinking.

Dr Kay Dickinson

SRG24\241053

Stand-Ins and Extras: Precarious Migrant Film Labour

University of Glasgow

Value Awarded: £5,745.00

Extras constitute the most populous group of performers we see on screen, yet rarely do they receive scholarly attention. In the United Arab Emirates, most extras are migrants with no long-term leave to remain. They contribute in a highly precarious fashion to the UAE’s hosting of hundreds of big-budget international film productions. One primary appeal for these ventures is that the UAE can be made to look like difficult-to-film-in global “hot spots,” such as Iraq or Pakistan. The similarity is not simply topographical; millions of people from these countries now seek brighter futures in the UAE and can be hired to provide authentic “background” for movie narratives. Through close on-set observation and interviews with local talent agents, this research project investigates the economic, geopolitical and emotional stakes for migrant extras in recreating their (often impossible to return to) homes from within a state that refuses them enduring sanctuary.

Dr Jill Dickinson

Co-Applicants: Ms Teri-Lisa Griffiths & Professor Monika Foster

SRG24\241358

How do academics with practitioner experience renegotiate their professional identities as they navigate the research culture within Higher Education?

Leeds Beckett University

Value Awarded: £9,988.55

There is considerable interest in ‘pracademics’ (academics with practitioner experience) as boundary brokers who complement a diverse faculty (Dickinson and Griffiths, 2023a). Whilst previous research examined the student experience (Dickinson et al., 2022), this study responds to calls for universities to strengthen HE-industry connections by exploring how pracademics renegotiate their professional identities in navigating HE research culture (Johnson and Ellis, 2023; Huey and Mitchell, 2016). Post-1992 institutions within the UK (those which have been granted university status through the Further and Higher Education Act 1992) have traditionally recruited more pracademics (Obembe, 2023), and are increasingly focused on strengthening their research profiles (Perkmann and Walsh, 2007). The research invites those who self-identify as pracademics from this type of institution to take part in a survey and also a focus group that draws on creative methods (artefacts) to engage participants in collaborative reflexivity discussions (Dickinson at al., 2022).

Professor Michalis Drouvelis

Co-Applicants: Professor Bradley Ruffle & Professor Todd Reuel Kaplan

SRG24\240221

Cheating in Competitions

University of Birmingham

Value Awarded: £7,126.00

Cheating plagues competitive environments with high stakes. Cheating scandals have recently rocked chess, poker and fishing competitions. We design laboratory experiments in which paired players can cheat in competitive environments when performing a real-effort task and report suspected cheating by others. We ask: are top/weak performers more likely to cheat? Is a player more likely to accuse the opponent of cheating, the lower the opponent’s rank is? Does making players’ rankings and win-loss records visible encourage cheating? Our results will shed light on the proximate sources of cheating behaviour and the design of institutions that can prevent misconduct.

Professor Ming Du

SRG24\240195

“De-risking” and the Future of International Trade and Investment Law

Durham University

Value Awarded: £7,139.21

China’s rapid rise as a great economic and military power with ambition to reshape the international order is leading Western governments to grow increasingly wary of potential economic and security risks from China. In May 2023, the G-7 countries agreed that a central part of their economic strategy towards China is “de-risking, not de-coupling” from the Chinese economy. Yet, there is no consensus on what ‘de-risking’ is or what it entails, resulting in diverging actions and strategies. This project is the first to unpack the concept of de-risking and its impact on the various stakeholders in the global economy, as well as exploring the implications of de-risking from China for the future of international trade and investment law. The target audience of this project are UK and international policymakers, scholars of international trade and investment law, international relations/international political economy, and Chinese studies.

Haian Dukhan

SRG24\241057

Identity and Dissent: Exploring the Factors Behind the Druze Community’s Political Shift in Syria

Teesside University

Value Awarded: £8,764.43

This research aims to explore the significant political shift within the Druze community of Sweida, Syria, observed in August 2023, when they engaged in large-scale protests—a stark departure from their historically neutral stance in the ongoing Syrian conflict. The study will investigate the internal and external factors driving this change, focusing on identity, security, and governance. By examining the internal dynamics such as changes in community identity, leadership, and socio-economic conditions, alongside external influences like regional political dynamics, interventions by external actors, and security threats, the research seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of the Druze community's response to the evolving political landscape. This understanding will offer valuable insights for policymakers and stakeholders on minority dynamics during conflicts, with a comparative analysis of the Druze community's actions against those of other minority groups in Syria.

Edith England

Co-Applicant: Dr Josie Henley

SRG24\241993

Neurodiverse housing equality: understanding lifetime housing experience through a Critical Neurodiversity lens

Cardiff Metropolitan University

Value Awarded: £9,991.00

Having a ‘home’ is critical to wellbeing. Rising homelessness and poor housing especially affect financially and socially excluded households. Neurodiverse individuals – those who are autistic, have ADHD/ADD, OCD or Tourette’s Syndrome, dyslexia and dyspraxia – often struggle financially. Our previous research suggests that neurodiverse housing exclusion is a pressing, complex concern, and that neurodiverse individuals face systemic and structural obstacles to housing equality. Using a Critical Neurodiversity Studies approach, which understands neurodiversity as a social, relational experience with disadvantage resulting from unaccommodating social systems and structures, we will interview 30 neurodiverse people about their housing experiences and aspirations. We will then consult stakeholders (sector experts and neurodiverse experiential experts) to develop key recommendations. Through planned academic and non-academic dissemination, we will both influence housing policy to improve housing experiences for neurodiverse people, and contribute to developing the emergent field of Critical Neurodiversity Studies within social policy.

Dr Catherine Eschle

Co-Applicant: Dr Maria-Adriana Deiana

SRG24\241700

The Contested Afterlives of Nuclear Bases

University of Strathclyde

Value Awarded: £9,560.80

This project enquires into the complex, contested legacies of nuclear bases once they have been dismantled. Building on a wide range of literature on everyday encounters with military and nuclear sites and what they leave behind, the project will compare the sites of past US nuclear submarine facilities at La Maddalena in Sardinia, Italy, and Holy Loch in Scotland, UK. We will use archival, oral history and walking methodologies to investigate the interplay of the remains of military infrastructure with landscape, community relationships and cultural memory. The project will draw out the implications of these two cases for wider understandings of how militarism and nuclear policy are sustained in the everyday - and how they might be undone.

Professor Nahyan Fancy

SRG24\241796

Needles in Haystacks: Tracking Plague Outbreaks in the Absence of Archives

University of Exeter

Value Awarded: £6,473.00

Plague is a rodent disease which is reported in historical sources when it enters into human populations. But not every spillover causes a pandemic, or even a regional outbreak that would be reported widely. However, thanks to recent work in genetics, we can infer that the strain of the bacterium, Yersinia pestis, which caused the Black Death in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346-1351, had been displaced from its home in the Tian Shan mountain region to regions far afield giving birth to four distinct lineages a century prior. This project models how to comb through voluminous literary sources to find traces of human outbreaks (‘needles’) in a literary haystack. It also models for historians how to use Digital Humanities and contemporary science to ask important questions in medical history related to the spread and focalization of zoonotic diseases like plague that preceded the onset of epidemics and pandemics.

Dr Maria Fernandes-Jesus

Co-Applicants: Professor Ingrid Ann Palmary & Professor Brendan Barnes

SRG24\240215

Agency in climate migration: Intersectional experiences shaping migratory agency and political power

University of Sussex

Value Awarded: £9,902.50

Climate change is leading to migration within and beyond borders, particularly in countries in the Global South. This project focuses on climate migration in Mozambique, a country highly affected by climate change and the subsequent implications for climate mobilities. We will examine the intersectional experiences of Mozambican migrants to understand the processes and factors shaping their migratory agency and sense of political power in relation to climate change. We will conduct 42 object-orientated interviews with Mozambicans who have lived experiences of climate migration. Both internal (e.g., rural to urban areas) and international (to South Africa and Portugal) migrants will be recruited to participate in the study. A Community Advisory Board will be established to contribute to project implementation and dissemination. By focusing on the voices and experiences of one of the groups most affected by climate change, this project will likely inform future research and policy change.

Dr John Fisher

SRG24\240753

Ambassadors in Bonds

University of the West of England, Bristol

Value Awarded: £1,691.40

This project explores the kidnapping of principally British diplomatic and consular staff between 1868 and 1980. During this period, both salaried and unsalaried staff were abducted and held against their will, for varying periods of time. The contexts included Abyssinia, Canada, Uruguay, Lebanon, and Cuba. The captors’ aims varied widely from opportunistic brigandage to revolutionary political motivations. Kidnapping is a recurring but neglected aspect of international politics. Investigating these historical kidnappings will illuminate new aspects of British Government policy towards the abduction of British subjects overseas. More specifically, the project will highlight the response of the Foreign Office (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office). Its family-like ethos inculcated strong mutual loyalties which influenced its response to kidnappings. The enquiry also considers the Office’s response to the abduction of other nations’ foreign service staff. Over time, these abductions, and those of British personnel, helped shape the Office’s response to kidnapping.

Dr Joseph Ford

Co-Applicant: Dr Jamille Pinheiro Dias

SRG24\241372

Everyday Eco-Activism: Translingual Connectivity in a Warming Stratford

School of Advanced Study, University of London

Value Awarded: £9,973.00

'Everyday Eco-Activism: Translingual Connectivity in a Warming Stratford' aims to amplify the voices of translingual communities on climate from one of the UK’s most culturally and linguistically diverse communities in the UK. In its initial phase, the project will run three creative participatory action workshops with young translingual participants (aged 18-30), recruited from the local area in collaboration with partners working on the former Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. The project’s aim is to investigate connections between the everyday languaging/diverse knowledges of translingual communities and the conceptual languages of climate change in scientific, political and public discourse, with a view to emphasising how local perspectives both understand and contribute towards wider debates. Employing a participatory methodology, the project team will run the three workshops to consult on a planned proposal to the AHRC’s Catalyst scheme, as well as produce a set of discrete collaborative outputs.

Dr Elisabeth Forster

Co-Applicant: Dr Isaac Taylor

SRG24\241176

Reconsidering Just War: Lessons from Modern Chinese History

University of Southampton

Value Awarded: £8,758.00

In this interdisciplinary, collaborative project, we discuss how philosophical just war theory should be rethought in light of the historical experiences of modern China. This grant will help us to develop this new project. Specifically, it will enable us to theorise our original and provocative methodology, by allowing us to convene a one-day workshop with scholars who have pioneered comparable methodologies, and by enabling us to present our methodology at a conference. China is a good case study, as its politicians and intellectuals adopted European-inspired just war theory after the First World War. In other words, since that time, China has been part of the global just war conversation. As we have shown in two already published papers on the topic, looking at the details of how just war theory has played out historically uncovers some of its shortcomings which have previously been overlooked in philosophical enquiry.

Dr Nick Freeman

SRG24\241788

Arthur Symons: A Life of Sensations

Loughborough University

Value Awarded: £8,045.00

I am writing a biography of the poet, critic, translator, travel writer and artistic theorist Arthur Symons (1865-1945). Symons was a major figure in Anglo-European culture during the1890s and early 1900s, the author of the important study of French poetry, 'The Symbolist Movement in Literature' (1900), which introduced T.S. Eliot to writers such as Jules Laforgue. 'Arthur Symons: A Life of Sensations' will offer a more thorough account of his life and work than either earlier biography of him (1963, 1987). I am especially interested in Symons' less well documented life after the nervous breakdown in 1908 which threatened to derail his career, his at times adversarial relationship with English identity, and the reassessment of his relationships with women writers and artists (notably Gwen John). On-site fieldwork in areas important to his life and work will give the study a wider interest than the narrow work-centred approach of earlier biographers.

Dr Sonia Freire Trigo

Co-Applicants: Dr Jessica Ferm & Professor Niamh Moore-Cherry

SRG24\241597

Understanding the impacts and outcomes of London’s Opportunity Areas.

University College London (UCL)

Value Awarded: £9,923.58

The majority of London’s development capacity for the next 8 years is expected to happen in its Opportunity Areas, growth poles identified in the London Plan where a substantial number of new homes and jobs are envisaged to be delivered. However, no detailed evaluation of the impacts and outcomes of such interventions has been undertaken to date since the first OAs were designated back in 2004. Building on previous work by the project team (Ferm et al., 2022), this proposal aims to create the empirical foundations for a broader programme of work that will interrogate the limits and nature of growth-led strategic planning to achieve sustainable and just urban communities. Specifically, this proposed project will investigate the cumulative impacts and outcomes to date of Opportunity Areas, and to what extent these interventions contribute to addressing the spatial and social inequalities within London.

Aurelien Froment

SRG24\240822

Translating the untranslatable: language as virus and therapy in Louis Wolfson’s oeuvre

University of Edinburgh

Value Awarded: £9,812.00

Following psychiatric treatments with shock therapy, Louis Wolfson (b. 1931, New York) refused his mother tongue and taught himself several foreign languages. He depicted his mental health disorder and sophisticated use of translation to overcome any contact with his mother tongue in an autobiography written in French. The manuscript was published in Paris in 1970, and its translation into English has remained forbidden ever since. This research aims to adapt Wolfson’s autobiography into a film script to create conditions for disseminating ethically his story beyond words into a moving image artwork. Using images and sounds, it will look for cinematographic equivalents to Wolfson’s rejection of English and his deconstruction of languages. It proposes an aural perspective to observe the effects of our sonic environments on mental health. Guided by Wolfson’s text, it will examine the influence of the environment on psychosis, to understand better the mechanisms of exclusion through language.

Dr Sarah Fuchs

SRG24\241399

Off the Record: Contextualising Vocal Difference and Disability in the Laboratoire de la Parole’s Collection of Wax Cylinder Recordings

Royal College of Music

Value Awarded: £8,456.00

Among the many thousands of analogue sound recordings preserved by the French National Library are 228 unpublished wax cylinders that once belonged to France’s National Deaf-Mute Institution. According to the online finding-aid, these recordings were made between 1912 and 1929 on the initiative of Hector Marichelle, one of France’s leading researchers in the field of deaf-mute education and the first director of the Institution’s Speech Laboratory. Taking representative cylinders from this recently digitised but still very under-explored collection as case studies, my project sheds new light on the diverse ways in which vocal difference and disability were imagined in early twentieth-century France. More broadly, my project makes a case for a fresh methodological approach to the study of early sound recordings, one that takes proper account of their material, institutional, and use-histories—including their preservation and patrimonialisation, particularly in digital formats—alongside the sonic information inscribed on their surfaces.

Dr David Garbin

SRG24\240275

The temporality of urban infrastructure in the Global South: pilot study of an informal settlement in Hyderabad, India

University of Kent

Value Awarded: £9,980.00

While contemporary literature on 'informal urbanism' often focuses on the disrupted nature of infrastructural provisions—particularly water, electricity, and transport—there is a notable gap in research regarding how people in the Global South navigate the temporal constraints posed by these deficiencies. This pilot project will take as case study an informal settlement in Hyderabad, India, a city characterized by pronounced socioeconomic disparities and rapid urbanization. By adopting a temporal lens, this study will document and analyse the lived experiences of residents as they confront and adapt to unreliable or dysfunctional infrastructure. It will explore how these communities negotiate the temporal dynamics of malfunctioning or 'out of sync' infrastructures and how these negotiations influence their daily routines, social interactions, and broader aspirations. It will investigate how these temporal disruptions are gendered and affect not only practical aspects of life, such as work and education, but also cultural perceptions of 'urban time'.

Dr Gemma Gibson

Co-Applicant: Dr Aisha Sobey

SRG24\241761

The Value of Digital Spaces for Food-Tracking in the Diabetic Population

University of Sheffield

Value Awarded: £8,474.00

Diabetes management is complex and ongoing. One key aspect of management for all types of diabetes is monitoring food intake. To reduce the burden of food-tracking, digital technologies such as food-tracking apps are popular. Yet, there has been little investigation of the experience of diabetic people within this digital environment, or efforts to understand the needs of diabetic users when designing food-tracking spaces. We propose to investigate and evidence the impact of the digital environment that people with diabetes navigate through a qualitative research study, building on both researchers' positionality as diabetic people. To do so, we will focus on the UK context and undertake content analysis of digital food-tracking spaces to understand what behaviours they incentivise. Concurrently, through focus groups with people in the diabetic community, we will foreground the lived experience of navigating such spaces and contribute to critical discussions about the embedded unquestioned wisdom of food-tracking technologies.

Dr Leah Gillooly

Co-Applicant: Dr Daniel Lock

SRG24\240071

What do we do when our favourite retires? Identity threats in athlete fandom

Manchester Metropolitan University

Value Awarded: £9,815.00

Currently, little is known about fandom in the context of athlete retirement. Athlete careers are temporary and when they retire, their fans are confronted with several questions: how do I feel when my favourite athlete retires? Will I stop following the sport entirely? Or should I become a fan of another athlete? If so, how will I decide who to follow next? This qualitative project will explore fans’ emotional and behavioural reactions to the retirement of their favoured athlete, focusing on the sports of golf and tennis. Sports fandom has the potential to positively impact fans’ psychological and social wellbeing, so this project is timely against the backdrop of the negative impacts of the cost-of-living crisis on societal wellbeing. Thus, the project will contribute to the body of work on fandom journeys, endings, and identities, within and beyond sport, and can inform wider policy and strategic decision-making within sports organisations.

Dr Daniele Girardi

SRG24\241971

Did Capital strike? Redistribution, firm value and private investment during the 1981-1983 French socialist experiment

King's College London

Value Awarded: £9,991.30

Why has universal suffrage not resulted in massive egalitarian redistribution? 'Capital strikes' represent a major candidate explanation: large-scale redistribution would stifle incentives for private investment, undermining its own economic-political sustainability. Quantitative evidence on this mechanism, however, is scarce. This project will assess empirically the possible role of a 'capital strike' in contributing to the failure and reversal of the 1981-1983 French Socialist Experiment- a defining event in recent history. According to a widespread narrative, the French socialist experiment caused a crisis of business confidence which resulted in weak investment, contributing to an economic downturn that eventually forced the French socialists to abandon the experiment. Drawing on archival sources, I will build a new historical firm-level dataset of stock prices, profits and investment. This will allow to document the reaction of the French corporate sector to the socialist experiment, and test the hypothesis that its egalitarian policies depressed private investment.

Professor Claudia Glatz

SRG24\240015

Making and Breaking the Early State at Late Chalcolithic Shakhi Kora, Kurdistan Region of Iraq: A Site-based and Regional Investigation of Emergent Social Difference, Inequality, and Freedom

University of Glasgow

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

This project investigates previously little explored aspects of the world’s first urbanising and state societies. Excavations at the newly discovered 4th millennium BCE site of Shakhi Kora in the Sirwan/Upper Diyala river valley of northeast Iraq have revealed a c. 1000 year-long occupation sequence that spans the transition from village communities to urban societies in Mesopotamia. The project investigates emerging socio-spatial divisions and inequality at the site and regional scale, as well as the apparently abrupt abandonment of centralising forms of social organisation by local communities. A season of targeted excavations and comparative material analyses will be conducted at Shakhi Kora to empirically define the spatial and material parameters of social difference and inequality, and to trace their long-term developments. Regional socio-economic interconnections and degrees of centralisation will be examined through a detailed comparative analysis of practices of procurement and production attested in pottery and lithic assemblages from survey sites.

Dr Swati Gola

SRG24\240177

Colonial Apathy and Epistemic Injustice in the NHS? Scoping the traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine usage by the UK’s Minoritized Ethnic Communities

University of Exeter

Value Awarded: £7,150.00

I am seeking funding to organise a half-day exploratory roundtable and follow-up event to plan and design a larger research project on epistemic injustice and the marginalisation of traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine (TCIM). The roundtable will bring together 15 representatives from minoritized ethnic communities to discuss their usage of, and attitudes towards TCIM. We will also explore the impact of the current lack of regulation of TCIM and whether regulation would be seen as a positive development. The follow-up event will co-create the questions and methodology that will underpin the research project. This project connects law, culture, health and knowledge: understanding the significance of TCIM for ME communities and the epistemic value they attach to it will allow for examining the impact of the current lack of statutory legitimacy and whether/how regulation could best be implemented.

Dr Laura Griffiths

SRG24\241160

‘Dancing Class’: Moving Stories of Levelling Up

Leeds Beckett University

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

Dance is a vehicle for class mobility within the UK. This research interviews dance professionals, whose journeys began at different points within a 40 year period (1980s-2010s), to explore experiences within their dance education and subsequent careers. It will employ podcast, video documentation and innovative uses of bi-neural sound to investigate participants’ experience of social mobility and understanding of cultural capital. Dance is often marginalised within education and cultural sectors, rather than foregrounded as a result of its potential to transcend and work across class distinctions. This research will evaluate the impacts of changes in the political landscape through first-person accounts of dance as a catalyst for social and economic progress whilst contributing to ‘levelling up’ discourses. A report will be shared with One Dance UK, the national support and advocacy organisation for Dance, to disseminate the research and influence educational and cultural policy.

Dr Najmeh Hafezieh

Co-Applicants: Dr Farjam Eshraghian & Professor Gopalakrishnan Harindranath

SRG24\240321

AI for Inclusion: Examining the Role of GenAI in Bridging the Gender and Minority Gap in the UK Technology Sector

Royal Holloway, University of London

Value Awarded: £9,819.00

This study investigates the role of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technologies in software programming training, focusing on the social inclusion of women, minorities and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. GenAI tools such as GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT streamline software development, however, concerns exist around over-reliance, particularly for novice developers. This research aims to understand the practices surrounding GenAI use in learning to code and explore how GenAI can support underrepresented groups in learning programming. The study will adopt a multi-method approach involving topic modelling of Reddit comments related to “AI in code learning” and a grounded theory analysis of interviews and observations of the GenAI use within social enterprises’ training programmes for underrepresented groups. This research contributes to understanding how GenAI can empower a diverse workforce to advance more inclusive software solutions and will inform policy on the use of GenAI for more inclusive workforce development in the tech sector.

Dr Robert Hagan

Co-Applicant: Ms Sarah Dennis

SRG24\240364

Examining family court culture and judgements in two regions and the impact on families: Making recommendations for change and consistency

Manchester Metropolitan University

Value Awarded: £9,310.00

The research project relates to examining detailed information relating to child protection court proceedings in two regions in the North West of England. In particular, we wish to explore potential variations between a largely urban locale and one which is more rural. We want to examine differences in relation to the personnel overseeing hearings, alongside the socioeconomic status of families as well as ethnicity, age, first language and additional needs. We will consider whether different court settings are fair and equitable for families and would like to examine whether there are inherent biases or inequalities in the system. The award would cover SAIL database access fees, run by the Family Justice Data Partnership (FJDP). The database was developed as there is, according to the FJDP, “insufficient intelligence about how the family justice system in… England is working.” As such, this project wishes to contribute to developing further knowledge.

Dr Lauren Hall-Lew

SRG24\240658

Homelessness and Sociolinguistic Variation

University of Edinburgh

Value Awarded: £8,905.41

The field of sociolinguistic variation was founded on the study of language and socioeconomic status. However, there has never been a study devoted to the speech patterns of people with lived experience of homelessness. Previous studies in urban contexts have focused classifying each speaker in a sample into one static level between the (lower) working class and the (upper) middle class. While there have been some studies on the speech of the upper class, we know essentially nothing about linguistic variation and poverty. This is a major oversight, because homeless individuals, although living in precarity and subject to high mobility, nonetheless form an important part of urban communities and should be part of our descriptions and theories of urban language use. The proposed project asks: in what ways do speakers currently or formerly experiencing homelessness use linguistic variation differently from those with similar backgrounds but no experience with homelessness?

Dr Karen Handley

Co-Applicant: Dr Shelley Beck

SRG24\240118

The discourse and practice of ‘hybrid work’, and the implications for productivity and wellbeing

Oxford Brookes University

Value Awarded: £5,063.00

The COVID-19 pandemic and the enforced lockdowns that followed radically disrupted working arrangements. New discourses and practices are emerging as many organisations transition towards a ‘hybrid work’ model. These changes raise important questions, such as how hybrid work affects employee wellbeing and productivity, and what ‘being productive’ really means? This study uses a multi-method approach to investigate: (1) how talk of hybrid working emerged during the COVID pandemic and is now shaping discourses around flexible-working practices and what it means to be a productive worker; (2) how UK employers are embedding ideas and assumptions about hybrid work into their flexible-working policies and practices; and (3) how employers/employees assess the impact of hybrid-working on outcomes such as wellbeing and productivity. The study will combine techniques from corpus linguistics, qualitative discourse analysis, and survey methods. It will contribute to debates on new forms of work, and the impact on productivity and wellbeing.

Professor Vanessa Harding

SRG24\241734

Mapping metropolitan London on the eve of the Great Fire of 1666

Independent Scholar

Value Awarded: £9,594.00

This application is for research assistance to complete a larger project, ‘Mapping metropolitan London on the eve of the Great Fire of 1666’. The applicant aims to research, create, and, in collaboration with the Historic Towns Trust, publish an atlas of London, the dynamic and rapidly-growing capital of Restoration England, on the eve of the fire that destroyed the historic city centre. This is the London of the young Samuel Pepys, the Restoration court, the early Royal Society, the expanding overseas trading companies, and the Great Plague. The centrepiece of the atlas will be a new, accurate, large-scale map of metropolitan London in 1666. With accompanying text and illustrations, it will enhance and communicate understanding of the layout and lived environment of the whole metropolis in the early 1660s. It will be of wide interest to a general public, as well as great value to scholars of the period.

Dr Kelsy Hejjas

Co-Applicant: Dr Laura Dixon

SRG24\241617

An Industry in Crisis: Seeking Solutions to Employment Challenges in Tourism and Hospitality

Edinburgh Napier University

Value Awarded: £9,813.16

Tourism and hospitality (T&H) contributes more than £237bn to the economy (Statista, 2023); however, job vacancies are currently at a record high, with T&H businesses more than twice as likely than other industries to struggle filling vacancies (ONS, 2021). This creates significant challenges for post-Covid recovery and has substantial social and economic consequences. In response, using interviews and focus groups, this multi-level, multi-stakeholder study aims to analyse (1) employee perspectives of T&H employment and (2) the potential role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in improving attraction and retention (A&R). To achieve these aims, the following objectives have been set: 1. To critically analyse the current and desired work experience of employees; 2. To critically analyse employee focused CSR policies and initiatives adopted by organisations; 3. To evaluate which CSR related factors trigger positive employee experiences and under what conditions; 4. To identify ways to enhance employee experiences through CSR policy.

Dr Kinkini Hemachandra

Co-Applicant: Dr Chamindi Malalgoda

SRG24\241595

Building resilience among ethnic minority women entrepreneurs: A case from Sri Lanka

University of Huddersfield

Value Awarded: £9,900.00

Despite their contribution to the economy and society, they often face some intrinsic challenges; lack of access to finance, information, training, credit, and networks, sociocultural restrictions, lack of family support, discrimination and so on. The situation for women entrepreneurs is more difficult when they represents ethnic minorities. The COVID-19 pandemic hit harder for these entrepreneurs across the world. Sri Lanka stands well within this study since it is a developing country with a multi-ethnic society. Apart from the pandemic Sri Lanka has been hit harder by the present economic crisis. Hence, the study will be conducted qualitatively to propose strategies in reducing the impact of twin disasters among ethnic minority women entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka. Hence, this study will addresses one of the disadvantaged groups in the community and for the long-term economic benefits to the country.

Professor Marsha Henry

SRG24\241964

The Contradictions of Living Everyday Peace: Feminist Activism in Japan and Iceland

Queen's University Belfast

Value Awarded: £9,950.00

This research project is concerned to map the political work of feminists living and working in the ‘ideal’ and 'peaceful' states of Japan and Iceland. Both countries regularly feature in ‘Top Ten Best Countries to Live In’ lists due to high levels of public safety and social wellbeing. Research on gender politics reveals that there are significant contradictions in everyday life, despite these marked conditions of peace and security; for example, the persistence of patriarchal foreign policy initiatives, inequalities in the division of labour, and ongoing cases of sexual harassment, abuse and violence against women. The research poses the questions: 1) why do feminists in Japan and Iceland persist in their pursuit of feminist goals in spite of peaceful socio-economic and political conditions? and 2) what historical and contemporary social circumstances influence and shape these vibrant and active movements? The comparative research contributes to feminist peace studies, practice, and policy.

Dr Felicity Hill

SRG24\241508

Influencing common knowledge in medieval England: oral mass communication c. 1180-c.1330

University of St Andrews

Value Awarded: £5,710.00

The nature, extent and impact of oral vernacular communication from authorities to the masses in thirteenth-century England--where a myriad of administrative, governmental, and pastoral developments took place--remains to be fully explored. The laity was given a great deal of information--about politics, pastoral care, trade, and law--but we do not understand how, when, and with what results the masses were purposefully informed about them. Moreover, no studies have analysed lay engagement with both secular and ecclesiastical information, nor how these authorities collaborated with, or contradicted, one another. Many ignore the lowest strata of society, particularly women. Information announced could be urgent or mundane, time-sensitive or recurring. This project uses a wide range of documents to investigate the role assigned to laypeople by their authorities, assessing how far authorities’ intentions to inform were realised, and the extent to which men and women responded as their overlords hoped.

Dr Toomas Hinnosaar

Co-Applicant: Dr Marit Hinnosaar

SRG24\240268

Regulation of Store Opening Hours and Consumer Shopping Behavior: Evidence from GPS Movement Data

University of Nottingham

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

This project examines how regulating store opening hours affects consumer shopping behavior. Over recent decades, there has been an ongoing policy debate concerning regulating and deregulating opening hours. Our study uses one such regulatory change as a natural experiment. We analyze the repeal of a strict Sunday Closing Law, which banned the sale of most non-food items from midnight to noon on Sundays, leading most stores to close. We assess the impact of this law's repeal on consumer shopping patterns, using detailed GPS movement data to compare visits to stores and other locations before and after the law's repeal in the affected region and its neighboring areas, where the law did not apply. Our objective is to understand how store opening hours influence consumer behavior and welfare.

Professor Hannah Holtschneider

Co-Applicant: Professor Peter Davies

SRG24\240235

Interdisciplinary interpretations of multiple testimonies of female physicians in Auschwitz

University of Edinburgh

Value Awarded: £9,940.00

This project explores the testimonies of a number of female Auschwitz survivors who worked as slave labourers in the infirmary at Auschwitz-Birkenau (Lucie Adelsberger, Władysława Jasińska, Ella Lingens, Gisella Perl). Our work advances previous studies of women’s experiences during the Holocaust by focusing on female professionals from different cultural and linguistic contexts who were enlisted in specific slave labour because of their medical qualifications. This project addresses one of the most intriguing, but still under-researched, aspects of testimony: how the remembering and telling of survivors experiences during the Holocaust changes through time, through shifting contexts and with increasing age. The originality of our project arises from its interdisciplinary perspective, with contributions from historians, scholars of literary narratives, and translation specialists. Together we explore how our different perspectives overlap, conflict with or complement each other, and what novel insights such disciplinary conversations generate.

Dr Kristen Hopper

Co-Applicants: Dr William Deadman & Dr Rawjan Amayali

SRG24\242073

Exploring the Sasanian and Early Islamic landscapes of Tell Ramihiah through collaboration and co production

Durham University

Value Awarded: £9,750.00

Tell Al Ramihiyah is located on the fertile Mesopotamian floodplain near the natural border with the western desert in Iraq. Current evidence suggests the site was occupied in the Sasanian and Early Islamic with smaller-scale activity of Ottoman date. Remote sensing, landscape survey and excavation of this substantial fortified town and its environs, using state-of-the art digital techniques, has the potential to reveal crucial information about the life of a community in an era of social, cultural and political change. Setting this project apart from other international endeavours in Iraq is the commitment to co-production from inception to publication, and the training of a significant cohort of Iraqi students. This project has the potential to transform not only our understanding of the Sasanian/Early Islamic archaeology of the region, but also to create a blueprint for more equitable research partnerships between Iraq and the global north.

Dr Soren Hough

Co-Applicant: Mr Christopher Coquard

SRG24\241986

Marie Goldsmith: Scientific Luminary, Anarchist Militant

Independent Scholar

Value Awarded: £5,000.00

Marie Goldsmith (1871–1933) was an anarchist political theorist and Sorbonne-educated evolutionary biologist. Her multilingual internationally published writing spans multiple books and hundreds of articles across academic and radical presses. As a part of the Russian diaspora, she targeted significant portions of her writing at Russian audiences, most notably in Revolutionary Syndicalism and Anarchism: Struggle with Capital and Power (1920). This book offers an unprecedented glimpse at the state of labour politics across Europe and post-revolutionary Russia in the early twentieth century from the perspective of a radical and highly networked female thinker. Unfortunately, language barriers and state repression have left Revolutionary Syndicalism and Goldsmith’s other work archived and untranslated. Having secured a publisher, this project seeks to release Revolutionary Syndicalism in English for the first time, accompanied by research into Goldsmith’s life and broader œuvre to bring a forgotten but important female voice into the twenty-first century.

Professor Flora Huang

Co-Applicant: Dr Khalida Azhigulova

SRG24\240088

Sustainable Investment Pathways in Central Asia: Convergence or Divergence?

University of Derby

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

The transition to energy-sustainable systems is a globally accepted concept, but it is implemented with various degrees of success around the world. This project examines sustainable investment in five Central Asian countries, which are fossil fuel-dependent economies and vulnerable to climate change, to determine whether there is convergence or divergence in their sustainability trajectories. Despite its strategic significance and growing role in the global energy transition, Central Asia often remains marginalised in sustainability discussions. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the study analyses economic, environmental, social, and governance factors shaping sustainable investment in the region. Drawing insights from initiatives by the World Bank, UNCTAD, and national green campaigns, it aims to understand opportunities and challenges for sustainable investment. By scrutinising policy frameworks, regulatory mechanisms, and investor behaviours and protection, the research intends to provide actionable recommendations aligning with the region's developmental goals and global sustainability imperatives.

Dr Colin Huehns

SRG24\241022

Tu Shen and the Erhu

Independent Scholar

Value Awarded: £800.00

As an erhu player, illustrated Chinese historic fiction would seem a fertile field for finding depictions of erhu performance, but after assiduous searching, I have found these only in the works by Tu Shen (1744–1801) 'Yinshi' (The history of the silverfish) and 'Liuhe neiwai suoyan' (Six concordances, outside and inside, trivial anecdotes). To understand the context of why these depict the erhu and to explain this to a English-speaking readership, complete translations of the relevant sections are required. Thankfully, the earliest editions of both books are available in British collections, so this project would also be a celebration of this. Tu Shen writes in a highly complex and ornate style and has a predilection for employing citation. My translations would be presented with copious exegesis resembling traditional commentaries on ancient Chinese texts to explain the formulation of his linguistic landscape, together with facsimiles of the historic books themselves.

Dr Charlie Ingram

Co-Applicants: Dr Michaela Gummerum & Professor Yaniv Hanoch

SRG24\240600

Evaluating Policy Impact: Observing crowd behavioural shifts at Reading Festival, 2000-2024.

Coventry University

Value Awarded: £9,863.00

The UK music festival industry brings a range of benefits to local areas, communities and individuals. Often, however, these events are accompanied with incidents of crime and anti-social behaviour. Policy strategies attempt to reduce this, however, little research has examined the effectiveness of these strategies long-term. Using the Reading Festival 2000-2024 as an example of this type of intervention, this project will examine how behaviour policy interventions made by the festival, alongside cultural and environmental factors might result in a reduction of anti-social behaviour. Through a mixed methods design, this project will also trial an experimental arts-based methodology that utilises the perspectives of festival staff, stakeholders, and ticket holders in live performance. This research will provide new insights into behaviour management at UK music festivals by providing evidence to local and national government that certain approaches may provide pathways to mitigate anti-social behaviour at future UK music festivals of scale.

Dr Alexandria Innes

SRG24\241599

A Systematic Review, Data Synthesis and Meta-Analysis of Research Documenting Sexual Violence Along Migration Routes

City, University of London

Value Awarded: £9,731.69

This project requests funds to carry out an evidence synthesis of qualitative data relating to sexual violence along migration routes. While sexual violence is often clandestine, there is verifiable evidence of sexual violence along known routes where people migrate without state authorization (Adeyinka 2023, Keygnaert et al 2014, Leyva-Flores et al 2019, Omar 2022). There is currently no study that synthesizes research on sexual violence along global migration routes to find common contributing factors, experiences, and effects. Systematic review is considered the most robust method in heath sciences for drawing reliable, transparent and verifiable conclusions across studies, and has been adopted in interdisciplinary and social scientific research. Systematic review requires at least two reviewers: the second reviewer verifies the inclusion, coding and analytical process. This request for funding allocates funds towards a research assistant to assume the role of second reviewer over the course of this project.

Dr Nirvikar Jassal

SRG24\241941

Do Policewomen Improve Law Enforcement Performance? Evidence from India

London School of Economics and Political Science

Value Awarded: £9,018.00

Police cases involving crimes against women (e.g. rape, dowry) are often assigned to female investigators while higher profile cases (e.g. murder, kidnapping, corruption) are often assigned to male investigators in police stations, especially in countries that emerged from colonialism in the 20th century such as India. Investigator gender can impact both case outcomes as well as career outcomes for the investigating officer. I will examine whether randomly assigning cases to investigators (male versus female) leads to disparate outcomes for crime registrations, police productivity, career trajectories and behavior. This experiment will be carried out in Haryana with the collaboration of the Inspector General of the State's police forces. Cases will be randomly assigned (to male and female) investigators within a police station. I will use a combination of administrative and survey data to measure outcomes, i.e., whether female officers perform as well (if not better) than men when investigating, say, murder.

Dr Junzhe Ji

Co-Applicants: Dr Carole Couper & Dr Lei Chen

SRG24\241108

Techno-geopolitical Uncertainty and Chinese Technology Companies in the UK

University of Glasgow

Value Awarded: £8,041.10

Chinese technology companies have experienced increasing uncertainty when internationalising their technology-related offerings, due to growing geopolitical concerns from Western Nations, including the UK, over their technological capabilities in relation to national security. While the rise of this new type of uncertainty is fundamentally reshaping the international business landscape, we know little how this new environment may be experienced by, and influence the strategies of, affected firms. By using an exploratory case study approach, this project intends to deepen our understanding of the emerging uncertainty by investigating the experience and strategic responses of Chinese technology firms operating in the UK. Our research contributes to: (1) the conceptualisation of techno-geopolitical uncertainty and the theorisation of its influence on firm internationalisation strategy; (2) UK inward FDI policy-making by providing insights derived from under-researched Chinese technology firms’ related experience; (3) business practices by offering practical examples of coping strategies to address the uncertainty.

Dr Stefana Juncu

Co-Applicant: Dr Jamal K. Mansour

SRG24\241344

The effects of lineup size on eyewitness decision-making: an eye-tracking study

University of Portsmouth

Value Awarded: £9,883.00

This project will increase knowledge about eyewitness decision-making by using the novel approach of eyetracking to study how eyewitnesses engage with differently-sized lineups, which I have demonstrated influences accuracy. Worldwide, police use lineups to test whether a suspect is guilty, but mistaken identifications are the largest contributor to wrongful convictions. One way to reduce these errors is by determining how many lineup members maximise guilty suspect identifications and minimize innocent suspect identifications. Tracking people’s gaze is an innovative and reliable method of examining the decision-making processes involved in eyewitness identifications. We will be the first to use eye-tracking to study how lineup decisions are affected by lineup size. We will also systematically manipulate the plausibility of fillers to differentiate the effects of lineup size from the effects of lineup quality. Using varied stimuli and large samples will aid us to ensure worldwide guidelines are supported by high-quality research.

Dr Vasiliki Kapogianni

Co-Applicant: Dr Eric Loefflad

SRG24\241562

Reconceptualising the Marginalised Nexus Between Genocide, the Ocean, and the Existing International Legal Mechanisms: The Case of the Caribbean

University of Reading

Value Awarded: £9,992.50

In this project we reimagine the legal and conceptual relationship between genocide and the ocean. Be it narrowly legal or broadly political, contemporary genocide discourse can marginalise or distort forms of violence connected to the ocean in domains that include war, migration, and environmental destruction. Drawing upon a synthesis of doctrinal legal analysis and intellectual history, our project will provide accounts of how genocide discourse effects global consciousness of sea-related violence. On one level, our project builds new interdisciplinary frameworks that enable a more inclusive analysis of both genocide and the ocean. On another level, our project incorporates the neglected maritime domain into studies of genocide. We begin with the Caribbean, a region subject to forms of violence, both historic and ongoing, exposing the limits of genocide discourse and has generated impactful policy proposals on reparations for sea-related historical injustices including the Transatlantic Slave Trade and destruction of indigenous peoples.

Dr Victor Kattan

SRG24\241107

Demographic Engineering and Apartheid in Western Sahara

University of Nottingham

Value Awarded: £9,964.08

This project explores the linkages between policies and practices of demographic engineering and apartheid systems in the situation in Western Sahara through a study of the archives in the UK and Spain. The aim is to explore how demographic engineering policies and practices have contributed to maintaining a system of apartheid in the territories occupied by Morocco and the national liberation movement Front Polisario as a contribution to the scholarship of better-known case studies (South Africa/Namibia, Israel/Palestine, Myanmar etc). The focus on Western Sahara is important to better understand the root causes and legal implications of the conflict, which has re-emerged in recent years after nearly 30-years of ceasefire. The timeliness of this research is further supported by recent developments in the field, such as the proceedings before the International Court of Justice regarding the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including demographic engineering and apartheid.

Dr Michael Keenan

Co-Applicant: Professor Carrie Paechter

SRG24\240673

Finding something in nothing: Exploring meaning and challenge in the everyday experiences of sexually abstinent religious university students

Nottingham Trent University

Value Awarded: £9,415.76

This project will explore everyday experiences of religiously motivated sexual abstinence (RMSA) amongst undergraduate students. It will also lay foundations for a future collaborative research bid exploring everyday experiences of RMSA across the life course. The project uses an innovative combination of questionnaire, diary and interview methods to explore diverse RMSA experiences. While RMSA is present in the literature it is generally explored in terms of the consequences of abstinence education or in terms of sexual behaviour and health. There is very little discussion of individual experience. This project will further innovate by using Scott’s ‘sociology of nothing’ to explore abstinence as an impactful presence rather than an absence, and takes a lived religion perspective to explore the meanings and importance ascribed to everyday abstinent experience. By focusing on the university context the project also explores how everyday experiences of abstinence are impacted, troubled and enhanced by sexualised culture.

Professor Laura Kelly

SRG24\241679

Irish pro-choice activism: an oral history, c.1980-92

University of Strathclyde

Value Awarded: £9,920.00

In 2018, following an historic referendum, the eighth amendment of the Irish constitution was repealed, leading to the legalisation of abortion in Ireland. The role of pro-choice activists in this referendum was undoubtedly key, and recent scholarship has sought to understand the experiences of activists involved in the Repeal the Eighth campaign. However, pro-choice activism in Ireland has a much longer history: the first Irish pro-choice group was established in 1980. This project thus seeks to reinstate the voices of pro-choice activists who were active in the 1980s and early 1990s and who have been largely excluded from the historical narrative. Drawing on oral history interviews and archival research and resulting in a number of academic and public-facing outputs, the project will shed light on their experiences, strategies, service provision and the importance of transnational networks and emotions to Irish pro-choice activism in this period.

Dr Mark Kenwright

Co-Applicant: Dr Fiona Cust

SRG24\241461

What mental health problems are experienced by undergraduate healthcare students and how can they be better supported in higher education?

Staffordshire University

Value Awarded: £8,238.00

This research will examine the specific mental health problems experienced by undergraduate healthcare students in Nursing; Midwifery and Paramedic Science and explore views on how the mental health of these students can be better supported in higher education. Data from three sources will be analyzed in a mixed-methods research design: 1) An anonymous online survey completed by healthcare students exploring the specific mental health problems they experience; 2) Analysis of data from the Student Counselling Service on the type/severity/complexity of problems for which healthcare students seek support; 3) Semi-structured interviews of the eight Student Counsellors in the University Wellbeing Service to explore their experience and views of healthcare student’s needs. Evidence from this research will be relevant to policy makers; educators and practitioners across both higher education and clinical practice in supporting the training and retention of the NHS healthcare workforce.

Dr Katherine King

Co-Applicants: Dr Samuel Hills & Dr Ellie Gennings

SRG24\240539

Making waves: Youth voices on safe access to blue spaces

Bournemouth University

Value Awarded: £8,082.94

Blue spaces are important resources for improving wellbeing. Given the global prioritisation of improving young people’s mental health, this is of particular significance for today’s youth. Despite well documented health benefits, their use is contested by controversies over safety, risk-taking, pollution, and exclusionary practices. This research will explore the interplay between wellbeing, inclusivity, and safety in the lived experience of youth leisure in blue spaces to inform debates over young people’s rights to safe access. Employing a case study in the South of England, this research will utilise participatory approaches of key actor interviews and concept mapping workshops involving participants in the generation, analysis, and interpretation of data. This timely research will connect policy makers and providers with young people’s own voices and experiences through a rights-based approach to inform practice and policy around management of blue spaces impacting young people’s health and wellbeing, and the safety of future engagements.

Dr Margaryta Klymak

Co-Applicants: Dr Monika Pompeo & Professor Silvia Sonderegger

SRG24\241493

Job Ads and Honesty in the Public Sector

King's College London

Value Awarded: £9,640.00

Corruption remains a critical challenge for governments worldwide, undermining public trust and hindering development. Traditional economic models argue that difficulty in monitoring and penalizing misconduct among civil servants drives corruption. Consistent with this theory, evidence shows that institutional factors, such as corruption opportunities, influence selection into the public sector globally. The literature on self-selection into the public sector primarily examines prosociality and dishonesty. This project will introduce experimental variations in job advertisements to manipulate both dimensions and assess their effect on the applicant pool in Ukraine. We will empirically test which treatment attracts fewer dishonest or more prosocial applicants. The study aims to understand how corruption opportunities and job characteristics shape public sector self-selection, with implications for policies to reduce corruption and improve public sector integrity.

Dr Helen Kowalewska

SRG24\240203

Too old to hire, too young to retire? Women’s job-seeking experiences after age 50

University of Bath

Value Awarded: £9,964.82

Women’s experiences of re-entering employment in later life remain largely invisible in academic research and society. This project will spotlight these experiences through in-depth, qualitative interviews with unemployed/inactive women aged 50-65 who are seeking re-employment across England. Studies have considered previous cohorts, but not these late-Boomer and early-Gen-X women. These women were a turning point in women’s employment rights and expectations; yet, many have no choice but to work for longer amid UK State Pension Age increases, welfare cuts, the cost-of-living crisis, and pension privatisation. The biographical approach will highlight the influence of earlier life events on these women’s labour market experiences today, while its intersectional approach will elucidate differences by class, family status, and ethnicity. There will be several academic and non-academic outputs, and I will capitalise on connections with the Centre for Ageing Better and Women and Work All-Party Parliamentary Group, which offer direct access to policymakers.

Dr Emily Lau

SRG24\241219

Higher Education and Experiential Learning: Understanding the ways that pedagogy can inspire civic , political and social action.

University of Kent

Value Awarded: £9,814.06

Can Higher Education (HE) transcend beyond academic learning and inspire students' civic, political and social action? Cross-discipline studies show that experiential learning, which includes in and out-of-class action orientated experiences, can lead to better learning outcomes. This study is interested in whether, post-module, students report more engagement and participation in civic, political and social action. Over two years this project will follow the experiences and perspectives of 150 university undergraduate students who are taking an experiential learning module at the University of Kent, the module includes interactions with community and charitable organisations and requires students, as a group, to distribute a funding pot of £2000 to a local charitable organisation. The project will use pre and post survey data to track attitudes and perspectives post-module as well as qualitative interviews each year to explore the ways that experiential pedagogies and action orientated experiences can shift perspectives and translate into action.

Dr Robert Lawson

SRG24\241525

Exploring the language of modern fatherhood: A linguistic study of a paternal support group

Birmingham City University

Value Awarded: £9,999.00

Fathers play a vital role in family life, but evidence suggests that new fathers face a range of difficulties adjusting to the challenges of fatherhood. While peer support groups have been shown to help fathers, we know little about how these groups operate or the interactive strategies adopted by participants and facilitators. Drawing on a range of linguistic methodologies, this project collaborates with a parent-centred Community Interest Company to explore the interactive strategies adopted within a fathers’ support group. Through a critical analysis of conversations in this group, the project investigates how fathers support one another in vulnerable settings, how normative ideologies of masculinity manifest themselves among fathers, and how fathers engage with practices associated with "caring masculinities". Amidst calls for more engaged fatherhood and counter-narratives to outdated paternal norms, this research aims to inform the development of a toolkit to better support fathers as caregivers, partners, and community members.

Dr Sun Hye Lee

Co-Applicants: Dr Jungho Seo & Dr Young Jun Han

SRG24\240973

Making sense of dynamic capabilities: the implications of national competitive advantages

University of Surrey

Value Awarded: £9,600.00

In times of uncertainty and unpredictability, practitioners and scholars are increasingly interested in how companies navigate 'grand challenges' while maintaining strength and competitiveness, rather than merely surviving. Experts have extensively analysed those challenges and corresponding corporate responses, underscoring the importance of possessing the right set of dynamic capabilities during tumultuous periods. This study posits that these capabilities are not solely intrinsic to each organization; they are also significantly shaped and enhanced by the national context within which the company operates. This interdependence becomes particularly salient during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Through interviews with industry experts, this research delves into the dual influence of organizational competencies and national endowments in effectively addressing crises. It is not merely about the organization's internal strengths; the country’s inherent resources and strategic positioning play a pivotal role in shaping a company's resilience and agility in the face of unprecedented disruptions.

Dr Jiaxin Liu

SRG24\240873

Making transnational families: the negotiation of intergenerational support across borders among first-generation Chinese immigrant families in the UK

University of York

Value Awarded: £9,521.56

Intergenerational support, a crucial element in Chinese families, is undergoing transformations due to population ageing, evolving family structures, and increasing migration. Existing research predominantly examines intergenerational families with domestic migrants, whereas transnational families receive limited attention. These families involve adult children, as first-generation migrants, living in countries with different cultural and policy contexts from China, where their parents may still reside. The diverse social policy arrangements, family policies, cultural and gender norms, geographic distance, and migration experience may lead to varied patterns, processes, strategies, and mechanisms in negotiating intergenerational support. This project, through in-depth interviews with first-generation migrants in the UK and their older parents in China, seeks to explore these dynamics. The study aims to offer new insights into the role of transnational families in social policy arrangements and examine family resilience amidst social, cultural, and demographic shifts and migration.

Dr Zheng Liu

SRG24\241297

Understanding China’s AI Industry: Key Actors, Resources, and Social Structures

University of Bristol

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

China and the US are leading the world’s innovation in AI. However, whilst there is a rich body of literature detailing the origins, evolution, organisation, and operation of AI innovation in the US (see, for example, Fleck 1987; Kenny 2000; O’Mara 2019), sociological knowledge about the social structures of the Chinese AI industry is lacking. Little is known about how China’s AI industry is organised and structured, why it has developed so quickly, the key actors driving its growth, and its interactions with other sectors influencing its development. This study aims to conduct the first comprehensive sociological analysis of the social organisation and structure of the Chinese AI industry, using primary data collected from interviews with AI industry leaders, academics, policymakers and others. Findings of this study will enrich the existing sociological literature on AI and inform policymakers and industry leaders worldwide seeking to shape the future of AI.

Dr Chia Liu

SRG24\242178

Socio-demographic determinants of geriatric suicide in East Asia

University of St Andrews

Value Awarded: £9,782.10

Population aging is a significant demographic shift with profound implications for societies, particularly in East Asia where the elderly population is rapidly growing while social provisions are still in nascent stages of development. Understanding the challenges and addressing the needs of aging populations is crucial for ensuring their well-being in an equitable and resilient society. This project aims to delve into the issue of geriatric suicide in higher income yet collectivist countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, or Japan. Geriatric suicide is a prominent issue in East Asia and a phenomenon which signals the pressing need to address successful later-life care amidst the backdrop of population aging in the region. This project aims to leverage quantitative analyses of administrative and survey data in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan to illuminate the linkages between singlehood, lone-living, later-life separation from partner, empty nest, childlessness, and adverse outcomes such as suicide.

Dr Alexander Lloyd

Co-Applicant: Professor Jonathan Roiser

SRG24\241184

Explore/exploit decision-making as a transdiagnostic correlate of mental health problems in adolescence

University College London (UCL)

Value Awarded: £9,959.28

Across the lifespan, individuals face choices to either stay with familiar options or explore new alternatives, which is known as the “explore/exploit” dilemma. Relative to adults, adolescents exhibit heightened exploration, which serves a functional developmental role as it can support individuals to gain experiential knowledge necessary for adult independence. Importantly, recent work in adults has demonstrated that mental health problems are associated with a bias to explore too frequently. In this project, we will conduct a cross-sectional study to examine whether adolescents’ explore/exploit choices are associated with general psychopathology (i.e., the ‘p-factor’). We predict that in a community sample of ~350 adolescents, general psychopathology will be associated with over-exploration, meaning participants will not stick with options sufficiently to gather rewards. This project will help us to understand whether explore/exploit decision-making is a viable target for intervention during adolescence to prevent the onset or worsening of mental health problems.

Dr Sara Lorimer

Co-Applicant: Dr Ellen Henderson

SRG24\241243

Getting Through Aversive Episodes: Cognitive Predictors of Pain Perception and Tolerance.

University of Ulster

Value Awarded: £9,950.00

Whilst it is well-established that the experience of pain or similarly aversive episodes can influence attention, memory and mood, our understanding of how cognition affects perception and tolerance of pain, and willingness to undergo aversive but ultimately beneficial experiences is less coherently understood. This project will use an experimental approach to address this imbalance in understanding by identifying the natural patterns of cognition that promote engagement in, and tolerance of, painful experiences. Once identified, we will develop and establish the feasibility of a novel intervention promoting pertinent patterns of cognition for enhancing pain tolerance and willingness to undergo an aversive but ultimately beneficial experience. The outcomes of this work will inform a bigger grant application for testing an intervention concerning cognition and pain.

Dr Ibrahim Magara

SRG24\240377

Kenya’s Presidency-led Regional Conflict Mediation in Eastern Africa

Coventry University

Value Awarded: £9,910.00

This study will contribute to (re)conceiving Africa’s evolving peace mediation praxis. It will do so through the case of Kenya whereby mediation (as is the case with many high-level peace-making initiatives in Africa) is domiciled in the presidency and mandated by relevant (sub)regional bodies, particularly the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Specifically, this research will seek to understand Kenya’s conception (ideational) and its approaches (praxis) to peace mediation within eastern Africa. This will cover three parameters – (i) intensions, rationale, and logics; (ii) approaches, strategies, and tactics and (iii) outcomes – of Kenya’s mediation praxis. The study will equally investigate how heads of state-led mediation (can) work in contexts of multi-mediation, including potential for complementarity with inclusive approaches to peace-making in eastern Africa and beyond. In the end, this research will add to literature and advance theorisation on the multi-faceted evolving environment of mediation and regional peace and security governance.

Dr Adriana Laura Massidda

SRG24\241294

‘Water Blew Up Everything’: An Urban History of Climate Disasters in Buenos Aires Informal Settlements

University of Sheffield

Value Awarded: £9,882.00

In a global context of climate change, continuing urbanisation and persistent inequality, understanding the causes and socio-spatial effects of weather disasters for the urban poor is crucial to construct more just cities. This project examines an under-researched event, the 1967 flood in Buenos Aires, in order to broaden existing analyses from the angle of urban informality history. The flood had devastating effects on informal settlements, built in floodplains as the consequence of unjust land distribution, and these were aggravated by unequal infrastructure resource allocation across the city. It was taken as an excuse for the national government to launch an ambitious programme of settlements eradication. Paradoxically, however, it intensified residents’ networks, which ultimately allowed them to resist eviction. Using written, visual and oral history sources, and in collaboration with residents, the project will produce a conference paper, a peer-review article, and an itinerant exhibition to be displayed in Buenos Aires.

Dr Marisa McGlinchey

SRG24\240923

Nationalism in a Post-Conflict Consociational Society: A membership survey of the Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland

Coventry University

Value Awarded: £9,905.00

This project will make a significant contribution, both empirically and theoretically, to our understanding of the operation of ethno-nationalist parties in post-conflict consociational democracies. In Northern Ireland politics continues to be framed around British unionism, Irish nationalism and the centre ground. Competing ethno-nationalist traditions were accommodated in the 1998 Agreement and resulting consociational power-sharing institutions. The SDLP wrote significant parts of the Agreement, remains the only sitting representative of Irish nationalism in Westminster, and has entered Opposition in Northern Ireland. However, little is known about the contemporary SDLP, its form of nationalism within the post-conflict consociation, and party views on the rules for constitutional change. This pioneering project, unprecedented in scale, will redress this scholarly gap, producing a new and unique dataset derived from a survey of 100% of the membership, which has been agreed by the party leadership; and interviews with elected officials and members of the Dublin group.

Dr Kathleen McIlvenna

SRG24\240671

Tokens of Esteem: Retirement gifts in Modern Britain 1860-1930

University of Derby

Value Awarded: £7,930.90

The ‘Tokens of Esteem: Retirement gifts in Modern Britain 1861-1930’ project willinvestigate the material culture of retirement from the Victorian period up to 1930. Between 1860 and 1930 large companies started to bureaucratise employment relationships. This saw the rise in occupational pension schemes, and a new stage of life, retirement, became accessible to more people. Gifts and presentations had long been a part of working culture, but with the creation of a new stage of life we see a new ritual develop. This project will examine how and why the practice of retirement gifts developed in the early years of its practice and what it tells us about life and work relationships as well as how old age and retirement was viewed by different people from different roles around the country. It forms part of a larger book project examining the culture of retirement between 1860 and 1930.

Dr Robert McLean

Co-Applicants: Dr Karen Cooper & Professor Chris Holligan

SRG24\240720

Adolescent stalking experiences: a qualitative exploration of the nature, impact and support needs of victims and perpetrators in Scotland

University of the West of Scotland

Value Awarded: £8,930.00

Stalking is a course of conduct involving fixated, obsessive, and repeated unwanted behaviours. Although long recognised as harmful, it has only been a specific criminal offence in UK legislation for just over a decade. Traditionally, and stereotypically, associated with adulthood and sexual intent, little is known about the nature and impact of stalking amongst the younger generation. In partnership with Scotland's dedicated stalking charity, Action Against Stalking the study will explore the experiences of stalking amongst a sample of adolescents aged 14-19 residing in Scotland, and the work of practitioners who support them. Examining the socio-psychological impacts of stalking; the perpetrator-victim nexus; and the existing availability of support, the work will contribute to academic and legal debates by exploring whether stalking aligns with other adolescent on- and offline bullying and sexual risk-taking. The findings will inform co-produced age and gender appropriate training materials to enhance practitioner responses to these behaviours.

Dr Alex Mermikides

SRG24\240980

Playing Doctors

King's College London

Value Awarded: £9,900.40

This project uses performance practice to investigate and address the affective impacts of human cadaveric dissection among first year medical students, bringing a novel perspective to this historic rite of passage into medicine. Using performance to explore students’ accounts of their own dissection experiences will reveal the affective dimensions of students' early inculturation into medical school and how this impacts their self-identity as future doctors. Through this the project will demonstrate how performance might generate new conceptual insights into what it means to be a doctor in anticipation of an increasingly diverse and pressured future medical workforce. More immediately, performance material generated through the project will be used to develop an art-based educational workshop designed to address the wellbeing of students undertaking dissection and to 'future-proof' them for an emotionally demanding career, and to evaluate its effectiveness in a cohort of around 450 medical students.

Dr Joe Merton

SRG24\241123

Beyond crisis: ‘white ethnic’ responses to urban crisis and transformation in the United States, 1960-1990

University of Nottingham

Value Awarded: £9,655.00

Historians have typically interpreted the history of American cities in the late 20th century through the lenses of crisis, decline, abandonment, and racial conflict and polarisation. Drawing on newly-released archival collections and training its focus on a different range of actors, this project reassesses these narratives by excavating the work of activists, intellectuals, community organisers, planners and policymakers who interpreted American cities and their residents through an alternative prism to race – white European ethnicity – and argued for the importance of ethnic identity, culture, community and subjectivity to urban experience and as a resource for urban renewal. While not without contradictions, this ‘ethnic’ urbanism and interpretation of urban problems generated local and national political attention and innovative policy solutions to urban decline, providing a more complex reading of the histories of urban America, ethnic and racial politics and white identity formation since the 1960s.

Dr Nate Millington

SRG24\240103

Reparative politics in urban Brazil

University of Manchester

Value Awarded: £9,800.00

This project analyses the politics of repairing and retrofitting vacant buildings in São Paulo, Brazil, in order to consider how differently positioned urban actors in the city are repurposing urban space in line with differing visions of the urban future. Actors range from private entities promoting economic revitalization through the logic of retrofit, housing movements occupying vacant buildings for the purposes of social housing, and a network of “technical assistants” who aid in the maintenance and repair of occupied/squatted buildings while offering legal assistance and training in infrastructural repair. The project contributes to ongoing scholarly conversations about the politics of repair and the possibilities of “reparative infrastructures” (De Coss-Corzo, 2021; Webber et al, 2021) in contemporary cities. In doing so, it contributes to empirical explorations of the politics of occupying and inhabiting contemporary cities and creates mechanisms for knowledge exchange between Latin American and British universities and intellectual traditions.

Dr Victoria Mills

SRG24\240536

Art, Labour and Devotion: Uncovering the Victorian Art-Workman

Birkbeck, University of London

Value Awarded: £8,313.15

This project uncovers the neglected contribution of the art-workman to British art and design of the late nineteenth century through a micro-historical approach that investigates the life and work of art-workman David Parr using archival research and developing a partnership I have established with the David Parr House, an independent museum in Cambridge. The art-workman, unlike the middle-class leaders of the Arts and Crafts Movement, has received little scholarly attention. By researching Parr’s involvement in the decoration of both public and private buildings (including his own home) I will reveal how questions of class can reshape the history of art and design in the second half of the nineteenth century. This application supports research that maps Parr’s contribution to the decoration of eight UK churches (1872-1903), investigates how this work inspired Parr’s approach to the decoration of his home, and reconstructs the life on the road of a Victorian workman.

Dr Amore Minayora

Co-Applicant: Dr Johanes Herlijanto

SRG24\241858

Transition in digital platforms: Empowering or debilitating?

University of the West of England, Bristol

Value Awarded: £9,927.00

Online retailing in Indonesia has soared in recent years. The value of e-commerce sales increased more than sixfold between 2018 and the next year to hit IDR689 trillion or equal to USD$44bn (The Central Bank of Indonesia, 2023). While existing research highlights the potential of digital platforms to support the growth of small business owners and drive economic growth, there is little practical or policy advice to help micro-entrepreneurs move out of poverty. Economic growth in Indonesia is relatively slow and the unemployment rate is quite high (Fahlevi et al, 2020). Women and youth especially are often sidelines and categorised as second-class citizens in politics and business. Upon the ban of TikTok by the Ministry of Trade and Industry,our study will examine to what extent social media platforms empower or destroy competition among micro-entrepreneurs, and what institutional and regulatory conditions are needed to support the growth of low-income informal businesses.

Dr Anirban Mitra

Co-Applicants: Professor Sugata Ghosh & Professor Samantha Pal

SRG24\241798

Ethnic Diversity, Brexit and Social Integration – A Study of Local Governments in England

University of Kent

Value Awarded: £9,999.39

In the UK, there is a noticeable absence of political dialogue on integration and assimilation of immigrants while the country’s net migration figures are rapidly growing. We aim to address this gap by exploring the political economy of local councils where immigrants live and work. Our two objectives are to study: (1) whether/how descriptive representation of ethnic minorities in local governments can make a substantive policy impact on local spending shares that promote integration, and (2) whether/how Brexit Leave (relative to Remain) councils may have negatively impacted social integration measured by incidence of hate crime and social cohesion indices. We will collect official information from the Census, local government websites, and the Ministry of Housing and Communities, among others, to build a matched data-set of councillors and councils over 2000-23, and employ a regression discontinuity design using close elections to randomise the key explanatory variables identified in (1) and (2).

Dr Sean Molloy

SRG24\241967

Facilitating Child Participation in Transitioning Societies

Newcastle University

Value Awarded: £7,000.00

How do we ensure that children’s views are represented in peace processes? Since the end of the Cold War, most conflicts have ended through negotiated settlements. As peace agreements have become more comprehensive in the issues they address, it is increasingly recognised that a greater range of views must be included when negotiating them. Yet, children are often wholly excluded from peace processes, with little empirical work existing on how to arrest this reality. This research will conduct semi-structured interviews with 10-12 organisations leading the way in developing spaces, methods, strategies and tools to support children in representing their opinions in conflict-affected settings and articulating these views to key decision makers. At a time where conflict is on the rise, this research will draw on the experiences of these organisations to help explore how similar approaches could be used to ensure that children's views are included in peace processes.

Dr Lindsey Moore

Co-Applicant: Dr Mohammed Hamdan

SRG24\241715

Countermapping Urban Palestine: Nablus as Case Study

Lancaster University

Value Awarded: £9,915.00

‘Countermapping Urban Palestine’ will record and analyse ways of inhabiting and remembering urban space in historic Palestine (now Israel/Palestine) over the last century. We will produce, disseminate, and solicit contributions to different sorts of (digital, data, literary, memory) maps that counter the erasing effects of occupation, war, and natural disaster. Our focus on originally Palestinian cities, now spread across the conjoined States of Israel and Palestine, emphasises modernity in the context of national identity formation and illustrates the changing fortunes of coastal and inland cities and their hinterlands, from the late Ottoman period to the present. This pilot stage of the project takes as its case study the city of Nablus, in the West Bank, home to partner institution An-Najah National University of Palestine. The project connects UK, Palestine, and Jordan-based scholars in literature, linguistics, creative writing, digital humanities, history, geography, and sociology.

Dr Chris Moreh

SRG24\242020

Trust Research Methods Database (TReMeDa)

Newcastle University

Value Awarded: £9,434.00

The proposed project aims to create a curated database of secondary quantitative replication data on the topic of ‘social trust’. Its main deliverables will contribute both to improving practice in quantitative research pedagogy in sociology and related social science disciplines, and to advancing the research reproducibility agenda. The main outcome of the project with be the Trust Research Methodology Database (TReMeDa), which will serve as the basis for a planned sociological methodology textbook and various pedagogical resources. The texbook proposal will be submitted at the end of the first year of the project, based on a preliminary first-stage development of the TReMeDa. In the second year, alongside work completing the database and the underlying computer code - all of which is destined for the public domain -, the project also delivers a pedagogical research article documenting the implementation of the dataset in class over two academic years in two modules.

Dr Fran Myers

Co-Applicant: Dr Kristen Reid

SRG24\240169

Better Learning?: Developing line managers at the nexus of degree apprenticeship support

Open University

Value Awarded: £9,988.52

UK government policies for promoting the future knowledge economy and sharing the burden of funding degree-level studies are driving public attention onto Higher Education (HE) work-based learning (WBL) programmes. These include English employer levy-funded apprenticeships. Approved in 2015, the promise offered in apprenticeships is giving future managers the opportunity to gain debt-free degrees and formal accreditation as a chartered manager. These policies have therefore brought fresh prominence to work contexts as places for teaching and learning and managers as facilitators for learning. However, there has been little study so far into understanding contributions employers make to their apprentices’ development, and an absence of understanding the necessitated skills, knowledge, and behaviours required from line managers as a largely unseen contributor to apprentice success. Our case study of degree apprentices and their managers and mentors will provide new insights into understanding the challenges of supporting apprentices, and encourage debate toward policy enhancement.

Dr Kenichi Nagasawa

SRG24\241614

Robust Inference for Pairwise-Difference Estimators

University of Warwick

Value Awarded: £7,010.00

Data analysis has become a vital part of assessing efficacies of public policies. For effective evaluations, flexible and yet parsimonious statistical modelling is essential. A theoretically promising approach, called semi-parametric method, is suited for this purpose as they offer a good compromise between flexibility and simplicity. However, semi-parametric methods are not as widely used in practice. A key challenge is that these methods require analysts to select tuning parameters and the performance of the methods is often sensitive to the choice of these parameters, which renders the procedures unreliable in practice. To address this issue, this project aims to develop semi-parametric procedures that are less sensitive to choices of tuning parameters. Developed statistical procedures will help researchers conduct reliable statistical inferences, and the products of this project will contribute to increased reliability of quantitative evaluations of public policies.

Professor Jemina Napier

Co-Applicant: Dr Claire Houghton

SRG24\241323

Domestic abuse in deaf families: Perspectives on children as co-victims and language brokers

Heriot-Watt University

Value Awarded: £9,994.52

Domestic abuse (DA) is primarily perpetrated against women by men and has far-reaching impacts on individuals and families, with children often experiencing trauma. Language barriers compound the challenges faced by DA victims. The absence of professional interpreters in DA situations means that children are often used as language brokers. Deaf women are 2-3 times more likely to experience domestic abuse. This participatory project will explore the perspectives of deaf mothers and practitioners on the impact on families when children broker in DA situations. Interviews and workshops with a range of stakeholders will create recommendations to improve the response to the whole family. Enhanced understanding of the impact of DA on children and mothers in deaf families will enable project partners to identify steps to mitigate effects, explore future research centring children and consider implications for all women and children facing DA without access to the majority language of the country.

Dr Ha Nguyen

SRG24\240326

Caught in Turbulent Waters: Western Multinational Exit Strategies During the Russian-Ukraine War

University of Sussex

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine has forced multinational enterprises (MNEs) into dire straits, with losses of over $107 billion and growing threats of economic retaliation. The war's escalating humanitarian crisis, with over 5 million jobs lost and widespread poverty, demands urgent attention. This conflict is driving up poverty across Europe and Central Asia, including the UK, due to recession and food price inflation. Despite urgent efforts to avoid global backlash and the fallout of war, giants like Nestle and PepsiCo are trapped in the Russian market. This research project aims to expose the critical political and managerial barriers to foreign exit during crises, focusing on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Through interviews, case studies, and quantitative analysis, it reveals why some companies remain despite soaring risks. The findings offer valuable implications for both academia and practitioners, providing actionable strategies for navigating geopolitical uncertainties and guiding corporate decisions under extreme conditions.

Professor Rekha Nicholson

Co-Applicant: Dr Israa Kishk

SRG24\242074

The impacts of Brexit on UK international trade with EU and non-EU countries: A firm-level analysis

University of Essex

Value Awarded: £9,944.00

Following Brexit, a substantial body of literature emerged on its potential impacts. Using firm-level analysis, our study will examine how Brexit impacted the UK’s international trade with EU and non-EU countries. Unlike previous studies using simulations and aggregate trade flow to estimate the effects of Brexit on UK international trade, this study will examine the actual impact of Brexit using firm-level data from 2010 to 2024 covering UK-based companies involved in foreign trade. Two main research questions are addressed: First, has UK trade with the EU decreased following Brexit? Second, has UK trade with the rest of the world increased following Brexit? Furthermore, we consider the firm and industry characteristics in addressing these questions. The examination of the impacts of Brexit on UK international trade will help address the post-Brexit uncertainty affecting firms and provide policymakers with valuable insights to develop suitable policy tools.

Dr Amanda Norman

SRG24\242059

A Froebelian perspectives toward ‘Restorative Care’ during infant rest and sleep routines and rituals in the 21st century home

University of Winchester

Value Awarded: £9,233.20

Friedrich Froebel (1782 - 1852) was a pioneer of early childhood education and the kindergarten with his philosophy often, including his Mother Song book, studied from an early educator’s perspective. My research offers a new perspective in the light of a Froebelian philosophy to the wider connections of infant restorative care during rest and sleep rituals, with infants. By arguing for the relevance of a Froebel approach to the introduced term, ‘Restorative Care’ during rest and sleep in the home I will be introducing how interactions, and transitional approaches build and maintain positive healthy relationships, contributing to, as well as challenging the existing advice and literature within rest and sleep praxis. Outputs will culminate in a published monograph, illuminating how meaningfully relevant a Froebelian perspective is within home-based care, 1 peer reviewed article and a digitized flip book of practice, during 21st century home-based care sleep routines and rituals.

Dr Elsa Noterman

Co-Applicant: Dr Theo Barry Born

SRG24\242087

Bidding to Rent

Queen Mary University of London

Value Awarded: £6,285.40

There is growing anecdotal evidence in London and across the UK that letting agents have been encouraging prospective tenants to blind bid against each other in order to secure a tenancy from a private landlord. To date, there no academic research in the UK or internationally addressing this phenomenon and its significance in the activities of real estate actors across distinctive urban and economic geographies, and little in the way of policy or legislation that addresses or outlaws it. Through qualitative, mixed methods research on the actors involved in processes and practices of bidding to rent, the project is focused on collecting evidence of and analysing this phenomenon in respect of regional and global academic debates on the political economy and everyday practices and technologies of real estate, housing markets, and finance, and local, national, and international policy debates concerning rents, housing affordability, and insecurity.

Dr Jordan Nunan

Co-Applicant: Professor Lorraine Hope

SRG24\240960

Mock informants' memory recall: Investigating the effect of pre-event tasking instructions

University of Northampton

Value Awarded: £9,344.00

Actionable intelligence is vital for law enforcement and intelligence services to combat organised crime and terrorism. Human Intelligence (HUMINT), obtained from cooperative members of the community, plays a critical role in gathering such actionable intelligence. Unlike witnesses to a crime who typically do not anticipate the occurrence of an important event that requires remembering, such informants are often tasked to attend events with the explicit and intentional goal of collecting information. This task presents a significant cognitive challenge that has been largely overlooked in the wider memory literature, as research typically focuses on memory retrieval techniques (e.g., The Cognitive Interview; Fisher & Geiselman, 1992) rather than methods that may enhance memory for the to-be-remembered event. Drawing on prospective memory theory (see Rummel & Kvavilashvili, 2023), the proposed research will examine deliberate encoding strategies to determine whether pre-event tasking instructions support subsequent memory performance for personally experienced events.

Dr Pam Odih

SRG24\241531

Challenging Hair Discrimination Through Racial Narratives, Industry Knowledge on the Economics of Hair and Counter Literacy Equality, Diversity Strategies

Goldsmiths, University of London

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

On 27th October 2022 the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published new guidance aimed at ensuring that: “Pupils should not be stopped from wearing their hair in natural Afro styles at school” (EHRC 2022). The guidance is supported by resources that are “endorsed by World Afro Day and the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Race Equality in Education” and are designed to assist school leaders in ensuring that “hair or hairstyle policies are not unlawfully discriminatory” (ibid.). Research Focus: The proposed research will examine the application of these EHRC resources, into school policies and the responses of school leaders to the suitability and adaptability of these policies. An additional focus of the study is to envisage the scope and form of guidance on anti race-based hair discrimination that informs young people as consumer citizens in respect to their cultural heritage of hair sculpture as an expression of racial belonging.

Dr Henry Ogbeide

Co-Applicants: Dr Keerthana Jaganathan & Dr Mustafa Sinan Gonul

SRG24\241622

Empirical Investigations on Using Blockchain Technology for Anti-Money Laundering

Northumbria University

Value Awarded: £9,974.00

Achieving a significant reduction in illicit financial flows by 2030 requires substantial reforms in how financial institutions and regulated entities implement anti-money laundering (AML) programs to prevent, detect, and report criminal proceeds. Blockchain technology, a decentralized and distributed digital ledger offering secure and transparent record-keeping, is being positioned as an innovative solution within the financial services sector to meet these critical objectives. Building on our previous research on money laundering risk estimates and judgment, this project aims to investigate the integration and impact of blockchain technology on contemporary AML strategies, with a particular emphasis on its application in risk assessment. The project has two broad research objectives, including (1) analyzing how money laundering risks (e.g., smurfing, mule operations, shell corporations, trade-based, cash-intensive businesses, and complicit professionals) are being redefined and assessed in the context of blockchain technology, and (2) developing an adversarial risk assessment (ARA) deep graph learning model.

Professor Thomas Ormerod

Co-Applicant: Dr Wendy Ross

SRG24\241188

Analogical transfer of insight through observation and failure

University of Sussex

Value Awarded: £9,912.50

The project aims to discover conditions under which spontaneous analogical transfer of problem-solving skills can be fostered. It explores two educational practices - productive failure and vicarious learning – to investigate whether they provide conditions favourable to elicit far transfer between conceptually similar but superficially different problems. Experiment One examines the benefits of presenting the failures and successes of others vicariously to participants, compared with continued attempts to solve without feedback, on analogical transfer between variants of the Cards problem, an analogue of Mendeleev’s discovery of the periodic table of chemical elements. Experiment Two systematically manipulates the presentation of experiential and vicarious feedback on attempts that differ according to perceptual, procedural, or conceptual characteristics. Understanding the benefits of learning from vicarious experiences of failure and success for analogical transfer has implications for education and training in creative problem-solving.

Dr Rebecca Oswald

Co-Applicants: Professor Sarah Soppitt & Dr Samantha Walker

SRG24\240330

Scrutinising ‘child first’ policy and practice and its application to children involved in serious violence

Northumbria University

Value Awarded: £9,781.83

‘Child first’ is the guiding principle for the youth justice sector in England and Wales, viewing individuals under the age of 18 who offend as ‘children first and offenders second'. However, evidence suggests that those children who are involved in serious youth violence (SYV), many of whom may have also experienced grooming and exploitation, are still being criminalised, with the levels of harm they have experienced being overlooked. This research will explore if/how ‘child first’ narratives are being applied across the multiple social systems young people who are involved in SYV encounter, such as criminal justice, health, social care, education and the third sector, and the efficacy of such an approach. Furthermore, through this investigation into what ‘child first’ means in policy and practice, we aim to develop a shared understanding of these amongst the various agencies, to promote a non-criminalising, safeguarding and public health approach to tackling SYV.

Dr Beldina Owalla

Co-Applicants: Dr Elvis Nyanzu & Professor Tim Vorley

SRG24\241200

Contextualizing SME innovation: Understanding the influence of individual actors, institutions and socioeconomic conditions

Oxford Brookes University

Value Awarded: £9,720.00

This project addresses the lack of comprehensive knowledge on the impact of spatial contextual inequalities on SME engagement in innovation activities. Adopting a novel intersectional perspective, this study will conduct spatial analyses of innovation data, and carry out in-depth interviews to examine the relationship between socio-economic conditions, institutional arrangements and individual agency, and their subsequent impact on business innovation. As part of the UK government's strategy to boost innovation, emphasis has been placed on “levelling up” underperforming places through investment in infrastructure, education and technological R&D. However, the processes through which spatial inequalities influence innovation activities is not well understood. Additionally, a better understanding of the impact of individual actors and stakeholders on innovation activities within a given context is needed. The project outputs will contribute to promoting inclusive innovation and sustainable economic growth, as well as develop recommendations on best practices aimed at improving stakeholder engagement.

Dr Mustafa Ozturk

Co-Applicant: Professor Nelarine Cornelius

SRG24\240526

Black academic staff in UK universities and the complexity of microaggressions: Tracing the effects of intersectionality in context

Queen Mary University of London

Value Awarded: £9,782.00

Racial discrimination in the UK is pervasive, affecting all societal institutions, but it is particularly acute in higher education, which has been critiqued for institutional racism. Research on staff inequalities frequently uses aggregate terms like BME or BAME, which can obscure the specific challenges faced by black academics. In fact, black academics’ experiences may differ significantly from other minority groups due to the historical legacy of slavery and ongoing systemic racism. Additionally, black academics have significant intra-group heterogeneity involving gender, class, sexuality, and migration status, which requires further attention. Our research will explore these nuances through purposive sampling of 40 black academics from diverse backgrounds and institutions, tracing microaggressions in specific contexts. Utilising a long table discussion, a diary study, and in-depth interviews, the multi-stage research will offer unique insights into the intersectional and contextually shaped microaggressions that target black academics, aiming to enhance equality and inclusion in higher education.

Dr Letizia Palumbo

SRG24\241729

Shaping the living space with sensory experiences for individuals with intellectual learning disabilities with or without autism.

Liverpool Hope University

Value Awarded: £8,704.00

Space design may have an impact on well-being by reducing stress and anxiety. Multisensory rooms have been increasingly adopted to alleviate these symptoms. However, evidence-based practice in this area is in its infancy and data in support of the advantages of multisensory environments for individuals with learning and intellectual disabilities (ILD) is scarce. The current project seeks to assess which tools and conditions in a sensory room are most beneficial for these individuals depending on individual differences and severity levels. A future step in this research will be to assess to what extent multi-sensory environments can support cognitive processes in ILD individuals. These interventions will need to be verified through systematic large case assessments for which substantial funding will be sought in future.

Dr Niharika Pandit

SRG24\241204

Antimilitarist and anticapitalist justice: Mapping feminist possibilities from the margins of the Global South

Queen Mary University of London

Value Awarded: £9,985.43

In recent years, scholars have increasingly been attentive to issues of epistemic and socio-political justice and the need to amplify concepts, worldviews and cosmovisions emerging from the Global South. However, there are less concerted efforts towards mapping antimilitarist and anticapitalist imaginaries of grounded movements in the Global South as they resist militarisation; an issue that assumes urgency in current times of war, violence and coloniality. In this project, I will explore how grounded collectives in the margins of India/Global South resist the oppressive force of authoritarianism, extractive capitalism, militarisation, and their imaginaries of antimilitarist and anticapitalist justice. To do so, I will work alongside two solidarity collectives: Forum Against Corporatisation and Militarisation (FACAM) and Mahila Kisan Adhikaar Manch/Forum for Women Farmer’s Rights (MAKAM) to produce one major article, several conference presentations and host a workshop for scholars, organisers, artists in 2025 towards building a web-based archive of antimilitarist, anticapitalist justice.

Dr Mitya Pearson

Co-Applicant: Dr David Jeffery

SRG24\240513

What do British MPs think?

University of Warwick

Value Awarded: £9,480.00

The highly influential role played by backbench MPs in policy decisions in Britain has long been discussed, and recent years have seen myriad examples of this. This is why previous research, which uncovered the attitudes of British MPs elected to the 2019 parliament, was so valuable. However, with a general election looming, there will soon be a big change in the composition of British MPs. This project will therefore conduct a series of polls of the new intake of MPs shortly after the next general election, testing their views on a set of eight topical policy areas. In doing so, it will update previous research and fill a key knowledge gap by providing original insights into the views of a key actor in the policymaking process. In the context of increasing comparative research testing elite and citizen attitudes, this project will also directly compare MPs’ attitudes with voters’ views.

Dr Ferran Perez Mena

SRG24\241458

The British Council and the development of Sino-British transnational elite knowledge networks from 1970s to 1990s.

Durham University

Value Awarded: £5,580.00

Over the past decade, a new historiography has emerged that seeks to study the origins of the Chinese International Relations (IR) discipline and Chinese ideas of world politics. This historiography focuses on the post-Mao era, a turning point that allowed the importation of the Western IR tradition through the efforts of US institutions and Sino-American educational exchanges. While the role of US institutions was crucial in promoting Western IR after 1978, the literature overemphasizes the importance of Sino-American connections. Consequently, this emphasis obscures the contributions of other actors who also profoundly influenced the rise of Chinese IR and the socialisation of Chinese IR scholars. Through a transnational historical approach, original archival work, and elite interviews, this original project provides a novel account of how the British Council contributed to the rise of Chinese IR, the socialisation of Chinese IR scholars, and the management of Sino-British relations in post-Mao China.

Dr Damien Pollard

SRG24\241338

Screening Uganda: Grassroots Filmmaking Organisations and the Development of Contemporary Ugandan Cinema

Northumbria University

Value Awarded: £8,950.00

Filmmaking has bloomed in Uganda since the mid-2000s. The films produced by the country’s nascent industry reflect importantly on Uganda’s recent history while the financial frameworks within which they are made testify to Uganda’s ongoing economic transformation. Yet very little research has been conducted into the country’s emerging cinema. This project will analyse the work of the grassroots organisations that support Ugandan filmmakers via in-person interviews, observations of these organisations’ activities and consultation of their archives. This approach puts micro-level analysis (close reading of films supported by these organisations) into conversation with macro-level analysis (examination of the industrial and infrastructural contingencies that are shaping the development of Ugandan cinema). In so doing, it will theorise Ugandan cinema’s aesthetic specificity, its unique mode of production and its relationship to broader national and international forces. Broadly, it will deepen understandings of the relationships between media, culture and infrastructure in the Global South.

Dr Kingsley Purdam

SRG24\241870

From the Suffragettes to Voting in Late Old Age – Voter Turnout Amongst Older Women in the UK

University of Manchester

Value Awarded: £9,993.00

Many older women in the UK aged 75 years and older grew up when their mothers and grandmothers had only been allowed to vote for the first time following the Representation of the People Act in 1928. Almost a century later, older women are less likely to report voting and are less likely to feel they can have an influence on politics compared to older men. Older women are also more likely to live in financial insecurity. The ageing population has brought into focus how older people participate in elections. Six million people are aged 75 years and older and the ratio of women to men is around 2 to 1 amongst the older old. The aims of this research are to examine voter turnout amongst older women across the life course and to understand why some older women no longer vote and to consider the implications for democracy.

Dr Steven Puttick

SRG24\241789

The Gujarati Navigator: exploring journeys of information, knowledge and expertise

University of Oxford

Value Awarded: £9,999.99

This research will uncover and analyse archival evidence related to the Gujarati navigator who guided Vasco da Gama across the Arabian Sea. The project adopts a critical archival approach, re-telling geographical history by ‘starting from’ the Gujarati navigator. By centring the narrative on the little-known Gujarati navigator, the project challenges dominant Eurocentric narratives that emphasize European navigational prowess while neglecting the local expertise that facilitated these voyages. Research will be conducted in Mombasa, Kozhikode, and Oxford to explore; archival evidence, the discursive construction of Gujarati navigators, archival silences, and the circulation of knowledge. This research will not only shed light on the contributions of Gujarati navigators but also contribute to re-examining the origin stories of geography as a discipline, with practical implications for geography education. In addition to two journal articles and a professional article, a StoryMap will make the findings accessible and engaging for secondary school teachers and students.

Dr Shuai Qin

Co-Applicants: Professor Monder Ram & Professor Pradeep Chintagunta

SRG24\240331

Generative AI For Refugees’ Socio-economic Integration And Social Good

Aston University

Value Awarded: £9,965.50

Our proposed project combines field and lab experiments with qualitative research to explore the application and effectiveness of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in refugee integration. It involves our research team, including refugee integration researchers and AI scientists working with a reputable refugee integration service organisation - ACH, to scientifically develop customisable and multilingual AI characters with particular experience backgrounds using character.ai, such as supportive workers, peers, and hospitable locals for enhancing refugees' socio-economic integration and addressing current integration barriers. We will then facilitate interactions between refugees and these AI characters to examine AI characters' impacts on refugees' cultural literacy, language skills, and social confidence, etc. In parallel, we will develop refugee-informed AI characters based on ACH clients' lived experiences to examine public attitudinal changes after interaction with characters. This project will lead to holistic scholarly insights into how AI characters could be used cautiously and purposively for refugees' socio-economic good.

Dr Joel Rabinovich

SRG24\240265

Foreign-denominated Corporate Debt: Insights from Novel Data Collection and Analysis

King's College London

Value Awarded: £5,503.20

Between the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, global debt expansion was predominantly driven by the nonfinancial corporate sector in emerging market economies (EMEs). Notably, much of this borrowing, especially outside Asia, has been denominated in foreign currency. Despite the critical importance of this type of debt for the financial stability of both EMEs and the global economy, there is currently a lack of systematized firm-level data. This project aims to address this gap by hand-collecting and analysing information from the notes to the financial statements of a sample of large, macroeconomically relevant listed firms in EMEs. The resulting database will provide detailed information on these firms' debt structures, including currency denomination (local vs. foreign), maturity (short-term vs. long-term), and type (bank-based vs. market-based). Additionally, the database will include further data on the firms' overall external vulnerability, such as their foreign-denominated liquid financial assets and use of derivatives.

Dr James Rann

SRG24\241148

Veils and Curtains: Sex, Spectacle and Stalinism in Uzbek Theatre, 1925-1941

University of Glasgow

Value Awarded: £8,080.00

In 1927 Soviet authorities in Uzbekistan launched the 'hujum' (assault), an attempt to galvanise modernisation by making women discard face coverings, often at public events. While this controversial campaign has been much discussed in Anglophone scholarship and features in debates around race, gender and coloniality in the Soviet project, its cultural resonance has been overlooked. This project shows how unveiling as a symbolic act was mobilised in the construction of Uzbek national identity, focusing on its depiction in theatre and especially on the playwright and intellectual Hamza Hakimzade Niyazi, who became a figurehead of Soviet culture in Uzbekistan after he was ‘martyred’ for the cause of women’s emancipation. Reading both Hamza’s works about veiled women and later plays about Hamza alongside contemporary texts reveals the interconnection of gender, visibility and modernity in a new Sovietised Uzbek culture that fused local traditions with centrally mandated Stalinist paradigms.

Dr Kim Reising

SRG24\241713

Exploring Emotion in Prison: Pathways for Emotional Literacy and Rehabilitation

University of Lincoln

Value Awarded: £7,070.00

This pilot study aims to explore and understand the emotional literacy of prisoners in UK prisons. Emotionally literacy -- the ability to recognise, understand and manage one's own emotions -- is crucial for effective communication and social interaction. Despite its importance, little is known about the emotional landscape within prisons and how it affects rehabilitation. Through a combination of surveys, interviews, focus groups and the innovative use of emotion journals kept by prisoners, this study will assess how well prisoners can identify their emotions. Additionally, insights from rehabilitation experts will help identify key emotional skills needed for successful rehabilitation. The findings will provide comprehensive overview of the current state of emotional literacy in prisons and offer guidance on how emotional literacy programmes can enhance rehabilitation efforts and support the successful reintegration of prisoners into society. This project aspires to contribute to more humane and effective correctional education and rehabilitation strategies.

Dr Gemma Reynolds

Co-Applicant: Dr Deborah Bailey-Rodriguez

SRG24\241024

Expressive Writing as a Brief Intervention Targeting Anxiety about Research Methods and Statistics in Higher Education Students

Middlesex University

Value Awarded: £9,825.48

Research methods and statistics modules (RM) are compulsory in a variety of higher education (HE) programmes, often eliciting high levels of anxiety, subsequently impacting the learning process, academic performance, and mental health. This study investigates the efficacy of expressive writing (EW) in reducing anxiety related to RM. Using a mixed-methods design, HE students will be randomly assigned to either an EW or Control group. Participants will take part in a four-day writing exercise online. Baseline and post-intervention measures will explore the effectiveness of EW in reducing anxiety and stress related to RM, and to see whether this effect is mediated by perceived ability and confidence. The study also explores the impact of EW on mental health in general, while gathering qualitative data to investigate experiences and perceptions of EW. If EW is effective in reducing anxiety about RM, it can be easily implemented as a brief intervention for HE students.

Dr Fraser Riddell

SRG24\241727

Queer Body Cultures in English Literature at the Fin de Siècle: The Writings of George Cecil Ives

Durham University

Value Awarded: £9,752.61

The programme will focus on the completion of an edition of literary works by George Cecil Ives (1867–1950), a poet, writer and campaigner for homosexual law reform. It will make Ives’s texts available to readers for the first time. Ives was a central figure in the history of homosexuality in England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: he established a secret society for queer men in 1897, the ‘Order of Chaeronea’, and was a founding member in 1913 of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology. His extensive unpublished writings, particularly his novel ‘The Missing Baronet’ (1900 –1901), represent one of the most important historical resources for understanding emergent queer male subcultures in Victorian England. Funding will allow me to visit a number of key archives in the United States, which will be essential for the completion of the project.

Dr Vladimir Rizov

SRG24\240538

Allegories of Control: Crime and Repression in Philip K Dick’s Short Fiction and Legacy

University of Sussex

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

The project aims to explore the short stories of science fiction author Philip K Dick, their portrayals of crime and social control, and their legacy on the genre. Dick’s work is exceedingly influential and prevalent in popular culture with multiple examples in film, TV, and literature. Dick’s work features distinct forms of social control such as repressive police agencies, dystopian societies, and a recurrent theme of social deviance. As such, Dick’s short stories remain an underexplored source of criminological insight for popular understandings of dystopia, crime and its prevention. The project examines the archive of Dick’s short stories in the Pollak Library, as well as his influence on the genre itself and especially three of his successors – Samuel R Delany, Octavia E Butler, and William Gibson. The project will research the archive of drafts, correspondence, and public lectures with a focus on the portrayals of crime and crime control.

Dr Raysa Rocha

Co-Applicants: Dr Siddhartha Saxena & Dr Louise Nash

SRG24\241480

Neurodivergent workers and well-being: Socialization and meaningful relationships in the workplace

University of Essex

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

Neurodivergent workers in the UK's technology sector often face unique challenges in forming and maintaining social connections, which can significantly impact their well-being and career success. This research aims to investigate the role of acquaintances and distant connections, known as "weak ties," in the social networks of neurodivergent individuals across remote, hybrid, and on-site workplaces. Through a mixed-methods approach, combining surveys and interviews, the study will examine the challenges and opportunities associated with weak ties and their impact on job satisfaction, mental health, and career development. The findings will inform the development of a conceptual framework and a practical guide, providing insights into the experiences of neurodivergent workers and informing the development of strategies for creating inclusive workplaces that foster supportive social connections. Ultimately, this research aims to support the well-being and success of neurodivergent individuals in the UK's technology sector by contributing to a more inclusive and supportive workplace.

Dr Michele Rosenberg

SRG24\241921

The Political and Economic Consequences of Social Insurance Programs

University of Essex

Value Awarded: £9,983.60

This project aims to establish the origin and delve into the social consequences of the first introduction of social insurance systems. While the introduction of these policies is generally regarded as a first step toward the construction of a welfare state and the expansion of the political franchise, these legislations originated in authoritarian imperial Germany and not in liberal England, opening questions on both the origins and consequences of social insurance programs. In this project, I study one of the first social insurance programs introduced in a Western country: the mandatory workers' insurance introduced in Italy at the turn of the nineteenth century. I test the hypothesis that mandatory insurance was first introduced to curb the growing power of radical social movements among industrial workers (Kuhnle and Sander, 2010; Kersting 2023) and explore its economic and political consequences on labor conflict, wages, and voting behavior.

Dr James Rowlands

Co-Applicant: Dr Elizabeth Cook

SRG24\240681

Improving the Commissioning of Domestic Homicide Reviews in England and Wales

Durham University

Value Awarded: £9,887.62

In England and Wales, Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) are a government-sponsored review mechanism for improving the evidence base about domestic abuse-related deaths. DHRs are commissioned into the domestic abuse-related deaths of those aged 16 or over. DHRs are multi-agency reviews that bring stakeholders together to examine the circumstances before a death, identify learning, and recommend practice, policy, and system changes. However, how individual DHRs are commissioned has not been examined, nor has the effectiveness of oversight. This leaves a gap in what constitutes current measures of and evidence on domestic abuse-related deaths, underpinned by the question of whose death counts, how evidence is generated and, fundamentally, the legitimacy of DHRs. Addressing this gap, this study will submit Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the responsible public authorities to generate data about the DHR notification, decision-making, and oversight pathways.

Dr Valeria Rueda

SRG24\240046

Militantism and Non-Violence in the Women’s Suffrage Movement

University of Nottingham

Value Awarded: £9,873.20

We will compare the effectiveness of militant versus non-violent tactics in the British movement for women’s suffrage. We will assess success in terms of the spread of activism and the influence on public opinion and political action. Using previously untapped records and leveraging AI and Big Data techniques to process them, we will assemble the first comprehensive database mapping and dating all the activities organised by different actors in the suffrage movement. Collecting these data and sharing them interactively is one objective of the project. Furthermore, the data will serve two central objectives of the project. The first is understanding the geographical and socioeconomic reach of the women’s suffrage movement, as well as the complementarity or substitution between movements favouring militant or pacific tactics. The second is quantifying the causal impact of the two forms of activism on public opinion around women’s issues and political action on the suffrage extension.

Dr Christopher Russell

Co-Applicant: Dr Dimitrinka Stoyanova Russell

SRG24\240170

Careering through life? Charting digital nomad careers over their life course

Canterbury Christ Church University

Value Awarded: £9,946.96

This project studies careers of digital nomads. Digital nomadism, location-independent technology-enabled work, is a growing global phenomenon. Usually researched through social media or in coworking spaces, our current knowledge is fragmented. We don’t know what the careers of these digital nomads look like over their life course as they career from one location to the next or return to more static lives. Career scholarship has tried to capture the multi-faceted reality of non-traditional and flexible careers through concepts such as boundaryless, protean or mosaic careers. Phenomenon such as digital nomadism has the potential to contribute to this literature through empirical insight and theoretical advancements. Conducting fieldwork in Bansko, Bulgaria, a digital nomad hotspot and site of the world’s largest digital nomad (physical) meeting place, Bansko Nomad Fest, the project will capture digital nomads’ career (hi)stories and reflections longitudinally through multiple interviews.

Dr Hadiza Sa'id

Co-Applicants: Dr Raymond Swaray & Professor Kabir Tahir Hamid

SRG24\240835

Enhancing Women’s Financial Inclusion in Northern Nigeria: A Case Study of Housewives in Kano State, Nigeria

University of Hull

Value Awarded: £9,975.00

Improving access to finance for women is crucial to the achievement of several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (World Bank, 2022). Traditionally, northern Nigerian married women are not adequately covered in empirical research due to lack of easy access to them, as they mostly stay in their homes and interact less with the public, except their fellow women, relatives and other persons as culture, tradition, and religion dictates. This study seeks to investigate the impediments to women's financial inclusion in Kano State Nigeria and suggest ways to improve their situation. It is anticipated that the findings of this study will assist the government (especially state and local governments), women associations, NGOs, development finance agencies, development partners, financial inclusion ambassadors, and financial institutions in developing financial products and services that are affordable, more easily accessible and compatible with women's needs, with a view to contributing to the achievement of UN SDG.

Dr Steven Samuel

SRG24\240300

Are there limits to embodied visuospatial perspective taking?

City, University of London

Value Awarded: £8,825.50

Understanding where things are from others' perspectives sometimes requires us to imagine ourselves where others are. What are the limits to this 'embodied perspective taking'? In the present study, adult participants will be asked to take the perspective of another person with two objects in front of them. Sometimes, they will be asked where one of the objects is ("Left" or "Right"), other times they will be asked what is on that person's left or right ("Object A" or "Object B"). If this ability is limited to the requirement to produce a spatial response (Left/Right), then fixing the participants' posture so that it is incongruent with the movement required to reach the desired perspective location should impair performance in this condition, but not when the response is to name the objects. The results will tell us how wide-reaching embodiment is as a solution to perspective taking problems.

Dr Clara Sandelind

SRG24\240797

Unbounding Solidarity: Refugees, Political Agency and the Welfare State

University of Manchester

Value Awarded: £8,955.00

This project develops an account of political engagement with marginalised groups as a source of solidarity in diverse welfare states. It significantly contributes to the debate assuming a conflict between humanitarian and social solidarity, by entertaining a mostly unexplored notion of political solidarity. While the literature typically studies identity-based, usually nationalist, sources of solidarity, this project foregrounds the political agency of marginalised groups, such as refugees, as such a source. As a project in grounded political theory, it undertakes qualitative interviews with refugee activists and NGOs, as well as hosting a workshop on refugees’ political engagement and solidarity with speakers including refugee activists, NGOs and scholars. In addition to suggesting an alternative way in which humanitarian and social solidarity can be more easily combined, the project will be able to address the lack of refugee perspectives in normative theorising on refugee protection more broadly.

Dr Lavanya Sankaran

Co-Applicant: Dr Constadina Charalambous

SRG24\240111

Communicative practices and memory culturalization processes across borders: two conflict-affected case-studies

King's College London

Value Awarded: £9,981.15

This interdisciplinary project brings together Ethnographic and Interactional Sociolinguistics (EIS) and Memory Studies (MS) to investigate how cultural meanings of conflict legacies take shape through communicative practices. To do this, data from existing projects on Sri Lankan Tamil and Greek-Cypriot diasporas in London, complemented with new data from Sri Lanka, will be analysed and compared. Sri Lanka and Cyprus are apposite cases to study as they involve protracted conflicts at different spatio-temporal/politico-institutional trajectories, allowing insight into the formation of conflict memories at different stages of culturalization, from barely institutionalised (Sri Lanka) to fully institutionalised (Cyprus).The project is significant as there has been little research that examines how communicative practices (traditionally examined in EIS) and affective practices associated with trauma can link to the formation of cultural memory (traditionally studied in MS). It will be thus one of the few comparative studies of memory that theorizes it from a bottom-up perspective.

Dr Ayelet Sapir

Co-Applicants: Dr Giovanni d'Avossa & Dr Gavin Lawrence

SRG24\241227

Designing toys for motor rehabilitation after stroke: Integrating theory, suitability, and practical considerations

Bangor University

Value Awarded: £9,926.25

Stroke is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide, with upper limb motor impairments significantly hindering patients' ability to resume daily activities. While early, high-intensity rehabilitation can greatly enhance the speed and extent of motor recovery in stroke survivors, the limited availability of clinicians' time often restricts the frequency of necessary therapeutic activities. Our objective is to design, manufacture, and test prototypes of novel, self-administered rehabilitation tools that can accelerate the recovery process for patients with motor impairments post-stroke. The design process will be guided by theoretical frameworks and patient acceptability to ensure both relevance and efficacy. Our goal is to provide age-appropriate, affordable, and engaging resources that facilitate self-directed rehabilitation, allowing patients to continue their recovery independently outside of supervised therapy sessions. This approach aims to improve the overall rehabilitation experience and enhance long-term outcomes for stroke survivors.

Dr Anna Sarkisyan

Co-Applicants: Dr Udichibarna Bose & Dr Chiara Banti

SRG24\241848

Does personal liability of independent directors impact corporate misconduct?

University of Essex

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

In the wake of a series of corporate scandals in the early 2000s, including those linked to abusive use of related party transactions, regulators around the world introduced reforms to improve corporate conduct. Among those is the introduction of personal liability for independent directors in India as part of the Companies Act 2013. The proposed project will examine the impact of the new rule on the independent directors’ effectiveness in curbing misconduct captured by related party transactions. Related party transactions can be used by managers to transfer wealth to related parties at the cost of shareholders and are particularly relevant in the context of Indian firms. The study will contribute to the literature by examining the impact of the personal liability reform on independent directors’ monitoring effectiveness and by focusing on India, a representative emerging market where corporate governance issues have been under-researched due to limited publicly available data.

Professor Mike Savage

Co-Applicant: Professor Peng Lyu

SRG24\242001

Comparative Study of British and Chinese Business Elites

London School of Economics and Political Science

Value Awarded: £4,990.00

In this era of globalisation and technological revolution fuelling wealth growth alongside widening inequality, our timely research scopes out a comparative study of the dynamics of global business elites in the UK and China. Given China's status as the UK's largest Asian trading partner, and the UK being China's third largest in Europe, business elites play a pivotal role in economic life and social development. They've been crucial as icebreakers, promoters, and witnesses in Sino-British relations and global economic growth. Utilizing comparative survey data, and an in depth literature review our study will profile the comparative exploration of social composition, attitudes, and actions within these elites. It not only contributes to the academic study of elites but also offers practical insights into addressing contemporary challenges of inequality and economic development.

Dr Manu Savani

SRG24\240004

What policies do we want? Understanding public acceptance of coercive policies in the past, present, and future

Brunel University London

Value Awarded: £9,794.00

People generally prefer policies that apply fewer curbs on their freedom: persuasive policies like nudges and information over coercive policies like bans and taxes, which apply greater costs in terms of personal freedom and/or finances. Despite this, the British public often comply with coercive, or ‘stringent’ policies, and this prompts questions. What social, political, and individual factors influence acceptance of more coercive policies? Does acceptance now of coercive policies used in the past predict willingness to accept future coercive policies? Does acceptance of coercive policies for public health predict acceptance of coercive policies for other policy priorities, like climate action? I will develop theory and hypotheses to answer these questions and generate fresh empirical evidence with a bespoke representative survey of the British public. The study will illuminate how citizens address the trade-offs between personal freedoms and public goods, and what factors raise the perceived legitimacy of coercive policies.

Dr Hamid Shaker

Co-Applicant: Professor Babak Taheri

SRG24\240705

Does AI in Fashion Damage the Earth? Investigating the Impacts of AI-powered Recommendation Systems on Consumers’ Sustainable Consumption in the Fashion Retailing

Nottingham Trent University

Value Awarded: £9,950.00

The fashion industry's environmental footprint, contributing significantly to global carbon emissions and wastewater, has spurred efforts toward sustainable practices. Artificial Intelligence (AI) integration promises to mitigate these impacts. However, while AI shows potential for optimizing supply chains and reducing waste, its influence on sustainable consumption remains unclear. This research aims to investigate the impact of AI-powered recommendation systems (AIRS) on consumers' sustainable consumption in fashion. Through a blend of qualitative interviews and scenario-based experiments, we explore how different AIRS configurations—consumer-curated versus machine-curated—affect consumers attitude towards sustainable consumption. Drawing on attribution theory, we examine how consumers attribute responsibility for unsustainable consumption and the role of self-learning AI in shaping choices. By elucidating the intricate dynamics between AIRS design, consumer behavior, and sustainability, this study not only advances theoretical understanding but also offers practical insights for policymakers, practitioners, and AI developers. Moreover, it aligns with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Karan Singh

SRG24\240132

Coinage of Kashmir

Independent Researcher

Value Awarded: £9,950.00

Kashmir was a distinct political entity for much of the ancient and medieval periods. Due to the geographical barriers that separate the Kashmir valley from the rest of the Indian subcontinent, it was one of the last north Indian kingdoms to fall to Islamic invasions, in the 14th century, over 150 years after the Rajputs had lost Delhi. This allowed the Hindu rulers of Kashmir to maintain a distinctive coinage for more than 800 years. Their designs depicted Hindu deities Shiva and Lakshmi to legitimise the coins. Kashmir is also the only early Indian kingdom to have a written record of the dynasties that ruled it: the 12th century 'Rajatarangini' by Kalhana. Yet there are rulers whose coins have been discovered in the new millennium, who were not recorded by Kalhana. I will therefore build up an updated political history using the evidence of numismatics and corroborated by literature.

Dr Wai Meng Jeremy Siow

SRG24\240644

Impact of Colonial Language Versus Mother Tongue Instruction on Educational and Socioeconomic Outcomes

University of Oxford

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

It remains unclear whether teaching in a colonial tongue improves educational and socioeconomic outcomes in postcolonial societies. Critics argue that colonial languages of instruction impose significant learning costs on students and worsen academic performance in postcolonial countries. Conversely, other studies indicate that early exposure to a colonial language in the classroom improves educational attainment and employment, given the global usage and relevance of these languages. To resolve this debate, I investigate a language policy change in Malaysia, where English was used to teach Mathematics and Science from 2003 to 2012. What sets this study apart is its ability to trace the timing (e.g., primary or secondary) and duration of English language exposure based on students’ birth years. This project involves analysing short-term academic achievements using the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data and assessing long-term educational and socioeconomic indicators through an original nationally representative survey of Malaysians.

Dr Kate Smith

Co-Applicant: Dr Kelly Lockwood

SRG24\240863

Mothering in carceral spaces: Stories of seeking asylum and the criminal justice system

University of Salford

Value Awarded: £9,716.00

This feminist narrative research will look at mothering in carceral spaces to extend knowledge of both ‘carceral spaces’ and ‘motherhood’, allowing us to hear and tell women’s stories of carceral experiences. Building on research in relation to prison and immigration detention, the research will make visible the experiences of mothers in the asylum and criminal justice systems whose mothering practices are surveyed and restricted, securitised and managed. Beyond the limitations to physical space alone, we will consider factors which facilitate or impede mothering and examine which aspects (if any) of mothering practices are prioritised or change during life in carceral spaces. We will research with mothers to examine how they experience different immigration and criminal justice policies and use the findings to influence post-prison and asylum resettlement, and UK asylum and criminal justice policies and practices, uniquely from the perspective of mothers.

Dr Simon Smith

SRG24\241709

A New "Twelfth Night" Performance History (Cambridge Shakespeare Editions)

University of Birmingham

Value Awarded: £7,414.95

This research project consists of a full scholarly edition of "Twelfth Night", under contract for CUP's new "Cambridge Shakespeare Editions" series. My application relates specifically to the new production history of the play that will form a substantial part of the critical introduction. This entails accessing production archives across the world. Much of this access is now possible digitally or remotely, but there remains much material that can only be consulted in person. I am therefore seeking funds to help with the costs of archival trips, alongside funding already in place from the Folger Shakespeare Library and my own institution (University of Birmingham); available through my institution’s strategic partners (Goethe University, Frankfurt; Waseda University, Tokyo; Nanjing University/The Shakespeare Centre, China); and, to be applied for in the future (Huntington Library).

Dr Elena Sottilotta

SRG24\240076

Fairy-Tale Weavers: Unravelling Women’s Hidden Networks and Forgotten Voices in Nineteenth-Century Italian Folklore and Children’s Literature

University of Cambridge

Value Awarded: £9,999.00

This project will examine women’s neglected contributions in the fields of folklore studies and children’s literature as writers, storytellers and collectors of oral traditions in the first fifty years of the Italian Unification (1861-1911). Through the analysis of unpublished archival materials and the study of articles, folk and fairy-tale collections and literary works penned by forgotten or marginalised female figures in this period, this research will weave a thread between their personal motivations and their scholarly efforts in the dissemination of oral traditions in Italy. This study will thus innovatively bring into dialogue the personal and socio-cultural dimensions of women’s participation in the preservation of folklore and fairy tales in Italy by shedding light on lesser-known cultural forerunners, their networks and legacies from a gendered perspective.

Dr Mateusz Stalinski

SRG24\242104

Social Media Toxicity, Emotions, and Mental Health: Experimental Evidence

University of Warwick

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

Social media platforms have a negative impact on the mental health of their users (Allcott et al., 2020, 2022; Braghieri et al., 2022). However, it is challenging to identify which aspects of social media are responsible. This limits designing mitigating policies. We address this gap by hypothesizing that toxic/hateful content is an important contributing factor. We experimentally test this hypothesis by exogenously varying toxicity in a browsing experience. We do so by detoxifying hateful statements either by (1) toning down the style and preserving their meaning or (2) holding the structure constant but negating a hateful assertion. We measure participants’ emotional response to the browsing experience, relying on facial expression recognition and mood questionnaires. We also capture the impact on perceptions of real world discrimination, beliefs about others’ altruism, and relative moral superiority. These are helpful in disentangling mechanisms in which toxicity affects both short-term emotions and overall mental health.

Elizabeth Storer

Co-Applicant: Professor Robert Kajobe

SRG24\241191

Plants, Toxicity and Science at African Borderlands: Cassava's Ambivalent History in West Nile, Uganda

Queen Mary University of London

Value Awarded: £9,815.00

Cassava (manioc) is a staple survival crop for agricultural communities across Uganda. On account of the crop’s ability to flourish in infertile soils, survive drought and resist pests, cassava has emerged as an African-led solution to underdevelopment. Yet technocratic blueprints for cassava production and export overlook innate and agential aspects of the crop. Cassava tubers contain cyanide, which can be lethal to humans in high doses. In West Nile, a borderland sub-region of Uganda, lethal cassava poisonings are becoming common. This project uses ethnographic and 'plant history' interviews to understand the drivers of toxic exposures within a marginalised border region. It asks how the legacies of indigenous agricultural experimentation, whereby cassava has been tamed through innovative forms of preparation, are being undermined by environmental change, genetic modification, shifting market economies, and state mistrust. Findings will influence the emergent field of 'toxic geographies' as well as environmental science policy in Uganda.

Dr Louis Strange

Co-Applicants: Dr Matthew Hunt & Dr Sophie Holmes-Elliott

SRG24\241603

Gender Penalty: Sociolinguistic Evaluations of Female Football Commentators

University of Glasgow

Value Awarded: £9,799.00

This experimental sociolinguistic project investigates the implicit attitudes relating to female football commentators. A number of high-profile sports-media figures have claimed that women’s voices are “too high-pitched” for football commentary. However, results from our pilot study show that listeners judge female commentators with lower-pitched voices less favourably than higher-pitched female voices. This suggests that both implicit and explicit attitudes lead to a strict policing of women’s linguistic behaviour: women are penalised for being feminine and for not being feminine enough. This study builds on these preliminary findings by examining how the penalties evident in ratings of women’s voices are affected when combined with class-based linguistic variability, expanding the experiment to include variations in pitch levels (gender) and between standard and non-standard speech (class). This work will contribute to our understanding of linguistic discrimination at the intersection of class and gender, within the traditionally male-dominated sphere of sports media and beyond.

Dr Razia Sultanova

SRG24\241484

Songs of Resilience: Female Islamic Traditions in the Balkans

Independent Scholar

Value Awarded: £5,967.00

This research project aims to document and analyse the female Islamic reciting and singing traditions in the Balkans, focusing on their historical roots, resilience post-Yugoslav War, and connections to Islamic practices in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. By examining the dominant role of women in preserving these cultural traditions, the study will provide a comprehensive understanding of their impact and evolution. The research will cover Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, and Kosovo, highlighting the rich tapestry of female Islamic genres such as Ilahija, Nasheeds, and Qasida. This comparative analysis will elucidate the enduring influence of the Ottoman Empire's Islamic heritage and offer new insights into the global phenomenon of female Islamic singing. Emphasising the critical role of women in these traditions not only enhances our understanding of their cultural significance but also underscores the importance of gender perspectives in the preservation and transmission of Islamic cultural heritage.

Dr Margaux Suteau

Co-Applicants: Dr Greta Morando & Dr Sonkurt Sen

SRG24\242088

Social Media Use and Child Development: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trials

London School of Economics and Political Science

Value Awarded: £9,800.00

As social media (SM) usage skyrockets among youth, concerns mount over its impact on their development and well-being. This research investigates the crucial role parents play in regulating their children's SM experiences. Leveraging new data sources, we aim to provide a rich account of parents' beliefs about SM's effects, their strategies for guiding their children's usage, and how parental mediating practices are associated with family characteristics and child outcomes. Moreover, this project will provide novel evidence on how to foster better parenting practices to promote young people's emotional health and strengthen parent-child bonds in the digital age. Our findings will reveal inequalities stemming from varied parental approaches and inform policies to safeguard the next generation from SM's potential risks while harnessing its benefits. As regulation proves challenging, empowering parents emerges as a vital step towards ensuring SM positively impacts youth development.

Dr Leontien Talboom

SRG24\241463

Future Nostalgia: Safeguarding the knowledge of floppy disks

University of Cambridge

Value Awarded: £9,463.43

Floppy disks have been around for over sixty years and have become part of collections across the GLAM sector. Due to their material composition floppy disks have started to deteriorate. This has led to many institutions creating disk images, byte-by-byte snapshots, to preserve their contents. However, creating a disk image only seems to be the first step in safeguarding and accessing the content on these carriers. The reliability of various tools and techniques for transferring floppy disk material is uncertain, and there is no clear best practice workflow. Additionally, the expertise surrounding floppy disks is diminishing as professionals retire or pass away. The aims of this project are two-fold, first to create a guide to have one central point for safeguarding floppy disk knowledge. Secondly, to enhance this knowledge by interviewing individuals who have worked with floppy disks, and by running a number of experiments with conservation specialists.

Dr Eugene Tang

Co-Applicant: Dr Serena Sabatini

SRG24\241928

Investigating the links between views on ageing, health enhancing behaviours, and cognitive impairment

Newcastle University

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

The world’s population is getting older. The number of people with cognitive impairment and dementia is increasing. Negative views on Ageing (VoA), such as believing that ageing equals poor health, may be a key modifiable risk factor for cognitive impairment and dementia. Perceived lack of control over one’s ageing, causes people to ignore health-promoting behaviours (e.g., exercise). This project aims to investigate (1) Whether negative VoA increases the risk of cognitive impairment and dementia. (2) The extent to which this is due to people with negative VoA being less engaged in physical, social and cognitively stimulating activities than people with positive VoA. (3) Whether positive VoA reduces the detrimental influence of negative VoA on behaviours that enhance cognitive functioning. (4) Whether it is possible to develop a new risk calculator to predict future dementia. Results will inform new policy focused on including VoA measures in the assessments of older people.

Dr Jamie Thompson

SRG24\240286

Ad Circumvention in Esport Streaming

Edinburgh Napier University

Value Awarded: £8,231.00

Competitive video gamers are increasingly broadcasting (streaming) their gameplay to spectating audiences on platforms such as Twitch. Most of these streaming platforms require streamers to run disruptive advertisements in the middle of their gameplay. To circumvent the disruptiveness of advertisements, many streamers are pausing gameplay, displaying mini-clips, and/or encouraging their audience to have a break so that those spectators in ad breaks don't miss any gameplay. This acts as a form rebellion on behalf of streamers against the platforms that control advertising on their channel. From a Marxist conflict theory, this study proposes an innovative screen recording methodology to explore how streamers circumvent commercial advertising and the impact ad circumvention has on audience attitudes. This has implications for the policies of online streaming platforms and implications for the future development of user-developed commons and free spaces to stream and consume content.

Dr Margot Tudor

SRG24\240746

Forging a moral force: examining peacekeeping from within

City, University of London

Value Awarded: £9,791.03

This project examines the historical origins and lived experiences of the first UN peacekeepers. Using the case study of the UN Emergency Force (UNEF, 1956-67), initially deployed during the Suez Crisis, it focuses on the influence of field-based international staff in shaping the organisation’s vision of liberal internationalism. Using troop-produced magazines, photographs, and previously-classified UN documents, this project moves beyond inter-state histories of the UN and its contributors to show how the UN’s own ‘agents of internationalism’ shaped dynamics from the ground up. This approach centres troops’ quotidian activities and interactions, uncovering how a distinct, hypermasculine peacekeeper identity was forged on the front lines and contingent on troops' racial hierarchies (with civilians as well as other national batallions). In turn, it offers the first socio-political history of peacekeeping, shedding light on how internationalism was diversely performed, received, and manifested by those deployed to war, as well as those surviving it.

Dr Ferhat Tura

Co-Applicants: Professor Andromachi Tseloni & Dr Christopher Long

SRG24\241386

Prevalence and risk and protective factors of child (poly)victimisation in England and Wales

Bournemouth University

Value Awarded: £9,981.76

This study will examine the prevalence and factors explaining why children experience crime as victims in England and Wales, analysing the Crime Survey for England and Wales. Historically, vulnerable children going through the criminal justice system have been deemed a “social problem,” and much criminological research has explored why they offend rather than why they experience crime as victims, even though they are the most criminally victimized members of communities. Despite the severity of childhood exposure to crime and its impact on children in the UK, previous research on child victimisation of crime has focused on one type of crime victimisation. This study will instead focus on experiencing multiple crime types and suggest policies to minimize the effects of victimisation, which range from physical and mental health problems to economic and academic negative outcomes, by disseminating the findings widely.

Dr Mandy Turner

SRG24\242013

We Are All Palestinian! A History of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Independent Scholar

Value Awarded: £9,510.00

This project will produce the first in-depth study of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign – Europe’s largest pro-Palestine activist organisation – from archives, interviews, and first-hand accounts. The struggle for justice and rights for Palestinians has become one of the defining causes of our current moment. Yet, surprisingly, no comprehensive analysis and history has been written of the PSC; this project aims to fill that gap. I will produce an account of the PSC from its humble origins in 1982 to the huge campaigning organisation it is today. I will explore the origins, evolution, key milestones, and significant impacts of the PSC within the broader context of global solidarity movements – particularly those related to Palestine. The goal of the project is to provide a history and analysis of the PSC’s role in advocating for Palestinian rights, its influence on public opinion, and its interactions with other social justice movements.

Dr Jemma Tyson

SRG24\240072

Organisational flexibility within policing: An exploration of the experiences of disabled police officers in England and Wales.

University of Portsmouth

Value Awarded: £7,127.00

This proposed research aims to explore the lived experiences of disabled police officers in managing their role as a police officer and their disability, critically analysing their perceptions of organisational flexibility. Research by the applicant and colleague found that police officers are frustrated by organisational inflexibility (Charman and Tyson, 2024). Findings by the Police Federation of England and Wales stated that nearly half of the police employment tribunals in 2023 related to disability discrimination (PFEW, 2023). Using a participatory research design, this research will place a specific focus on perceptions of flexibility and reasonable adjustments within policing. This research will provide an in-depth analysis on the experiences of organisational flexibility within the police service, from both cultural and structural standpoints. Through the production of a roadmap for reform, it will enable police forces to develop informed strategies for the recruitment and retention of this specific officer group.

Dr Luke Ulas

Co-Applicant: Dr Joshua Hobbs

SRG24\240073

Motivating Cosmopolitanism: An Interdisciplinary Approach

University of Sheffield

Value Awarded: £9,775.00

The central commitment of cosmopolitan political theories is to the moral equality of all human beings, regardless of race, nationality, or other markers of difference. From this basic moral commitment, cosmopolitans develop differing political claims. Some of these are radical, while some are much more modest and commonplace, such as defences of basic human rights. However, a glance at political reality will evidence that even the most modest cosmopolitan aspirations are far from being realised in practice. This gap between cosmopolitan theory and political practice has begun to be explored as a problem of cosmopolitan motivation. The current project aims to advance, and potentially to problematise, this research agenda by stimulating collaboration between cosmopolitan political theorists and academics working in empirical disciplines. The heart of the project will be a collaborative workshop, which will produce a collective publication and lead to the development of an ongoing research network.

Dr Nnedinma Umeokafor

Co-Applicants: Professor Chioma Sylvia Okoro & Professor Kariena Strydom

SRG24\240649

Individual Strategies for the Advancement of Women in Higher Education Leadership

University of Greenwich

Value Awarded: £9,875.76

Despite programmes to address gender inequality in higher education, the problem persists especially regarding leadership. The most effective women’s advancement programmes occur through the synergy of individual, state, institutional and situational strategies. Additionally, the role of technology in engendering change in future leaders is critical. However, ways to leverage these strategies, singly and in combination, and the mediating role of technology in improving women’s advancement in higher education leadership (HEL) are poorly understood. This study develops a framework of effective individual strategies to improve gender equality and women's advancement in HEL. Focus group discussions (FGDs) and a questionnaire survey of female academics in South Africa will be undertaken. Thematic, correlation and artificial neural network analyses will be conducted. A mobile technology application (WhatsApp Chatbot) will be developed from the study. Knowledge mobilisation activities include a stakeholder engagement and capacity development workshop and dissemination of findings through journals and news platforms.

Dr David Veevers

SRG24\240405

Indigenous Enslavement and the Beginning of English Plantation Colonies in the Lesser Antilles, 1600 - 1676

Bangor University

Value Awarded: £8,575.00

This project seeks to revise our understanding of how England established plantation colonies relying on enslaved labour in the Eastern Caribbean at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Traditionally, we have understood the earliest plantation colonies to have relied mostly on indentured European labour, before the introduction of sugar cultivation led to a transition to enslaved West African labour. Virtually ignored from this understanding has been the Indigenous Kalinago, who, this project will show, were enslaved in large numbers by English colonists and used alongside both indentured labourers and enslaved West Africans. By moving the focus away from Barbados - the usual case study - this project will look at the very first English colony in the Caribbean, St Kitts in 1624, to re-orientate our understanding of the emergence of plantation colonies as being shaped predominantly by Indigenous enslavement and labour before full-scale West African slavery from the 1650s.

Professor Athanassios Vergados

Co-Applicant: Dr Giulia D'Alessandro

SRG24\241895

The Homeric Hymns: Form, Content, Performance

Newcastle University

Value Awarded: £9,750.00

The proposed project aims to examine the so-called Homeric Hymns (hymns addressed primarily to Olympian gods, composed in the metre and diction of the major Homeric poems) through an interdisciplinary and diachronic perspective so as to assess the progress made in the study of these poems in recent decades and point to potential future directions of research. The outcome of this project will be a high-quality edited volume (working title: The Homeric Hymns: Form, Content, Performance) to be submitted to Oxford University Press for publication consideration. Questions to be explored include: the deployment of formulaic material between tradition and innovation; the performance context of the Hymns; the Hymns' place within early Greek hexameter poetry and in their Near Eastern and Indo-European context; the reception of the Hymns' theological speculation in later periods; and the construction of their narrative.

Dr Owen Waddington

Co-Applicant: Dr Bahar Koymen

SRG24\240875

Moral vigilance: Examining young children’s selective sense of forgiveness

University of Manchester

Value Awarded: £9,907.80

Forgiveness is crucial to enable cooperation and its associated benefits to continue. But to forgive transgressors indiscriminately carries risks. Instead, individuals ought to be selective in who they choose to forgive. Young children are remarkably forgiving, but these data come from paradigms in which children should and are expected to forgive the perceived transgressor. Thus, the limit or scope of children’s forgiveness and their awareness of the risks involved remain poorly understood. The aim of this project is to examine the boundaries of preschool children’s forgiveness in the context of transgressive acts that occur in the victim’s and transgressor’s presence or absence. By turning the traditional paradigm on its head and focusing on situations wherein children should not forgive so readily, this project represents a unique opportunity to establish a new body of research investigating the nuance of children’s forgiveness and extent to which they serially or selectively forgive others.

Dr Catherine Walker

Co-Applicants: Dr Audrey Bryan & Dr Kevin Ardron

SRG24\240373

Classrooms for climate justice? Exploring pedagogic opportunities for critical climate change education in England and Ireland

Newcastle University

Value Awarded: £9,993.00

The proposed research will work alongside educators to explore the opportunities and challenges of incorporating climate justice into primary and secondary education in England and Ireland. Issues of climate justice are increasingly foregrounded in scientific and policy communications on climate change, and there is growing theoretical interest in climate justice education. Recent surveys suggest that students and educators desire greater attention to issues of justice and equity in climate change education. This timely and pioneering research will take place in England and Ireland, two national contexts with policy aspirations to develop climate and sustainability education. The research will support educators as they consider, experiment with and reflect upon opportunities for climate justice education in the context of their pedagogic practice. It will be led by an interdisciplinary team across three universities with shared interests in developing climate justice education as both theory and praxis.

Dr Alison Ward

SRG24\240994

Exploring the impact of a novel lifelong learning service supporting people living with dementia in the community: A UK perspective

University of Northampton

Value Awarded: £9,815.10

The study aims to research a new UK service, known as Brain Gym. This provides continued education for people with dementia and caregivers support. The Brain Gym believes that people with dementia can continue to learn, develop, and grow. It provides an individual education-led programme of activity. This aims to support members to maintain or develop skills that keep them interested in their life and the world around them, helping to maintain people’s independence and quality of life at home. The research will explore how these aims are being met. A mixed methods approach will see data collected for new members to the service across three time points (entry to the service, 6-months, 1-year). Data will be collected using validated measures on cognition, quality of life, self-efficacy, independence and daily activities. Focus groups with people with dementia and caregivers will be collected to understand the experience of attending the service.

Dr Rebecca Ward

Co-Applicants: Dr Hywel Turner Evans & Dr Richard May

SRG24\241428

Identifying Neurodiverse Children: Disparities in Diagnosis Across Linguistic and Ethnic Backgrounds

University of South Wales

Value Awarded: £9,990.00

The project aims to use one of the most comprehensive databases in the world to examine referral and diagnostic data pertaining to neurodiverse conditions, specifically autism, to identify disparities in diagnostic rates. Around 5% of children in the UK have autism, yet up to 72% remain unidentified by the time they leave education. Varied language and ethnic backgrounds are one explanation for this staggering rate of unidentified children. Initial reports suggest that bilingual children are at risk of being both under and over-referred for specialist services. This research will analyse routinely collected, detailed and accurate healthcare data pertaining to billions of individual records, enabling us to investigate the number and age of children referred and diagnosed with autism from various linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. This project will then explore whether the level of deprivation and gender contribute to any disparities. This study will make substantial progress in addressing healthcare inequalities.

Dr Nathalie Weidhase

SRG24\240603

From #Girlboss to #LazyGirlJobs: Young Women’s Working Lives on and through Social Media

University of Surrey

Value Awarded: £9,880.60

This study aims to explore the ways in which young women make sense of work on and through social media. It aims to advance empirical understanding of young women’s understanding of work in a mediated landscape that often purports very gendered notions of work, from the postfeminist ideal of ‘having it all’ to the contemporary #Girlboss. These proliferations have taken on a near meme-like quality on social media, forming important communicative communities that inform young women on the meaning of work. The study will consist of an in-depth exploration of the gendered audiovisual digital representations of work on the social media platforms Instagram and TikTok, and 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews with young women aged 18 to 30. The study is particularly interested in how young women understand compliance with dominant narratives of work, and the possibility of resistance to these discourses in the context of contemporary popular feminism.

Dr Emily Whitehouse

SRG24\240198

Real time monitoring of asset price bubbles and crashes

University of Sheffield

Value Awarded: £9,910.00

In economic and financial markets, we often observe rapid rises in the price of assets that are not justified by the intrinsic value of that asset. These price movements are referred to as asset price bubbles, and are usually followed by substantial declines in price, known as crashes. Bubbles and crashes can have severe consequences for economic stability, and it is therefore vital that policymakers identify these bubbles as soon as they emerge, so that they can respond quickly to mitigate any negative effects. This project will develop a new econometric toolset for real time monitoring of bubbles and crashes in time series data that will provide early warning signals for policymakers. I propose an original methodology that overcomes the limitations of previous work and will allow users to monitor for bubbles and crashes over longer time horizons, whilst maintaining a low probability of false detection.

Dr Matthew Whittle

Co-Applicants: Dr Philip Aghoghovwia & Dr Sophia Brown

SRG24\241732

Environmental Displacements: Climate Migration and Colonialism in African Literature

University of Kent

Value Awarded: £9,863.00

The climate emergency is underpinning political rhetoric that justifies the policing of borders and the scapegoating of refugees. Such rhetoric frames refugees from the Global South as threatening the social/ecological stability of wealthy nations in the Global North, disregarding the relationship between climateinduced displacement and European colonialism. To counteract this, it is vital to hear the voices of people from regions where the colonial dimensions of environmental displacement are most keenly felt. This study will focus on literatures from two ‘hotspots’ of colonialism and climate-induced displacement: Nigeria and South Africa. It will respond to three questions. (1) How can literature dramatize the root causes of climate-induced migration? (2) How can literary analysis assist the work of refugee organisations and how can this work inform new ways of reading literary texts? (3) Can a category of ‘African climate-refugee literature’ be identified and how can it provide a voice for displaced people?

Dr Samantha Wilkinson

Co-Applicant: Dr Catherine Wilkinson

SRG24\240778

Storying the Alcohol Consumption Practices and Experiences of Young People in Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities

Manchester Metropolitan University

Value Awarded: £9,962.10

Due to social exclusion, discrimination, lack of awareness and difficulties in engaging with addiction treatment protocols, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities are considered vulnerable to problematic alcohol use. At the same time, alcohol study approaches have been critiqued for giving causality to alcohol as a catalyst of problematic drinking. There is thus a need to explore the relationship this community has with alcohol consumption. I am pioneering the use of the theory of vital flows (Stern, 2010) in this kind of research, as a way of giving agency to more-than-human actants in the drinking practices and experiences of young people in Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, without reinforcing moralising, disciplining, or normalising discourses. I adopt a participatory research design, proposing group narrative interviews and group craft-elicitation interviews as methods enabling young people from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities to tell their drinking stories in culturally credible ways.

Dr Hannah Wishart

Co-Applicant: Dr Helen Williams

SRG24\240450

Police Charging Decisions of Children and Diversion: Impact of Age and Immaturity on Decision-making

University of Sunderland

Value Awarded: £9,970.00

This project aims to investigate how the police use their discretion when deciding whether to charge young offenders aged 10-17 years who have committed non-fatal violent offences. The study will specifically focus on how the Child Gravity Matrix, in combination with the Crown Prosecutor's Code, supports decision-making, as its effectiveness has not been thoroughly assessed. Specifically, it will focus on the use of discretion by the police in interpreting the broadly defined Code for Crown Prosecutors and the Child Gravity Matrix to consider the suspect's youth and maturity at the time of the offence when deciding whether to charge or divert them away. The research will use a mixed method to analyse charging case files and conduct online surveys with relevant stakeholders and children/young people in the Northeast of England. The project will collaborate with the Cleveland Police, Youth Offending Team (YOT), and Youth Offending Services (YOS).

Dr Agnieszka Wlazel

SRG24\241557

The same art, a different experience? A Comparative study of audience engagement during mixed-reality performance.

Independent Scholar

Value Awarded: £9,995.00

Abstract: Though technology increasingly dominates the way people engage with art, understanding how technologies are transforming the nature of the arts experience remains in its initial phase. This transdisciplinary project empirically explores audience experiences during a mixed-reality, immersive theatre experience. The mixed method study combines analysis of signs of engagement in audience members’ bodies (heart rate, skin conductance, temperature), reflections, and the contextual influence of the artworks. The study seeks to understand the differences in engagement with the same performance of two audience groups: 20-25-year-olds and 40–45-year-olds (the digital generation and the group that grew up before the widespread use of the internet). The project responds to audience studies and art practice's need to develop new ways to study and stimulate audience engagement with arts suitable for times of fast technological and societal changes. Integrating knowledge from humanities and natural sciences offers a more nuanced understanding of audience engagement with art.

Dr Zhaokun Xin

SRG24\241574

The Many Faces of Anger: Reshaping Emotional Norms in Late Imperial Chinese Literature

University of Manchester

Value Awarded: £9,830.44

Were people in late imperial China angry? Judging from a long-standing scholarly tradition, they were not, but according to this period’s literary productions, they were frequently so. My project sheds new light on late imperial Chinese emotional experiences by focusing on the understudied representation of anger in literature. It teases out what give rise to the emotion, and how literary works reconfigure the emotion’s regulation. The project will examine neo-Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist teachings, as well as such prescriptive fields as law and medicine to demonstrate their normative thinking about anger. It will further reveal how literary productions of late imperial China reshape the emotional norms in these discursive fields through editorial intervention, paratextual negotiation, and cross-genre adaptation. In this project, anger will serve as an innovative entry point alternative to love and desire into a more dynamic, gendered, and embodied understanding of late imperial Chinese emotional experiences.

Dr Lei Xu

Co-Applicant: Dr Van Trung Vu

SRG24\241887

The impact of population aging on productivity

Loughborough University

Value Awarded: £10,000.00

This study examines the under-explored role of population aging in driving sectoral productivity, with special attention to large heterogeneity in reliance on aged workers and prospects for using labour-replacing technologies across industries. It also aims to analyse whether public support for immigration influences countries’ responses to population aging by using innovative (productivity-enhancing) technologies. For these purposes, this research intends to use various datasets of detailed industry and individual characteristics to delve deeper into such heterogeneity in the aging-productivity nexus, thereby provides a comprehensive understanding of whether and through which mechanisms population aging affects productivity at the industry level.

Chuanzi Yue

Co-Applicant: Professor Marisa Miraldo

SRG24\241753

Consumer Concentration and Innovation: The Effect of Chinese Centralised Procurement Programme on Pharmaceutical Research and Development

Imperial College London

Value Awarded: £9,969.23

How does the degree of monopoly of downstream buyers affect upstream firms' innovation efforts? Utilizing proprietary data on pharmaceutical innovation and sales, we examine the impact of China’s centralized procurement program for prescription medicines. This programme enables the Chinese government to negotiate prices and quantities for all public hospitals on a pre-selected list of drugs, significantly concentrating demand. Public hospitals account for 84% of total hospital visits, and our preliminary analysis based on firm-level Research and Development (R&D) spending suggests a profound impact. However, there is no evidence on how this effect varies with different degrees of concentration or between domestic and international markets. Global drug spending reaches $1.3 trillion annually, and with China being the second-largest global consumer of medicine, thoroughly assessing the program’s impact is not only academically significant but also essential for the financial sustainability of health systems and the promotion of population health.

Amina Zarzi

SRG24\241645

The Place of the Sahara Desert in the Development of Algerian Identity in the 20th and 21st centuries

University of Oxford

Value Awarded: £5,470.00

This project analyses, compares and contrasts Arabophone and Francophone representations of the Sahara, whilst engaging with the voice of local inhabitants in the context of the emergence of post-colonial Algerian identity. It investigates how the Sahara is represented across the linguistic divide, by bringing together established and well-known authors such as Mouloud Mammeri and Malika Mokeddem with lesser-known writers, especially Arabophone ones such as Said Khatibi and Hadj Ahmed Sadiq, as well as other Berber and Arab participants whose voices have tended to be marginalised in literary renditions. The project argues for the need to deconstruct mainstream perceptions emanating from the North, highlighting instead the voices of ethnic minorities who are themselves producers of knowledge. Its interdisciplinary scope generates a multifaceted meaning production of the Sahara as an accurate analytical prism of identity and reshapes its colonial perception as empty and devoid of meaning.

Dr Amanda Zhang

SRG24\240055

Iron Man’s Brothers: Grassroots masculinities in the Nantong metal industry during the early People’s Republic of China, 1949 – 1980

Birkbeck, University of London

Value Awarded: £9,236.00

This project will research what it meant to be a man in Mao Era China (1949-1976). It departs from extant scholarship by drawing on first-hand shop floor experiences from previously unexamined personnel dossiers of steel workers to add further discussions about discourses of masculinity both as ideas and in practice under Maoist Socialism. It will analyse the instillation of gender norms through supervised work routines, everyday life, and interactions between peers and their superiors, family, friends, and lovers. In doing so, it will map the tensions manifested in the convergence of state, party, society, culture, gender politics, and everyday life. Understanding the historical antecedents of the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to shape masculine ideals along with lived experiences will illuminate how these policies are interpreted, navigated, and contested within Chinese society, both in the past and present.

Dr Chenchen Zhang

Co-Applicants: Dr Carwyn Morris & Dr Yao Lin

SRG24\240846

Digital counterpublics, everyday geopolitics, and the emerging transnational activism of diasporic Chinese youth

Durham University

Value Awarded: £9,501.39

Following the wave of protests against zero-Covid policies within China in late 2022, a number of digitally mediated collectives and mobilisations have emerged in diasporic Chinese communities. These emerging forms of digital transnational activism are not only oriented towards opposing Chinese authoritarianism, but also explicitly aligned with broader progressive movements, including feminist, queer, and anti-colonial struggles, in both China and host societies. Drawing on the concepts of digital counterpublics and everyday geopolitics, this project explores the affective politics of identity formation, everyday geopolitical encounters, and transnational solidarity in the digital activism of diasporic Chinese youth. It aims to provide original empirical insights into this novel space for forming counterhegemonic narratives and alternative interpretations of identity amidst the geopoliticisation of dissident politics. It also reflects on the possibilities for transnational solidarity across geopolitical divides and regime types, which will be incorporated into a best practice toolkit targeting civil society audiences.

Dr Mao Zhang

Co-Applicants: Professor Oleksandr Talavera & Dr Yuanlin Gu

SRG24\241444

Market Reactions to Managers' Accents in Earnings Conference Calls: a Machine Learning Approach

University of St Andrews

Value Awarded: £9,627.00

Earnings calls are an important avenue for voluntarily disclosing company information to the financial market. They are considered an effective mechanism for mitigating information asymmetries between companies and market participants. Prior studies have documented that text transcripts of earnings calls reveal incremental information over the earnings press release through subtle language features of managers’ speeches, including the use of words and the text tone. In this project, we take a step beyond textual analysis by developing a novel machine-learning system to analyse the audio recordings of earnings conference calls. We focus on a crucial linguistic feature -- managers’ non-native English accents. We also study whether managers’ accents affect information processing and the subsequent impact on the financial market. Our findings will provide new implications for improving the effectiveness of managerial communication and promoting a diverse, inclusive, and equitable communication culture.

Dr Xiaoyue (carol) Zhang

Co-Applicants: Professor Michael Zisuh Ngoasong & Dr Xinrui Wang

SRG24\241668

Bamboo Culture in Rural China: Uncovering how doing and redoing gender enables women social entrepreneurs’ participation in pro-poor tourism development

University of Nottingham

Value Awarded: £9,900.00

Research shows that social entrepreneurship networks, which facilitate the exchange of personal favours, are effective in achieving commercial, social, and sustainable development goals. While these networks provide access to resources and agency, they often pose gendered challenges to female social entrepreneurs in rural contexts. To address this poorly researched area, this interdisciplinary ethnographic study explores how the process of ‘doing’ and ‘redoing’ gender enables women-led community-based bamboo craft initiatives to contribute to pro-poor tourism development in rural villages. Bamboo craft, traditionally a symbol of male virtue, is used for food, construction, transportation, and tourism, reflecting a system that rationalises male dominance. Doing gender consists of complying with gender stereotypes as part of culture; redoing gender consist of defying gendered stereotypes by leveraging agency to overcome gendered challenges. Through understanding the context-specific nature of ‘doing’ and ‘redoing’ gender, the project informs strategies to sustain women’s social entrepreneurship activities for sustainable development.

Dr Xin Zhao

SRG24\240850

Fight against racism towards the East and Southeast Asian community: Leveraging TikTok

Bournemouth University

Value Awarded: £9,996.40

The COVID-19 pandemic witnessed the East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) community, for the first time, collectively fight against the racism issues towards their community, leveraging social media platforms such as TikTok. It is pressing to systematically identify what the effective strategies are. The lack of enough scholarly attention on this topic diminishes the value of social media in addressing social justice issues. This project aims to fill the gap. Through content analysing 500 TikTok posts and their first 50 comments, the project will achieve two research objectives: first, identify the discourse characteristics of TikTok posts about anti-racism strategies for the ESEA community; second, identify the patterns of their comments. Theoretically, this project will contribute to understanding the mechanisms of social media in addressing social justice issues. Empirically, it will provide evidence-based strategies for ESEA community organisations and individuals within and outside the ESEA community to fight against racism using TikTok.

Professor Yu Zhu

Co-Applicants: Professor Alfonso Miranda & Professor Alissa Melinger

SRG24\241752

The effect of accent on wages: Evidence from an experimental vignette study

University of Dundee

Value Awarded: £9,700.00

Accent is the way people from a particular area, country, or social group, pronounce the words of a language. Previous studies have found compelling evidence that listeners routinely use accent to stereotype speakers—i.e., using oversimplified and widely held ideas/beliefs about the relationship between accent and other personal or group characteristics that may or may not reflect reality. The proposed study tries to shed light on the existence and nature of accent discrimination in the Scottish labour market. We inquire: Does speaking with a regional accent carry a negative wage return in the Scottish labour market net of other individual characteristics? We intend to establish causality, rather than only documenting associations and/or correlations, by using experimental vignettes as a methodological device that can address the main identification challenges. We will control all extraneous factors and systematically manipulate the sex, education, and accent of the candidate in in the audio presentation.

Dr Zhen Zhu

Co-Applicant: Dr Ching Jin

SRG24\242072

Identifying Early Signals of Diabetes with Online Social Footprints: A Network Science Approach

University of Kent

Value Awarded: £9,885.63

Patients with diabetes consistently seek two primary outcomes: early diagnosis and predictions of potential future health issues. These goals were traditionally pursued through the study of multimorbidity, leveraging electronic health record (EHR) databases. However, disease correlation also involves lifestyle behaviours and social activities, often missing from medical records, leaving significant aspects of patients’ lives unobserved. The emergence of large-scale online datasets provides a unique chance to analyse individuals’ social footprints, offering insights into their interests, lifestyles, and healthcare issues. By applying network science techniques, we can replicate existing multimorbidity patterns as well as uncover new ones, and link diseases with social activities and interests, thus tracing the sequence of events and identifying early indicators of conditions like diabetes.

Dr Jarad Zimbler

Co-Applicant: Dr Ben Karl Etherington

SRG24\240891

Craft Wars: Poetry and Decolonization

King's College London

Value Awarded: £9,795.00

In the early 1970s, a series of debates ignited among writers across the global south. Amidst new realities created by decolonization movements and the rapid break-up of European empires, poets became involved in heated arguments about how to write poems. These ‘craft wars’ were imbued with the language of political decolonization, but questions about which forms and techniques were ‘radical’, ‘conservative’, ‘anti-colonial’, ‘neo-colonial’, ‘elite’, or ‘popular’ could not be decided on strictly political grounds. The project of research we propose begins with a focus on craft wars in the Caribbean and South Africa before looking further afield. Our key research questions, which entail the development of a distinctive comparative methodology, are: 1) what role do poems and poets play in decolonization? 2) what does it mean to decolonize poetry? And 3) how do the temporalities of literary cultures interact with the more familiar temporalities of politics?

The awards listed are those for the 2024 British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants. Previous award announcements can be found on the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants past awards page.