Dr Craig Berry EN\170055
Manchester Metropolitan University - Politics £14951
Industrial strategy and the transformation of British economic statecraft
The sluggish recovery from the 2008 economic crisis has revealed and reinforced several economic problems in the UK, and there is an emerging consensus that a comprehensive and meaningful industrial strategy is required. This project will build upon and disseminate my research on UK industrial policy, which has sought to account for the seemingly conservative nature of policy change with references to limitations in the institutional framework and ideas around industrial policy. It builds also upon my work with the Industrial Strategy Commission, which worked with government to develop industrial policy throughout 2017. The project will encompass a pamphlet which will further develop policy ideas, launched and discussed at events with key stakeholders and the public. I will also organise an academic workshop to situate moves towards industrial strategy within a wider intellectual context.
Political economy analysis is essential to understanding changes in elite perspectives on the state/economy relationship.
Dr Ian Cawood EN\170137
Newman University - History £7850
The development of the concept of public service and the decline of corruption in nineteenth century Britain
This project aims to create an interdisciplinary forum for intellectual exchange between researchers in nineteenth century European history, political scientists, policy-makers, think-tanks and lobby groups. The study of corruption in Britain has tended to concentrate on political corruption and on the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. The experience of the nineteenth century when Britain moved from a public sphere that was, by any modern definition, intrinsically corrupt to a state built on an ethos of public service and institutional altruism has yet to be systematically explored. By bringing together political scientists, those tasked with fighting corruption in modern Britain and historians who have studied the decline of corruption in other west European countries in the nineteenth century, the symposium, to be held in Oxford in January 2019, explicitly focuses on encouraging academics and non- academics to take on research challenges together, as well as to navigating the often divergent methodological traditions.
Dr Maria Cesario EN\170152
Queen's University Belfast - Medieval Studies £15000
Bridging Across Disciplines: Medieval Visions of Modern Science
In the past few years cross-disciplinary research has been strongly encouraged by both European and UK Research Funding Councils and Academies. The proposed programme, which uses a participatory research and public engagement approach, aims to inspire high-impact cross-disciplinary projects crossing between Medieval Studies and Sciences (with particular focus on astronomy and weather) by providing support and mentoring to early career scholars and PhD students over a one-year period. What specific skills are necessary to embark on such projects? Interdisciplinary research of this kind requires extensive networks, intellectual flexibility and a renegotiation of disciplinary parameters. The main objectives of the programme consist thus in promoting new collaborations between Medievalists and Scientists , identifying new areas of research together with methodological and epistemological challenges , negotiating solutions by proposing innovative disciplinary and cultural frameworks essential for addressing the research questions, and working towards ways of achieving impact and knowledge exchange.
Dr Piotr Cieplak EN\170013
University of Sussex - History of Art £14975
Public deaths, private archives: image-based commemoration and remembrance in Rwanda and the Global South
This project offers a unique opportunity for public and scholarly engagement with the practice of private archive image-based commemoration of mass violence in the Global South.
The Rwandan genocide has been described as a ‘genocide without images’. And yet, it is a genocide that has been mediated, especially internationally, through images: memorable photographs of mutilated bodies or anonymous refugees and blockbuster films. But many Rwandans commemorate their dead, privately and institutionally, with images showing life rather than death: a passport photo or a group portrait from a wedding.
The project consists of two activities. Firstly, it brings a documentary about the multifaceted uses of personal photography in genocide remembrance to the mostly-neglected Rwandan audiences. Secondly, extending its focus from Rwanda to the wider Global South, it presents a dedicated symposium for early career researchers and international practitioners (Rwanda, Argentina, UK) on commemorative uses of personal photography in the digital age.
Dr Andy Clark EN\170056
Newcastle University - History £12357.35
Deindustrialisation, memory and impact: a formal network for public engagement
Academic studies of manufacturing decline, termed deindustrialisation studies, inevitably involve substantial engagement with communities impacted by deindustrialisation. Residents are our respondents and their social groups inform the direction of research. Similarly, community-based historians and heritage organisations are highly involved in the process of collecting narratives of job loss and the social impacts of manufacturing decline, with testimonies and monuments regularly forming a key part of exhibitions and regeneration projects.
Despite the necessary links between academics and community groups in researching deindustrialisation, there is no network to coordinate the work being conducted or its outputs. This significantly reduces the potential impact of the research, and will lead to the unnecessary duplication of projects. This will involve three collaborative workshops across the UK, creating a formal network of early career researchers and community-based groups to develop a more systematic approach to our research, maximising its impact and public visibility.
Dr Susannah Cornwall EN\170015
University of Exeter - Religious Studies £14472
Practice, Activism and Advocacy in Academic Research on Religion, Gender and Sexuality
Sex, gender and sexuality are prominent issues in public debate concerning religion and society. This programme includes training for early career researchers (ECRs) working on sex, gender, sexuality and religion from disciplines including theology and religion, psychology, history and law, allowing them to meet and learn from both senior academics (on e.g. research design, ethics and governance; transition to being a principal investigator; working with faith groups) and from practitioners, activists, advocates and faith leaders (on e.g. co-creating and co-curating research). It brings together a network of early career scholars and senior researchers for a two-day conference, to include mentoring and training on research design and development and an ECR poster/video installation session, and several public engagement events, including a photographic exhibition, live play and film screening. It will strengthen communications and research relationships between ECRs and senior researchers across disciplines, and with stakeholders beyond academia.
Dr Niheer Dasandi EN\170034
University of Birmingham - Politics £14324.04
Aid Donors, International Diplomacy, and Human Rights in Developing Countries
The question of how aid donors can ensure that human rights in developing countries are protected and promoted has received much recent attention. High profile crises – such as homophobic legislation in Uganda, and the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar – have prompted greater discussion about how donors engage with human rights from the media, NGOs, politicians, and the public. This has fostered recognition of the need to better understand how donors can use available diplomatic and development resources to promote people’s rights in developing countries. This project contributes to this challenge by bringing together early career and senior researchers from different academic backgrounds – including international development, human rights, and diplomacy – that are interested in this issue, and putting them in dialogue with policymakers, NGO practitioners, and journalists. This will happen through a one-year programme that includes a conference at University of Birmingham, and a policy workshop in London.
Dr Katharine Dommett EN\170107
University of Sheffield - Politics £13201.97
The Challenges of Studying Political Campaigning in the Digital Realm: Implications and Strategies for Studying Facebook, Algorithms and the Online Sphere.
Studies of electoral campaigning have yielded important findings on campaign activity, electoral strategy and campaign effects in the offline and online spheres. However, recent developments signal an evolution in practice, with parties adopting online advertising tools (notably using Facebook in the 2017 General Election), and recruiting data companies for campaigns. These latest changes pose challenges for data collection as organisations such as Facebook don’t share advertising information and external companies are bound by confidentiality agreements when hired by parties. This makes it challenging to study what is happening, and what implications these changes have for contemporary democracy.
This programme will bring together early career researchers interested in electoral campaigning, data scientists, political consultants, data targeting companies and other interested stakeholders. At two workshops participants will, first, consider barriers and implications, before, second, working to share and develop possible solutions to these barriers.
Dr Derek Dunne EN\170075
Cardiff University - English Language and Literature £14997.75
Survival Strategies for Humanities ECAs
The period between finishing a PhD and taking up permanent academic employment has become an increasingly uncertain, stressful and prolonged stage in an academic career. In order to provide practical support for Humanities early career academics (ECAs) during this precarious transitional phase, this initiative makes available resources and workshops tailored to their specific needs. These take the form of:
(1) ‘#ECAchat’: A podcast series where established Humanities academics share their stories of career progression, failures as well as triumphs, and offer practical advice to ECAs.
(2) A summit on ‘Strategies for Survival in a Changing Academic Landscape’ for Humanities ECAs, with two days of panels, workshops and networking events. These will be recorded and live-streamed for reasons of accessibility and visibility, and will act as a launch for the podcast series.
Both initiatives will foster community and solidarity, while advancing the needs of Humanities early career academics to policy-makers.
Dr Kayleigh Garthwaite EN\170057
University of Birmingham - Sociology £14457
Charitable food provision as an emergency response: sharing evidence from Canada, the USA and the UK
In the past five years in the UK, we have seen a steep rise in the number of people seeking emergency food aid in the form of charitable provision, signalling permanence to the existence of food banks. In Canada and the USA, there is a much longer history of charitable food provision. There is an urgent need to engage with what can be learnt from the transatlantic context here in the UK, and vice versa. This programme includes an interactive workshop which will bring together international early career (ECR) and senior researchers, charities, front-line workers, media, those experiencing food poverty and insecurity, and grassroots organisations. A specific mentoring scheme for ECRs is built into the workshop. This two day event will foster a new network of early-career scholars, whilst establishing innovative understandings of the relationship between the institutionalisation of charitable food aid within different contexts, to take the agenda forward.
Dr Sarah Gilligan EN\170029
Hartlepool College of Further Education - Culture, Media and Performance £14879.9
Fashion, Costume and Visual Cultures
Fashion, Costume and Visual Cultures (FCVC) will create an international, interdisciplinary forum for established, early career and emerging Humanities and Social Sciences academics and practitioners to share and debate current research and support one another through networking and mentoring. The project aims to explore the distinct, yet interconnected roles that fashion and costume play in the construction, performance and transformation of identities on and beyond the screen within contemporary visual cultures. Through bringing academics, researchers, designers and makers together, new discourses, analytical methodologies and critical understanding will be developed that will inform research, teaching, practice and business. This project will involve a one day symposium (with workshops & launch) in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a three day international conference in Zagreb, Croatia, together with the formation of a digital network and regional meetings to facilitate support, collaboration and networking beyond the two events for academics and practitioners at all stages of their careers.
Dr Jessica Goodman EN\170019
University of Oxford - Modern Languages £14956.2
Modern Languages in Crisis: Creating a Support Network for Languages Outreach in the UK
The study of Modern Languages is in crisis. Uptake is declining drastically, provision is being cut (particularly in the state sector), and new curricula require teachers to provide literary instruction for which many feel unprepared.
Researchers have the desire and responsibility to support languages at school level, e.g. using their research to
broaden pupils’ perspectives on language study. However, a key central provider of MFL outreach, Routes into Languages, is currently in abeyance. The proposed programme will bring together eight ECRs from different regions, along with teachers, national providers and policy bodies, to discuss current provision and future needs, and share best practice for research-based engagement. Each ECR will then organise a regional schools engagement afternoon (thus receiving training in crucial transferable skills), whilst collectively-created online models and resources will extend the impact of the project beyond those involved in the initial event, to academics and schools across the UK.
Dr Sarah Grochala EN\170125
Central School of Speech and Drama - Culture, Media and Performance £14995.99
Contemporary European Drama in Translation on the British Stage: Exploring its absence in the context of Brexit
Contemporary European plays in translation are a rarity on British stages. They make up less than 1% of UK theatre productions. This project brings together senior and early career researchers, theatre professionals and policymakers from the UK and Europe, and British theatre audiences to engage with the reasons for this absence through a series of interlinked engagement events. A theatre festival featuring contemporary European plays will engage researchers with theatre professionals, policymakers and audiences in a discussion about pre-conceptions of contemporary European drama and barriers to its production. This will be followed by a two-day conference during which researchers will engage further with theatre professionals and policymakers to examine barriers in detail and model solutions. The project will bring together a core group of early career researchers with backgrounds spanning theatre and performance and translation studies, mentored by a panel of industry experts and senior researchers working across these fields.
Dr Berenice Guyot-Rechard EN\170145
King's College London - History £14220
New International Histories of South Asia: Laying the basis of a scholarly and public engagement community
South Asia is a volatile region. Academic and public understanding of its international relations has suffered from a lack of solid research and a focus on top-level diplomacy and decision-making, hampering our capacity to envision and shape the region’s future. This project seeks to lay the foundation of a scholarly and public engagement community around the « New International Histories of South Asia » (NIHSA) through a two-day research, brainstorming and public engagement workshop. The first day will bring together scholars across History, post- colonial IR, or political geography (many of them early career), all doing cutting-edge work on the subcontinent’s international environment, to debate new research frontiers. The second day will bridge the divide between academia, the public and policy-makers. It will consist of brainstorming NIHSA’s next steps, a research and policy- making training session, and a roundtable between participants and policy-makers on topics of interest to the latter.
Dr Michael Hannon EN\170083
School of Advanced Study, University of London - Philosophy £10140
Political Epistemology: The Role of Truth in Politics
Our political culture is increasingly characterised by appeals to emotion, disconnected from the details of policy, and framed by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored. Further, the irreconcilable clash of political outlooks seems to threaten the common ground on which the collective pursuit of truth depends. As a result, an increasing number of scholars are investigating the role of truth in politics, the challenges to deliberative democracy, the epistemology of propaganda, and related topics. This project seeks to establish a 'Political Epistemology Network' that brings together social epistemologists, political philosophers, political scientists, and cognitive psychologists that work at the intersection of these fields. This network will support work by early career researchers through an international conference, a fortnightly seminar, and it will produce a podcast series titled ‘The Role of Truth in Politics' that promotes the public value of research in the humanities.
Dr Mary Harrod EN\170047
University of Warwick - Culture, Media and Performance £8360
Imagining ‘We’ in the Age of ‘I’: Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture
This project will connect researchers of contemporary romance and related interpersonal dynamics across disciplines and beyond academia. Shifts in gender roles, work and mobility patterns and especially technology have recently provoked cultural interest in perceived threats to social bonding. Yet initial moral panic about dating apps has largely given way to their normalisation, new platforms have boosted literary romance sales and new media given impetus to fan fiction in the genre, while in many western countries divorce rates are suddenly falling.
Since romance derives from and bears a privileged relation to fiction, understanding new social norms around couples and secondarily family structures requires interrogating narrative fictionalisations of and attendant imaginary notions about them. This project seeks to shine light on the relationship between cultural narratives and behaviours connected with erotic love and/or kinship or companionship ties in the contemporary context of online cultures and global capitalism, including through those frameworks.
Dr Andi Hoxhaj EN\170025
University of Warwick - Law £13574.5
UK – Western Balkans Early Career Network on “Migration, Security and Justice”
The UK–Western Balkans Network aims to create an interdisciplinary forum for intellectual exchange between early career researchers, senior academics and policymakers working on the Western Balkans in the UK, the EU, and their counterparts in the region. The aim of the network is to foster engagement activities with a focus on the multidimensional and interlinked issues of migration, security and justice. The study of migration from the Western Balkans in the UK and the EU forms a cornerstone for a new research agenda identifying priority areas that can help to design multilevel migration governance models applicable to the UK and the EU. The interdisciplinary goal of this project is to bring together different contributions from Law, Political Science, Sociology, Economics, and Anthropology, which will be presented at the intentional workshop and research talks at the Faculty of Social Science.
Dr Olga Jurasz EN\170005
Open University - Law £14872.93
Making International Law Work for Women Post-Conflict: New Voices
This engagement activity seeks to address the multifaceted challenges facing women in post-conflict situations and to explore ways in which international law can (and should) be put to work in order to effectively assist women and secure their rights in the aftermath of contemporary conflicts. Although some steps have already been taken at an international level to address the gendered impact of conflicts on women, they have been primarily focused on establishing accountability for conflict-related sexual violence largely to the exclusion of other pertinent matters such as legal mechanisms for transformative reparations, securing women’s economic & social rights, women’s involvement in peace building processes, the impact of foreign investments and financing on advancement of
women’s rights in post-conflict reconstruction. The project seeks to enable early career scholars to engage in critical discussions which will further expose such gaps and explore ways of addressing them within the scope of international law.
Dr Anna Kotova EN\170063
University of Birmingham - Sociology £12975
Families of prisoners: pathways to policy impact
Following a recent review (Farmer Report 2017) on the importance of prisoners' family links, it has become clear that prisoners' families play an important role within the prison system. However, on a policy level, prisoners' families are often invisible and their needs unaddressed. This programme of activities seeks to bring together Early Career Researchers (ECRs), senior academics and key policymakers in order to create a toolkit for policy engagement in this often politically unpopular context. In doing so, it aims to equip ECRs with the skills necessary for generating policy impact, and to ensure policymakers also have an opportunity to inform academics as to how best to generate such impact. The collective wealth of research on prisoners' families will be, in turn, used to inform discussions with policymakers. The publications generated, moreover, would be of use to other ECRs working in areas of research that have little political support.
Dr Julia Laite EN\170118
Birkbeck, University of London - History £14990
Telling Small Stories: a family history workshop
In my ongoing research, I am using digital history and family history to write a microhistory of trafficking in the early twentieth century British world. This has led me to develop a keen interest in how academic historians use the resources of family historians and genealogists, and the way that the boom in the family history industry has created new opportunities for academic historians, writers, artists, and family historians to tell small stories about the past. Historians could stand to learn much from engaging with those who work with these resources as family historians, writers, and artists. At the same time, historians are uniquely placed to help others question the way that the family history industry has developed, and we can offer vital contextualization for small stories. How can we share the small stories that fascinate us in meaningful and critically engaged ways?
Dr Tobias Lock EN\170046
University of Edinburgh - Law £13119.8
The Brexit and Rights Engagement Network (BREN)
Brexit poses challenges for the protection of rights in the UK with many rights no longer underpinned by EU obligations. Future attempts at human rights reform will therefore see Parliament able to legislate freely not only on the Human Rights Act, but rights currently protected by EU law. The multiplicity of rights sources make this area of law difficult to navigate in particular with the added complication of devolution, exemplified by rights obligations in the Good Friday Agreement and discussions over devolved bills of rights.
There is thus an acute need for academic engagement to influence and shape public policy. Particularly ECRs find it difficult to make their voices heard in politically charged debates on Brexit, rights, and devolution.
The BREN network will provide ECRs with training and practical engagement opportunities – three geographically spread roundtables – and thereby provide them with lasting skills and confidence to engage effectively.
Dr Naoise Mac Sweeney EN\170044
University of Leicester - Classics and Ancient History £14408.8
Claiming the Classical: 21st century political movements and the Greco-Roman past
From fascism’s Roman-inspired power symbols to the liberal fetishisation of Greek democracy, the 20th century saw many politicised appropriations of the Greco-Roman past. Several such claims have been made so far in the 21st century, often by far right groups. But historical complexities rarely fit political slogans, and at best these claims are based on a limited view of antiquity, at worst on a wilfully distorted one. In the last year, classicists seeking to challenge inaccuracies have met with hostility, online campaigns, and even death threats. This network will bring together ECRs and more established academics to map the claims on antiquity currently being made by political movements, and to consider practical ways for scholars to engage constructively with such claims. The network will organise a launch meeting, a showcase workshop, and develop online resources to enable ECRs to conduct engagement activities addressing current politicised appropriations of the classical past.
Dr Julie MacLeavy EN\170147
University of Bristol - Geography £14984
Feminist engagements with austerity
This interdisciplinary symposium will bring together researchers and practitioners, activists and community groups to focus on feminist engagements with the geographies of austerity. Feminist theoretical work has not only highlighted the gendered impacts of the material and social conditions of austerity, but also how austerity affects different women in different ways. Central to this symposium is a thus concern with how contemporary political, economic and social transformations are reanimating questions of difference and diversity that have long concerned feminist scholars. By creating a space for productive dialogue on the geographies of gender and austerity, the symposium will provide an opportunity for postgraduates and early career scholars to engage with experienced researchers in areas of mutual interest. It will also foster broader conversations between researchers and non-academic users through the inclusion of representatives from policy and charity sectors that are engaged in austerity work.
Dr Lisa Morriss EN\170048
University of Birmingham - Sociology £12249.96
Enhancing the visibility of Early Career Researchers in Social Work
Social workers engage in highly complex and significant real world problems such as mental health and child protection. They work with adults and children experiencing poverty, abuse and neglect. The decisions that social workers make are life changing and have lifelong impacts. Thus, it is vitally important that there is a strong research base to inform their decision-making. Yet, social work is only newly emerging as an academic discipline; doctorates in social work are relatively rare and there is a paucity of support for social work early career researchers (ECRs). The aim of the engagement programme is to enhance the visibility of ECRs in social work through a conference, training, mentorship, and policy engagement with leading stakeholders. Fundamentally, ECRs in social work have the potential to make a real world impact on improving the lives of some of the most vulnerable adults and children in our society.
Dr Nadine Muller EN\170053
Liverpool John Moores University - History £14719.5
War Widows' Stories
Building on a Radio 4 Woman’s Hour broadcast and an edited volume of oral history interviews, this series of public engagement events will raise awareness of the lived experiences of war widows in Britain with the help of the research, resources, and volunteers of the War Widows’ Stories project (http://www.warwidowsstories.org.uk). War Widows’ Stories captures the lives of war’s forgotten women past and present by recording the life stories of war widows and their children through oral history and archival research. In doing so, the project dispels prevalent myths about war widowhood and highlights the hidden, everyday challenges these ordinary women face in extraordinary circumstances. By enabling war widows to tell their stories in their own words and by creating an intricate, multidisciplinary history of war widowhood in Britain through literary and cultural research, War Widows’ Stories breaks the deafening silence that continues to surround war widowhood in Britain today.
Dr Robert Portass EN\170079
University of Lincoln - History £10939.62
Medieval Encounters between Islam and Christianity: Reassessing the Past and Reshaping the Present
Relations between Islam and Christianity are often presented as fundamentally antagonistic, yet this interpretation is a partial and incomplete representation of the many, varied and diverse encounters that occurred between Muslims and Christians in the Middle Ages. This project will shed light on these encounters via a series of events, each designed to provide enriching responses to deeply-rooted yet still relevant questions about inter-faith relations: by reassessing the past, we can thus begin to reshape the present. These events are aimed at two constituencies, the first, leading young researchers; the second, the wider public, including school children. The project's aim is to foster connections between ECRs of diverse expertise, in the process creating materials with which non-experts can engage – namely, a radio podcast and a series of short films. These latter will be used to engage our audiences at two events: a conference and an engagement workshop with children.
Dr Amanda Potts EN\170108
Cardiff University - Linguistics £14935.24
Identifying and Encouraging Prosocial Behaviour on Social Media: Perspectives from Academics and Content Creators
Recent statistics have shown that 96% of people under 35 in the UK use some form of social media. This is a crucial communicative tool for managing interpersonal relationships and negotiating personal identity. Much recent scholarly work has focussed on antisocial behaviour on social media, including: trolling, cyberbullying, and grooming. However, continued engagement with social media is rooted in its rewarding, prosocial aspects, such as: group formation, showing of empathy/support, and community policing of antisocial behaviour. In this programme, we will form a network to link two perspectives on this topic, namely academic (ECRs from language, communication, and media) and industrial/professional (representatives from digital platforms). We will form interest groups around a range of prosocial behaviours currently observable on public-facing social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and Tumblr, and create a pool of resources which will guide and inform future work on behalf of both stakeholder groups.
Dr Gale Raj-Reichert EN\170123
Queen Mary University of London - Geography £14170
Improving labour conditions in global production networks through socially responsible public procurement
Global industries such as electronics and clothing face significant challenges over labour violations and poor working conditions in developing countries. This is due to governance gaps in global production networks (GPNs). They include either inadequate regulations, deficient regulatory enforcement capacities in developing countries, or weak and unsustainable self-regulatory private mechanisms, such as standards and codes of conduct, by firms. Research on labour governance in GPNs, however, has paid little attention to socially responsible public procurement particularly by large consuming states. Yet in 2014 the European Union adopted a Directive on Public Procurement which allows clauses on social and labour standards in procurement contracts. The proposed programme aims to develop a conceptual and theoretical lens on the state as a governance actor, in hybrid form as regulator-buyer, exercised through market power in GPNs by bringing together academics and PhDs researching labour governance in GPNs with public-sector buyers and civil society organisations.
Dr Cecilie Sachs Olsen EN\170112
Royal Holloway, University of London - Geography £14902.4
URBAN VOICES: the political arts of listening
Participatory approaches to urban development have come a long way in providing frameworks that enable people to voice their opinions on urban issues. Nevertheless, residents complain that their voices are not heard. While much attention is paid to speaking, listening has gained far less attention. Building on my ongoing research around the potential for arts practices to enable more democratic forms of urban development, I propose a programme of engagement activities that focuses on cultivating contexts for listening amongst a range of stakeholders within urban planning processes. My engagement activities will focus around three sets of activities: 1) Listening labs - a series of public workshops and an audio walk 2) Listening lobby - an international conference 3) Listening loop – ECR network and the making/dissemination of a podcast.
Dr Danielle Sands EN\170038
Royal Holloway, University of London - Philosophy £14747.3
Posthumanities: Redefining Humanities for the Fourth Industrial Age
Existing conceptions of the ‘human’ and its boundaries are challenged by technological and scientific developments, including those in genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and animal cognition. Transforming existing philosophical and cultural debates regarding the legacies of humanism and human values, the posthumanities aim to assess the ethical implications of these developments. UK-based early career researchers, keen to improve their understanding of these issues, will benefit from a series of posthumanities network events which will engage European posthumanities experts, facilitate peer debate and develop public discourse by engaging with scientists, researchers and policy makers. The events will consist of three workshops, each addressing a key area in posthumanities scholarship: bioethics, animal welfare and artificial intelligence. The collaborative networks generated by the project will lead future partnerships, guide principled research and educate policy influencers on the critical emerging issues of the fourth industrial age.
Dr Camilla Schofield EN\170111
University of East Anglia - History £8600
Rivers of Blood at 50
Half a century has passed since Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech, yet we continue to see the power of populism in Britain and around the globe. In partnership with the Runnymede Trust and the Raphael Samuel Centre, this programme treats this uncertain political moment and the 50th anniversary as an opportunity to drive the historical conversation forward on the shifting political meanings of race, inequality and difference. Via a major public event in London, Rivers of Blood at 50 will provide a platform for a politically pluralist conversation among historians and historically-minded political scientists and sociologists about scholarly approaches to the study of multicultural Britain since 1968 - as a contested political project and lived reality. It will deliver an agenda-setting seminar series at the Institute of Historical Research, bringing together a new network of early career historians and graduate students working on contemporary histories of race.
Dr Laura Swift EN\170018
Open University - Classics and Ancient History £14981.44
The Art of Fragments
This project builds on the growing interest in recent years in lost texts and the fragmentary, both within the technical study of ancient fragments, and within the creative arts, where there has been a spate of artistic responses to the idea of the fragmentary. It brings together academics and creative practitioners to explore what these approaches to fragmentation can learn from each other. This will initially take the form of small-group workshops where I work closely with artists from different backgrounds, exploring how fragments can be represented in different media. The output of these explorations will be performed in a artistic performance in London. Second, the project will oversee the development of a network bringing together academics and artists, which will culminate in a network day, giving the opportunity to showcase and discuss different types of collaboration. Funds will also be used for disseminating the results of these collaborations.
Dr Emma Tominey EN\170109
University of York - Economics £9785.34
Establishing a network of early career researchers and distinguished academics working in Labour and Family Economics.
Labour and Family Economics has long been established as a central topic to the study of Economics. Whilst many conferences or workshops may take place on the topics, in the UK and internationally there is the need to facilitate high quality interactions between early career researchers (ECR) and distinguished academics.
The proposed programme will fill this gap, through four main activities. These include an ECR poster session where each ECR is assigned a senior academic as a mentor, subsequent mentoring session to give individual and quality feedback on the poster session, a masterclass training opportunity and membership to a virtual network of labour and family economists. This engagement and collaboration proposed during and after the workshop is ambitious but feasible and will plant the seed for future collaborations between young and senior economists within the UK as well as internationally.
Dr Gerasimos Tsourapas EN\170049
University of Birmingham - Politics £14957
The International Politics of Middle East Migration: Problems, Policy, Practice
Migration has emerged as one of the major challenges of our time, from the Syrian refugee crisis or sub-Saharan migration via the Mediterranean to the mobilisation of the Turkish diaspora across Europe or the politics of labour immigration in the Gulf. This project aims to forge a network of early-career researchers keen on understanding the international politics of cross-border mobility into, out of, and across the Middle East. It also seeks to foster engagement with senior academics and policy-makers via three initiatives. Firstly, a two-day symposium will allow early-career researchers to present their research in a context that facilitates feedback as well as networking and career development in discussion with senior scholars. Secondly, a half-day impact event will disseminate the symposium's findings to a broader audience. Finally, a webpage will serve as an online hub for early-career scholars to present their research findings, discuss fieldwork practices, and share resources.
Dr Jan Vermeiren EN\170158
University of East Anglia - History £14839
Lifting the Fog: Visions and Ideas of Europe in Britain
The decision to leave the EU is often seen as the culmination and logical conclusion of a long tradition of Euroscepticism in the UK. This engagement project aims to explore such notions and to discuss the relationship between Britain and the Continent in historical and interdisciplinary perspective. A two-day conference at UEA, involving early-career researchers, senior scholars, as well as policy-makers and media representatives, will investigate British conceptions of Europe in the longue durée. It will be concluded by a public roundtable discussion on the history and future of British-European relations, intended to stimulate debate with a non-academic audience. These activities also aim at promoting the work of an existing research network and the establishment of an Institute for the Study of the Idea of Europe which will host similar activities in future and develop an original web resource on themes of European integration and identity.
Dr Bridget Vincent EN\170099
University of Nottingham - English Language and Literature £14908
Attending to Literature: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Attention and Distraction
The project will take the form of an international research network for early career scholars, culminating in a two- day public symposium at the University of Nottingham. The symposium will bring together perspectives on the concept of attention from a variety of humanities disciplines (literary studies, philosophy, politics and psychology, as well as broader umbrellas such as ecological studies and the digital humanities).
The project has three aims:
- To allow researchers who work on similar questions from different disciplines to interact for the purpose of developing future collaborations and networks;
- To provide a training opportunity for ECRs in engagement and outreach, allowing participants to practice bringing the specifics of their research to bear on an issue of public concern (attention);
- To expose non-specialist audience members, in particular those who work in related professions (e.g. teachers, programmers, psychologists) to a variety of humanities-based perspectives on the problem of attention.
Dr Sharon Webb EN\170035
University of Sussex - History £15000
Identity, Representation and Preservation in Community Digital Archives and Collections
As communities take charge of their heritage, and create their own digital archives, the long-term viability and sustainability of these increasingly important collections, is uncertain. This project will bring together communities traditionally absent from the established archival collections, to create sustainable digital platforms as a means to preserve and reconstruct their histories. LGBTQ+ communities, feminist networks, black communities, among other marginalised groups, use digital technology to ensure representation and to protect against future erasure from the historical record. However, these representations are at risk of loss because of the fragility of digital archives and their associated infrastructures, both the human infrastructures (i.e. volunteers) and the digital infrastructures. Led by Dr. Webb, who possess skills in both digital preservation and historical research, this project asks what are the implications of a community-driven approach to long-term sustainability of these materials, and how might we support community archives without removing their agency?