UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-01

Visual images shape (and limit) our imagination of how we might live in a climate-changed world. For climate change, how an issue is represented in the news media (including TV, newspapers and social media) is central to peoples’ perceptions and behavioural responses. In July 2022, temperatures in the UK reached 40°C, the Met Office issued its first red ‘extreme heat’ warning and the Government declared a national emergency. Under climate change, the UK is increasingly experiencing extreme heat; but households, businesses and public services are poorly prepared for its impacts. Extreme heat carries substantial risks to human health and exacerbates existing inequalities in society. However, in the UK (as with much of Europe, North America and Australia) a heatwave often results in ‘fun in the sun’ images featuring in the news: photography and videography of children splashing in city fountains, bright umbrellas at the beach, high days and holidays. Rarely do visuals show the adverse impacts of extreme heat on peoples’ health, agriculture or infrastructure. This visual framing of extreme heat acts to hide vulnerable people and places from view; and excludes opportunities to imagine a more resilient future. This project builds on interdisciplinary literatures from geography, visual politics, media and journalism, and computer science to unsettle this narrow visual discourse of extreme heat. These literatures indicate that substantial barriers exist to reshaping the visual discourse of climate change in the news media. First, image agencies and news organisations are actors particularly powerful in influencing and shaping the visual climate discourse. Second, information architectures (or the ways in which information is organised and presented – such as how images are tagged to enable searches in an image collection) fundamentally influence how visuals flow through or encounter friction within the globalised media ecosystem. This project therefore offers an innovative examination of heatwave images at the sites of image production, the image itself, image audiencing and circulation by synthesising insights across the social science-computational science nexus. It aims to explore, understand, critique and reimagine the visual images used to represent heatwaves in the news media. This project brings together a transdisciplinary team of academics, experienced in working together at the nexus of the social and computational sciences, with practitioners. It has been co-produced with BAFTA-award winning filmmakers Open Planet, and climate communications specialists Climate Visuals at Climate Outreach. Project partners are the global image agency Getty Images and Press Gazette-award winning specialist climate journalism organisation Carbon Brief; and extreme heat and climate adaptation experts at the WHO-WMO Global Heat Health Information Network (GHHIN), the London Climate Ready Partnership (LCRP) and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). The Expert Advisory Board includes specialists bringing expertise from academia, media, health and nature sectors. This project will investigate the barriers and opportunities for visually portraying heatwaves in more equitable and representative ways, work with vulnerable communities to open a more representative and equitable visual discourse of extreme heat, and test the efficacy of these new heatwave visuals to understand engagement by climate decision makers, journalists and public audiences. It will deliver resources for the media industry, including the Heatwave Collection of free-to-access videography and photography, media cheat-sheets and a report. This co-produced research project aims to transform the visual discourse of extreme heat in the news media.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-01

Context The proposed research will address counter-narratives through understanding the everyday ethical and spiritual bases of challenges to health (e.g. COVID-19), climate change, and urban planning (e.g. 15 minute cities) policies. To do this I shall use a mixed methods approach that will advance the ESRC priority to understand politics and governance in the UK. Bringing together critical approaches in anthropology and religious studies, I frame everyday conspiracy theories as counter-narratives and investigate the ethical and spiritual reasoning underlying seemingly irrational claims. In doing so, counter-narratives will be approached as both political and spiritual, as opposed to existing research that largely separates these domains. The growth of far-right discourse in wellness and spiritual communities has been met with surprise because of the assumed left-wing politics of these communities and their worldviews. This approach allows for an examination of how counter-narratives often challenge generalizations as either ‘right’ or ‘left’ wing and in the process undermine social cohesion. Challenge Counter-narratives about health, climate, and urban planning proliferate online and in person. Understanding the ethical and spiritual reasoning behind counter-narratives is necessary to learn how social polarization is formed, erodes trust in governance, and disrupts interpersonal relationships. Public health, climate adaptation, and urban planning policies will be less effective if people interpret experts in bad faith and reject the premises of scientific principles. Governance depends on some level of trust in medical, scientific, and political authorities to be effective, indicating the substantial challenge of counter-narratives that erode trust. Spirituality and politics overlap in poorly understood ways in wellness and new age spirituality making this a significant yet understudied context for counter-narratives. Objectives The objective is to study how counter-narratives drive political polarization in wellness and spiritual communities and undermine social cohesion. To address these challenges, the proposed research aims to: [1] advance the fields of anthropology and computational sociology through theorizing counter-narratives in British offline and online life using a mixed methods approach integrating ethnographic and computational text analysis. To do this, I will undertake participant observation ethnography and interviews in the town of Glastonbury, UK, and computational text analysis of online content to investigate how counter-narratives are spread online and offline. [2] Focusing on the social context over the specific content of counter-narratives, this project aims to extend anthropological analyses of social communication with work in religious studies on meta-empirical beliefs to theoretically reframe conspiracy theories as counter-narratives that broach social and epistemological gaps between experts and lay publics. [3] Impact policy on counter-narratives at both local and central government levels. Potential Applications The potential beneficiaries of this research are [1] academic researchers who study polarization and radicalization in the fields of politics, health, climate, and social science. [2] The local community through empowering them to reflect on polarization. Ongoing community consultation events will create a feedback loop between project, study community, and project partners to learn from and help communities reduce polarization and increase social cohesion. [3] Central government and policymakers who are concerned with the effects of eroding social trust on policy implementation such as in vaccine uptake, climate adaption, and traffic management. [4] Community organizations concerned with far-right infiltration and the effect this has on social cohesion and interpersonal relationships. Through these applications this research will advance the UKRI strategic theme to build a secure and resilient world.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-12

Context It is predicted that 121 million tonnes of plastic waste will be produced per year by 2050. If practices and public policies do not change, this represents a massive challenge world wide both to manage its safe breakdown and removal from the environment. There is a move away from using fossil fuels as starting materials for plastic production and to move to biobased starting materials. Although this approach contributes to the sustainability of plastic production, the breakdown products still present a potential risk to animal and human health. This project seeks to accelerate our current knowledge regarding microplastic waste breakdown using ‘state of the art’ rapid evolution of biocatalysts to tackle a range of fossil derived synthetic and new bio-derived plastics and their breakdown products. In parallel we will also develop enzymes able to degrade environmentally sourced microplastic waste. This interdisciplinary approach directly addresses the current challenges these pollutants are causing within the environment and the ecotoxicology effects they have on marine and freshwater organisms. Challenge Our challenge is to speed up the optimisation of new sustainable enzymes that can address the breakdown of different microplastics. The new high-throughput assay and screening platform we will build will enable us to screen up to 10 million enzyme mutants per day dramatically increasing the current throughput. We will characterise the breakdown products using standard analytical techniques to understand exactly what chemicals are released into the environment. Although up and coming so called ‘biodegradable’ plastics such as polylactic acid and polybutylene succinate are gaining traction, their full breakdown requires specific conditions such as industrial composting facilities. Often they are not completely degraded and can also be of made up of mixed polymers to optimise specified performance. Most importantly recent research has shown that their breakdown into micro and nanoparticles is detrimental to living cells and whole organisms in their natural habitat. Aims and Objectives Our overall aims and objectives are to contribute to the worldwide problems associated with plastic waste using our inter-disciplinary team which offers complimentary expertise in biophysics, biochemistry, chemical synthesis and ecotoxicology. Bringing together our interdisciplinary team will allow a unique perspective to address this important problem of plastic waste management. More specifically, we will aim to improve currently known plastic-degrading enzymes towards complete breakdown of plastics, identify the breakdown products released and test whether they are harmful to model aquatic species. To accelerate enzyme discovery, we will develop a novel technology that allows us to rapidly test millions of different enzymes for the ability to degrade three different types of plastics, including bio-derived ones. Potential Applications The applications of the very rapid optimisation of new enzyme biocatalysts for plastic degradation will include improved waste management, accelerated environmental cleanup, rapid industrial composting and the design of new ‘safe-by-design’ biodegradable plastic materials with low ecotoxicity. In summary the important benefits from this work will be the development of ‘state of the art’ methods of microfluidic evolution of new sustainable enzymes for breakdown of a selection of different plastics. The knowledge gained in this project will help the management of microplastic accumulation in the environment and will provide a greater understanding of its overall toxicity to marine and freshwater organisms.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-12

The evolution of cooperation is central to current understanding of how complex life forms and animal societies - including human societies - evolved. A key step in the evolution of cooperative societies is the emergence of phenotypic markers of group identity, which permit group members to discriminate fellow cooperators from outsiders. The formation of a clear group identity is regarded as a ‘core design principle’ in evolutionary and economic models of human cooperation. In biology it is the basis of social immunity and a key feature of major evolutionary transitions to new levels of organismal complexity. Yet very little is known about how or why individuals merge or suppress their individuality to form a coherent group phenotype, or the consequences of such behaviour for the phenotypic diversity of groups and populations. Wild animal populations, living in the environment in which they evolved and subject to natural ecological and genetic variation, are ideal systems to address these very general questions. This project addresses these questions by developing a new evolutionary theory of group identity formation and testing this theory using a model wild mammal system, the banded mongoose Mungos mungo. In this species, group members mix their individual scents to form a group-specific scent profile, which acts as a marker of group identity during highly aggressive intergroup interactions. We investigate the physiological mechanisms generating and constraining scent individuality, the predicted effects of intergroup conflict on identity signalling behaviour, and the causes of individual variation in group identity formation. The specific objectives are: 1. To develop a new theoretical approach to the evolution and maintenance of group identity. 2. To establish the proximate mechanisms generating and constraining individuality in scent identity profiles in banded mongooses. 3. To test our model predictions concerning the factors driving collective investment in group identity formation. 4. To test the causes and consequences of individual variation in contributions to group identity. The experimental findings will feed back to develop extended models which explore the effect of individual heterogeneity on group identity and social behaviour. The project will generate and test a new evolutionary theory of group identity formation which has broad relevance to researchers studying social evolution across taxa, including humans. It will deepen our understanding of the physiological mechanisms driving mammalian scent communication in natural environments, benefiting multiple areas of research in evolution, ecology, and conservation. Finally, the project will provide exceptional training opportunities for researchers in both Uganda and the UK, supporting their development within a dynamic international interdisciplinary team.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-12

A renaissance of poetry is happening in Ukraine now, as soldiers and civilians seek both to process trauma and to give voice to their cultural and linguistic identity in defiance of Russia's invasion that seeks to eradicate them. This phenomenon presents an opportunity to set an agenda for fundamental research into the role of poetry as a cultural force in hybrid warfare and explore a crucial challenge to the conduct of research in complex circumstances. This project will investigate wartime poetry as a means of psychological resilience and cultural resistance. Research and poetry are integrated in our approach, which emerges from public engagement events in summers 2023 and 2024 with the poets and PEN Ukraine representatives Olena Huseinova and Yuliya Musakovska, leading to some of the first translations into English of Ukrainian wartime poetry written since the start of the full-scale invasion. The project will bring together leading international specialists in Ukrainian Studies from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including social anthropology, cultural studies, literary criticism, and translation studies, to achieve our first objective, a co-authored volume on Ukrainian wartime poetry. Our book will analyse the poetics of war, the evolution of literary responses to trauma, and the intersection of poetic form with national identity under existential threat. We will hold monthly publication workshops on Zoom to present work in progress and collaboratively refine research questions and interdisciplinary methods. The second objective is the production of an anthology of Ukrainian wartime poetry in English translation. This book will become a key reference point for future research in this area, as comparatively little Ukrainian wartime poetry has been translated into English since 2022. It will relate the war since the start of the full-scale invasion through work by 20 poets, approximately half of whom wrote while on active service. To achieve an overarching aim of raising awareness of the poetry we will run a series of at least three major public engagement events, to showcase the anthology-in-development as well as the wider research, through poetry performance and discussion. We will work with established project partners in the UNESCO Cities of Literature network, including Exeter, Lviv, and Manchester Cities of Literature, and the Ukrainian Institute London, to reach a wide audience, and engage the public in UK, Ukraine and beyond throughout the project via mainstream and social media promotion. The Project Lead, Hugh Roberts, is bringing research methods of literary analysis and scholarly editing within French Studies to this evolving phenomenon. He will co-edit the core volume with Iryna Starovoyt, a leading figure in Ukrainian Cultural Studies and a highly regarded poet. The translated anthology will be produced with independent publisher Jantar and edited by leading Ukrainian poets and cultural advocates with the Project Lead, who will also coordinate translation by three prize-winning literary translators from Ukrainian. Co-creation of research and impact for this project is both a methodological necessity and an imperative in solidarity, thus, excluding the PL, all core team members are Ukrainian and wholly or partly based in Ukraine. Completed pilot work on raising awareness of Ukrainian poetry in the UK attests to the visceral emotional power of the work and the key relations to the cultural context of production. The proposed project now affords the opportunity to take this initiative to a new level of research and impact.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-12

Genetic haemochromatosis results in too much iron accumulating in the body. This can result in liver disease, liver cancer, diabetes, musculoskeletal problems, dementia, and early death. Changes in a person’s DNA (genetic variants) can predispose to haemochromatosis. The strongest risk factor is a genetic variant in the HFE gene, with 1 in 150 Northern Europeans carrying two copies (C282Y homozygotes), though other variants can also affect iron (e.g. HFE-H63D). There is substantial variability in symptoms and outcomes of haemochromatosis: presenting symptoms often appear non-specific (fatigue and joint pain), with most patients diagnosed late or missed entirely. In our study within UK Biobank, only 40-50% of C282Y homozygotes were diagnosed by age 80 (Lucas 2024). Many patients are diagnosed only after irreversible organ damage has occurred, and over half of diagnoses occur after age 60. Haemochromatosis can be partially treated by a routine procedure to remove blood (venesection) that reduces excess stored iron, reducing liver disease risk. However, it remains unclear which patients need early/intensive treatment, or whether venesection treatment alone prevents all the non-liver symptoms. We aim to discover genetic and clinical features that could help identify which people will develop organ damage in haemochromatosis, to prioritise patients for further investigation. Data for millions of people linking genetics and electronic medical records are becoming available for health research. We will leverage these to study the genetic and clinical modifiers of haemochromatosis to better understand the symptoms and progression of this disease over time. This project builds on our work in the UK Biobank cohort of 500,000 people, where we estimated the incidence of haemochromatosis complications across HFE genotype groups to older ages, modelling differences between males and females, and demonstrated the impact of known common iron-related genetic variants on risk of severe outcomes. The GEM-H project will significantly extend this by: 1) Discovering genetic factors that explain differences in clinical outcomes. Through the UK Biobank and United States ‘All of Us’ research studies, we now have data on >1billion genetic variants. Our pilot analysis has identified mutations that may explain why some C282Y homozygotes develop haemochromatosis, where others don’t. We will extend this work to explore why some non-C282Y homozygotes develop iron overload. 2) Uncovering the diverse pathways to haemochromatosis diagnosis and the factors driving variability in patient outcomes. In our own Patient Forum, it was clear that the symptoms and patterns of patient-healthcare interactions prior to diagnosis vary dramatically between patients. We will use UK-based primary care data from >17million patients (Clinical Practice Research Datalink, CPRD) to determine the clinical features (e.g., symptoms) preceding diagnosis, and effects on clinical outcomes. 3) Developing a haemochromatosis clinical prediction index (“H-risk”). We will develop a risk prediction model to identify undiagnosed patients likely to have haemochromatosis based on routinely available clinical features. To overcome inconsistent diagnostic practices, the predictive model will be developed in UK Biobank to identify C282Y homozygotes. We will then test the clinical utility of this model in CPRD to see how well it predicts clinically diagnosed haemochromatosis and associated clinical complications. Our results will reveal new biology (rare mutations in a novel gene can highlight potential drug targets for haemochromatosis) and improve precision medicine (clinical prediction models). These discoveries have the potential to improve diagnosis, leading to earlier intervention, reducing disease severity and improving patient quality of life.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-12

Many fundamental biological processes are highly dynamic and occur at the nanometer scale. For example, tiny units like proteins and molecules (<30nm in diameter) continuously move between different subcellular compartments (30-100nm in diameter). Neuronal synapses (~20-40nm in diameter), which are key sites of brain communication, are constantly reshaped by very thin, mobile extensions of neighbouring cells. The ability to directly investigate these events in real-time and to visualise how they are disrupted during pathologies have tremendous potential to advance biomedical research into human diseases. Several technological advancements have pushed boundaries beyond the diffraction limit of light (~200nm), including Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) super-resolution microscopy. However, its application is limited, as many delicate live biological samples and labelling methods are incompatible with the required high laser power. The Leica TauSTED Xted (TauSTED) microscope is the latest revolutionising technology, combining STED with novel fluorescence lifetime-based detection mechanisms to overcome this challenge by effectively removing the requirement of high laser power. The system enables researchers to finally investigate intricate nanoscopic biological processes in complex living systems in real-time. The University of Exeter is renowned for its cutting-edge biomedical research, particularly in areas aligning with MRC priority areas, such as neuroscience and mental health, molecular and cellular medicine, infections and immunity, and translational research. Its world-class facilities and strong global collaborations foster scientific discoveries aimed at addressing human health challenges. To advance and keep pace with world-class research, we have identified that nano-resolution microscopy with dynamic live-imaging capabilities is currently in high demand across many research fields and departments. However, such technology is lacking on campus and is also unavailable within the UK South West research network. Therefore, we have assembled a team comprising 19 academics, an industry collaborator, a microscopy experimental officer, and a microscopy specialist. With strong support from the University of Exeter and its Bioimaging Centre, we seek to acquire the Leica TauSTED system to be housed within the Bioimaging Centre. Our aims and objectives are: To transform and elevate biomedical research at Exeter by leveraging state-of-the-art TauSTED capabilities to advance our understanding and treatment of human diseases. To bring the first TauSTED system to South West England. To enhance the existing educational platform for advanced microscopy at Exeter and within the wider community. To promote both internal and external collaborations, as well as industry partnerships. To support professional development of research and technical staff at various career stages by ensuring equal access to advanced technology. Potential applications and benefits of implementing TauSTED technology in Exeter are plentiful and include at least the following, directly related to our proposed research: Revealing dynamic nanoscopic events fundamental to neuroscience in health and disease, such as neuroglia interactions, neurodegeneration, and synaptic RNA and protein dynamics. Dissecting dynamic cell-cell and subcellular communications during embryogenesis, metabolic disorders, and diabetes at nanoscopic resolution. Understanding early immune responses and assessing drug therapies for autoimmune, heart and kidney diseases with nanoscale precision. By enabling dynamic live-imaging at nanoscale resolution, the first TauSTED system in the South West represents a major technological step forward for research and education in Exeter and its wider community. As demonstrated by the proposed applications, TauSTED promises to deliver unprecedented insights in both space and time across diverse research areas, ultimately benefiting human health by accelerating scientific discoveries in disease progression, diagnosis and treatment.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-11

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have greatly shaped the landscape of computational biology. The integration of high-throughput data acquisition and burgeoning computational power has led to the creation of powerful predictive models. More recently, the advancements inspired by large language models (LLMs)—transformer-based, large-scale pretrained foundation models—have further enhanced our ability to model and analyse complex biological tasks such as DNA sequence analysis, cell-type annotation, and network biology prediction. By decoding massive datasets encoded in the chemical languages of life—DNA base pairs, amino acid sequences, and protein structures—AI is driving innovations in engineering biology, drug discovery, and beyond. Despite the rapid development of powerful AI models, there is a longstanding challenge in interpreting and understanding why these models make certain predictions and whether to trust them. The complexity of these black-box models (e.g., deep neural networks with hundreds of millions of parameters) makes them difficult to comprehend. To address this challenge, explainable AI (XAI) methods have emerged to elucidate the predictions of trained ML models. Whilst XAI methods have gained prominence in computational biology, two significant barriers fundamentally limit their effective use in bioscience discovery: 1) the absence of clear guidelines for implementing and evaluating XAI methods in complex biological contexts makes it difficult to determine which explanations to use, and how to interpret them; and 2) a significant gap in interpreting these explanations and aligning them with the mechanistic insights of complex biological systems. This ambitious project aims to create the world’s first open-source, web-based conversational XAI agent called Explainome, specifically tailored for the bioscience community. By coordinating complex tools like ML and XAI methods, biological knowledge graphs (KGs), and LLMs, Explainome will help bioscientists with minimal technical skills translate XAI-generated explanations from ML model predictions into mechanistic insights of complex biological systems. We will focus on three objectives (Os). O1: Develop an open-source modular software framework of XAI toolkits, enabling easy integration and scalability. O2: Develop application programming interfaces that utilise diverse biological KGs as grounded knowledge bases to validate and rationalise the explanations generated by the XAI toolkits (O1), ensuring alignment with biological mechanisms. O3: Develop a web-based automated XAI agent powered by LLMs that coordinates tools developed in O1 and O2 to allow users to understand ML models with biological underpinnings through interactive dialogues. If this early-stage exploratory project is successful, users will be able to engage in interactive conversations with Explainome, gaining insights grounded in validated biological reasoning. They can explore why predictions occur, how changes in data might influence outcomes, and how modifying inputs could achieve desired results. In summary, Explainome is a multi-disciplinary, transformative project that will hold exciting promise for securing the UK’s world-leading position at the forefront of bioscience and AI. Looking ahead, Explainome will be further developed to continuously learn from new data and scientific findings, enhancing its accuracy and depth of understanding. This adaptivity will enable Explainome to remain relevant in the face of rapidly evolving biological data. By staying at the forefront of bioscience research, Explainome will unlock unprecedented flexibility and possibilities in catalysing AI-driven technologies. It will serve as an ‘AI co-scientist’ working alongside bioscientists to drive innovation and accelerate scientific discovery. This will supercharge scientific advances in understanding biology with deep implications for agriculture, energy, sustainability, healthcare, and beyond.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-11

Freedom and equality are two of the most important values of modern political thought. Their realisation is the aspiration underlying how our contemporary political and economic institutions are organised today. Rival schools of thought, such as liberalism, socialism, and libertarianism, weigh these values differently and put more emphasis on one over the other. With the failure of state socialism and the crisis of liberal democracy, there is a significant need for an alternative approach that delivers both equality and liberty. This project draws from anarchism, an anti-statist and anti-capitalist political thought that emphasises both values through self-government and decentralised federalism. Classical anarchists envisioned and described types of political systems that can emancipate people from the structures of economic oppression, and remove the coercive, centralised, punitive, and exploitative agency of the nation state. This project argues that the anarchist political economy of decentralised federalism is relevant to our contemporary political and economic problems, more than ever, and speaks to questions of devolution, asymmetric federalism, subsidiarity, inequality, justice, indigenous rights, and multiculturalism. By consulting the unique resources only available at the Library of Congress (LoC), particularly the Paul Avrich Collection, I will be tracing the evolution of decentralised federalist principles in the 19th and early 20th century anarchist movement, through primary texts, correspondences, and secondary sources on Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Rocker, Woodcock, Berneri, Goldman, and Ward. Incorporating these rare historical materials will not only enhance my research, but also make it more relevant to the contemporary public and scholarly discussions on federalism.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-11

Each year billions of birds migrate across our planet producing one of nature’s most incredible phenomena. People have been trying to understand this behaviour for over 2000 years and the advent of new tracking technologies is revolutionising the field, revealing some truly astonishing feats of endurance. Yet the findings often throw up more questions than answers, particularly with respect to the physiological performance. Of particular note is the remarkable ability of many of the more extreme migratory birds to transform their physiology multiple times during the annual cycle as they switch between feeding and flying machines. During migration, the sizes of some organ systems can change by more than 50% as digestive systems regress while flight muscles are grown, and stores laid down. Although individuals appear to vary in the extent to which they transform, we have little understanding of the consequences of this variation with regards to what this may mean for individual life histories and fitness or the trade-offs at play. This is largely because there are few longitudinal studies of these morphological reorganisations, as until now measuring the changes has typically required sacrificing focal animals. Here, we would combine the attributes of a unique study system with novel applications of state-of-the-art technology, including mobile x-ray radiography and ultrasonography, to address this substantial gap in our knowledge. We will develop a novel 3D imaging technique to measure the size of internal organs and carry out longitudinal analyses of migratory birds across their annual cycles. We will measure the drivers of variation in the extent and rate at which they transform including differences in habitat use, social status and wintering carry-over effects and link these to downstream consequences such as survival and reproductive success for the first time. From this we will understand how the trade-offs are managed, the consequences of individually variable strategies and the key processes that underpin them.   We will tackle the following broad questions: What causes variation in the timing and extent of individual transformations between feeding and flying machines? What are the consequences of this individual variation in transformations?   The proposed research will open up a suite of novel and exciting questions about the evolution and ecology of the migratory lifestyle and provide an innovative toolbox with which to investigate them. More importantly it will force us to think about the phenomenon of extreme migration in a new way, that incorporates the trade-offs associated with these flexible phenotypes. Finally, migratory species experience a range of pressures throughout their migratory cycle including the added strain of anthropogenic pressures such as habitat loss and climate change. Given the potential link between these phenotypic transformations and demography, it is crucial that we understand their underlying drivers and impacts, in order to implement effective policy and conservation measures to maintain the long-term conservation of these species.  

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-11

My FLF project involves a systematic and interdisciplinary line of research drawing on techniques from across fields to examine and improve testimony evaluation in the justice system, and to promote the effective integration of cognitive science research into the legal system more generally. In the initial phase of my FLF, I conducted a broad range of studies examining how laypeople make judgments about the accuracy of information provided by others in a legal context. These studies included examining the impact of manipulations in experimental work, reviewing decision-making of jurors and experts in a range of legal cases (including proven and alleged miscarriages of justice), and examining neural activation during relevant decision-making in fMRI work. As a result of that work, I have developed extensive new insight into how people examine testimony in the legal context which demonstrates important flaws in current systems. I have also developed suggestions as to how decision-making can be improved, both in the jury and in the Criminal Cases Review Commission. As part of my FLF, I have founded and direct a new research lab, the Evidence-Based Justice Lab, with a vision to conduct research in cognitive science and empirical law and to facilitate the utilisation of scientific work and evidence to create fairer legal systems and procedures. The lab is thriving. Through the lab, I have produced a number of influential policy-reports and publications, and have also founded the highly successful UK Miscarriages of Justice Registry (an interactive registry logging and categorising UK-based miscarriages of justice). In the renewal phase of my FLF, I will work on a highly ambitious programme of research aimed at increasing the utility and impact of my FLF work in legal research and policy. This research will involve developing and testing practical policy recommendations, translating my work into impact and culture change in law and legal research, and extending the work of my lab and miscarriages of justice registry. First, in order to test theory-based predictions about interventions that have the potential to improve decision-making in the legal context I will conduct an ambitious mock jury study. This study will utilise case materials including real identifications (following witnessing a mock crime), and a significant number of mock juries. I will draw on the results of this work, alongside my other FLF work, to develop normative legal arguments relating to existing policy and potential change. Second, in order to better understand resistance to interdisciplinary insight in law, and to provide insight into how this resistance can be challenged, I will conduct novel metascience research utilising network analyses in order to better understand communities of thought in the legal profession. Finally, I will develop a programme through which lab research assistants can work with partners to draw on lab data and expertise to generate insight in a range of topical areas. This approach will allow our data to be used in dynamic ways that respond to current needs, and create an ecosystem of information sharing between our researchers and practitioners.  

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-11

Writing well is central to success at school and university. However, it is a skill with which many students struggle, and those from socially disadvantaged or linguistic minority households are especially at risk. Students need not only to develop skills in a formal educational register that is challenging to many, but, crucially, to shape that language to meet the demands of different academic disciplines and writing tasks. Very different lexical and grammatical resources are required to, for example, report experiments in Chemistry, explain phenomena in Physics, account for events in History, and critique poems in English. Different language is needed when writing for experts or a lay-audience, for colleagues or strangers; to integrate written sources, analyse quantitative data, or foreground the writer’s voice. The ability to tune one’s academic writing to a variety of purposes and audiences is one of the key outcomes of, and determinants of success in, education across academic disciplines. It is an ability that is becoming all the more important as students learn to negotiate the shifting linguistic norms and text types associated with changing media technologies and to effectively employ the emerging tools offered by generative AI. Researchers seeking to understand academic language use and its development therefore need to tell a complex story that models the emergence of multifaceted linguistic skills and their application to different, and shifting, contexts and purposes. Such understandings can directly benefit teachers, examiners, and educational policy makers. By better understanding the different linguistic challenges and learning opportunities presented by different writing tasks, educators will be better prepared to help students face the challenges and benefit from the opportunities. By understanding the range of tasks set across different disciplines and year groups, educators will be better able to make links and comparisons between the tasks they set and those students are encountering in other areas. They will be better able to understand how tasks relate to students’ prior knowledge and experience. And they will be better able to look ahead to what students will be expected to write at later levels. To promote such understandings, this project will: create a ‘map’ of the range of writing tasks at schools and universities. This will enable researchers and educators to understand: a. the linguistic challenges and learning opportunities presented by different types of writing task in different disciplines; b. the linguistic similarities and differences between the writing needed for different tasks and disciplines, and the principles underlying this variation; c. the typical distribution of text types across educational levels and disciplines; 2. create and evaluate an online resource and practitioner-focused guidance that will help users navigate this map in order to: a. gain an explicit, detailed, understanding of variation in academic language and; b. understand how individual tasks, and the texts students produce, fit into their broader educational experiences and needs; 3. support future research by creating new reference resources. We will add grammatical annotations and information about text type variation to two existing collections of school and university level writing. Our survey will, further, provide a basis for evaluating the representativeness of these and future collections of academic writing.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-11

Type IV pili (T4P) are protein filaments assembled on the surface of many bacteria, used for cell motility, adherence, communication, biofilm formation, virulence, as well as environmental DNA uptake. T4P are thus crucial for bacterial survival, enabling them to respond to changing environments, facilitating genome plasticity, and the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes. Due to their importance in microbiology, T4P are well-studied, yet it is not clear how they can mediate such diverse functions. In this project, we aim to build a molecular picture of the interplay between T4P structure, properties and function through a combination of microbial genetics, molecular dynamics simulations, structural biology, and a catalogue of functional assays. By uncovering how the structure and properties of T4P relate to their diverse roles, this research has the potential to lead to new approaches for targeting bacterial infections and controlling the transmission of resistance genes, ultimately contributing to the development of more effective antimicrobial therapies. Historically, the multifunctional nature of T4P has made it challenging to identify specific properties responsible for function. Our research aims to address this challenge by investigating two distinct types of T4P within a single organism. In previous BBSRC-funded research (NIRG to Project-lead VG), we discovered that Thermus thermophilus assembles two T4P with different properties and functions. This presents a unique opportunity to unravel the fundamental mechanisms and underlying principles governing the functions of these essential microbial filaments. Our objectives are to: Examine how the structural properties of different T4P relate to their specific function Understand how T4P are assembled and retracted through the co-ordinated action of ATPases Elucidate how the T4P machinery facilitates DNA uptake To achieve these objectives, we aim to foster interdisciplinary frontier bioscience to advance knowledge and drive significant discoveries through complementary expertise, collaboration and the development of new tools. We will capitalise on a newly funded cryo-transmission electron microscope (BBSRC ALERT23 bid led by Project-lead VG), crucial to the success and impact of this proposal. The potential applications and benefits of this work are extensive and varied. Specifically, the project will contribute molecular and mechanistic knowledge about T4P that will facilitate a deeper understanding of bacterial physiology and survival mechanisms. Additionally, the findings will inform a wide range of downstream applications. For example, T4P are promising targets for anti-virulence strategies; in the longer-term, we can develop novel approaches to disrupt T4P function or inhibit biofilm formation in priority pathogens, thereby improving public health and economic outcomes. In biotechnology, insights into DNA uptake mechanisms can be harnessed to enhance the genetic engineering of organisms that are typically difficult to transform, leveraging their natural DNA uptake capabilities. By uncovering the mechanism behind these essential microbial structures, we have the potential to drive innovative solutions for pressing medical and industrial challenges in the future. More broadly, we will demonstrate the benefit of interdisciplinary research in addressing fundamental research problems and contribute to the training in key skills for talented researchers. Taken together, this research proposal addresses the BBSRC high-level objective “Advancing the frontiers of bioscience discovery” and within that the priority area “Understanding the rules of life”, and links to the BBSRC areas for investment and support “Antimicrobial resistance” and “Transformative Technologies”.  

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-10

One of the greatest threats to human health and livelihood, worldwide, is the risk of disease spilling over from wildlife into people or livestock, causing dangerous epidemics or even pandemics. A major knowledge gap is our poor understanding of how diseases persist in wildlife populations. A common presumption is that wildlife disease is somehow “endemic”, persisting at a stable prevalence and difficult to control without culling the wildlife host indiscriminately. We propose a challenge to this “endemic disease” paradigm. Instead, wildlife disease burdens are maintained by multiple drivers, each of which fluctuate through time in association with the ecology, genetics, social structure and demography of the host-pathogen interaction. Our goal is to understand the key drivers of persistence and transmission of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in a population of badgers that has been studied intensively, free from disease control interventions, for 50 years. The persistence of bTB in badger populations is perhaps the most important wildlife disease controversy in the UK. Using the badger-bTB interaction as a case study, we will radically improve the wider understanding of endemic and epidemic disease in wildlife populations. This new knowledge will transform our ability to predict and manage wildlife disease and emergent epidemics and pandemics of the future. The badger population we study has fluctuated in abundance through time, and the prevalence of bTB has also fluctuated in space and time. The population is open to the influence of badger immigration and emigration, to the risk of infection from livestock herds and to the impact of external population management. Our understanding of the causes of bTB persistence, and its fluctuations, is hampered by the hidden processes that affect all study of wildlife disease. We cannot be sure whether badgers are dead, truly infected, or responsible for onward transmission, because we rely on imperfect monitoring. Instead we use statistical models to infer the important demographic and disease processes. We propose to whole-genome re-sequence 50+ years’ worth of badger tissue samples, allowing us to build powerful host pedigrees; distinguish between resident and immigrant badgers; quantify changes in the genetic composition of the host population over time; and identify genetic associations with infection processes.  We propose the development of a complex statistical model to help us infer which badgers are most responsible for the transmission of infection and find out if those superspreader badgers could be targeted to help control disease. We will ask whether bTB prevalence is sustained by birth, death and transmission within social groups, or by immigration and transmission between groups. We will ask whether inbreeding makes badgers more susceptible to disease, and why. We will ask whether badgers become more susceptible with age, and what this means for superspreading behaviours. We will ask whether the drivers of bTB prevalence have changed over the decades, and whether there is any influence of badger culling, badger vaccination and new bTB strains in the wider landscape.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-10

wildID is a mobile and web-based application that uses machine learning to identify protected bird-of-prey species from digital images of their eggs. Designed for law enforcement, it delivers real-time, accurate species-level identification during search and seizure operations to combat illegal wildlife trafficking. The app is the first AI-driven forensic tool to address species-level egg identification, enhancing digital forensics capabilities in environmental crime.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-10

Making atmospheric predictions beyond short-term weather forecasts requires predictable signals that change the likelihood of particular climate events amidst the unpredictable atmospheric noise. In seasonal climate prediction, numerical models are used to forecast the evolution of the atmosphere and ocean for the next few months. These models produce forecasts of North Atlantic climate that, on average, better predict the real world than themselves. Given that models and initial conditions are imperfect, we would expect the opposite. This has become known as the signal-to-noise paradox (SNP). The SNP is interpreted as an underestimation of the predictable signal in models, but its root cause remains a mystery. A critical open question is whether the problem also affects multidecadal projections of future climate - the basis for decision-making on climate change - which are derived from similar models to those used in seasonal forecasting. Resolving the SNP would enable better forecasts at critical adaptation planning timescales and is needed to provide credible projections of future climate. 4SEE aims to identify the physical causes of the SNP and develop pathways to eradicate it, through a unique approach examining the SNP across timescales, from subseasonal predictions to multidecadal projections. The potential for common mechanisms that could explain the SNP across timescales motivates our focus on three hypotheses for model errors: too weak transient eddy feedback, insufficient ocean-atmosphere interaction, and weak tropical-extratropical teleconnections. Application of process-level understanding and novel statistical methods will allow us to trace error sources across timescales. We focus on the North Atlantic (NA) region where the SNP is known, but the mechanisms being investigated are likely relevant for other regions. 4SEE has four interconnected objectives, which address all aspects of Highlight Topic C: O1: Advance the detection and diagnosis of the SNP across timescales O2: Identify the causes and nature of the SNP in climate predictions O3: Determine the implications of the SNP for multidecadal projections O4: Provide projections calibrated for the SNP and pathways to eradicate it Novel diagnoses using large ensembles in O1 combined with new high-resolution datasets in O2 will allow us to identify the causes of the SNP and, in turn, assess their implications for projections in O3. O1-O3 will inform the development of calibration techniques in O4. To achieve these objectives, 4SEE will analyse an unprecedented breadth and depth of model simulations, including: ensembles from multiple subseasonal-to-decadal prediction systems and climate models; new large subseasonal and seasonal ensemble hindcasts from the Met Office; and novel predictability and sensitivity experiments at increased atmosphere and ocean resolution with three independent models. Increased model resolution is used as a tool to determine model deficiencies leading to the SNP, and is a potential solution for them. 4SEE unites experts in seasonal-to-decadal prediction, climate modelling and projections, atmosphere-ocean dynamics and interaction, and statistical modelling and calibration. It is motivated by, and builds upon, the team’s extensive work on the SNP: members of the team first uncovered the SNP and have led efforts to quantify, understand, and solve it. The team’s unrivalled expertise and unique multi-timescale approach will ensure successful outcomes – of major relevance to climate prediction, attribution of historical climate change, and projections of future climate. Beneficiaries include meteorological centres to improve forecasts; scientists and policymakers who use climate predictions for research and decision making; and broader end-users of climate services.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-10

The UK food system faces multiple concurrent threats, including growing diet-related health inequalities, environmental sustainability pressures, and over-reliance on food importation raising concerns over shocks, disruptions and food-security. To tackle these issues, new sustainable, healthy, and local food solutions are required. In this project, we propose research and development of a new product category - sustainable and nutritious seafood sausages - as a step towards addressing systemic challenges within the UK food system. The sausage is a major food product in the UK, with millions of Britons consuming pork sausages every day. A key benefit of the sausage is convenience, with ease of preparation and cooking recognised as a major driver of consumer choice in the food market. However, growing health and sustainability concerns are associated with consuming red meat products such as pork sausages. Meanwhile, despite seafood being a healthier, and in many cases, a much more sustainable food source compared to red meat, on average the British public consumes substantially less than the recommended weekly portion of seafood. Furthermore, this situation is even more acute in lower socioeconomic groups and families, where the nutritional benefits offered by seafood can be particularly beneficial. Seafood, particularly bivalves such as mussels, offer one of the most nutritious and sustainable food sources available. Mussels are rich in vitamins, minerals, protein, and essential fatty acids crucial for neurological development and health, while being low in saturated fats. Yet, mussels require no commercial feed, obtaining all their nutrition from phytoplankton in the surrounding seawater. Mussels filter seawater helping to clean it, and create important habitats for marine life, such as nursery environments for fish. Additionally, the UK is highly suited to shellfish production, having one of the longest shorelines in Europe.   Seafood sausages incorporating shellfish offer potential to overcome key barriers to seafood consumption in the UK, such as a lack of knowledge of how to prepare seafood, a reluctance to spend time preparing seafood, and to some consumers, a perceived ‘ick factor’ associated with whole invertebrate foods. Sausages are convenient to cook, and their relatively uniform taste and texture can ameliorate off-putting qualities, thereby potentially increasing sustainable shellfish uptake across a wide consumer base. Seafood sausage is also strongly suited to maximising sustainability and increasing uptake of locally produced seafood. Seafood sausage is a shelvable product, easily preserved and pallet shipped, avoiding waste, unlike fresh seafood where shipping is resource intensive and risky. Fish bones can be ground up and included in sausages, providing nutritious calcium and reducing processing time. Seafood sausage also suits fish grades that otherwise risk wastage such as small, bruised, offcuts, underused species, bycatch, and fat, lowering cost and increasing sustainability. This project aims to harness the benefits outlined above, by providing key research into consumer receptiveness towards seafood sausages, to better understand how to foster development and uptake of the proposed product. We will also consider the food science challenges necessary to produce and preserve a sustainable, healthy, and convenient seafood sausage. These goals will be achieved through the collaboration of a multidisciplinary team of researchers in the social and biologically sciences, together with a business partner working in sustainable seafood, and a business advisor with considerable experience in the field of fast moving consumer goods.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Within a ferromagnet (FM), each atom has a magnetic moment that behaves like a bar magnet with a north and south pole, and all atomic moments align in parallel to produce a macroscopic magnetic moment. In 1932, Louis Néel proposed the existence of antiferromagnetic (AFM) materials in which each atomic moment is instead aligned antiparallel to its immediate neighbours.  The magnetic fields from individual atoms then cancel out at the atomic scale, causing Néel to remark that AFMs would be useless for all practical purposes.  However, recent breakthroughs have shown how electric currents, electric fields, or laser light can modify the orientation of magnetic moments within AFMs, and that the direction of the moments may be read out with polarised light or using electrical contacts. AFMs may conduct and even amplify a current of electronic angular momentum, while magnetic moments within AFMs may be rotated more than 100 times faster than within FMs.  In fact, it is possible to change the alignment of magnetic moments within both FMs and AFMs on timescales of about 1 picosecond (1 trillionth of a second), by controlling the transfer of angular momentum within the material following ultrafast laser excitation.   Advances in information and communication technology (ICT) have enabled the dawn of the digital age, but at the cost of spiralling energy consumption. Worst case projections are for production and operation of ICT systems to consume 21% of global electricity supply by 2030.  Rather than building more data centres, the solution is to develop devices that process and store more data while using less energy.  Devices based on magnetic materials are extremely attractive for their non-volatility (information is retained when powered off), while use of AFMs favours greater device density, since the absence of stray magnetic fields avoids cross-talk, and increased speed.  For example, magnetic random access memory (MRAM) based on FMs is being developed for computer cache, but increased storage capacity could be realized by instead using an AFM and rotating its magnetic moments through 90° to represent a binary 0 or 1.  AFMs could be used to construct ultra-compact magnetic field sensors that enable increased data densities within hard disk drives (HDDs), while  ultrafast all-optical switching (AOS) of magnetic order could remove the need for pulsed magnetic fields within a HDD, greatly reducing the complexity of the recording head and the energy required for both its manufacture and operation.  AOS could also be exploited in non-volatile all-optical devices for energy efficient telecommunications, or for gating magnetic elements that generate magnetic fields for use in quantum computation.  The potential benefits of AFMs extend beyond data storage to brain-like computation, nanoscale sources and detectors of THz frequency radiation, and angular momentum amplifiers to deliver fan-out in spintronic systems.  AFM coupled nanostructures are attractive for use in magnetic hyperthermia as a cancer therapy to avoid agglomeration within biological tissue, while AFM minerals may contain information about the earth and solar system in the distant past.   The aim of AFMNET is to build an interdisciplinary community to deliver UK leadership in the science of AFMs and ultrafast magnetic processes so that the UK can reap the benefits that they provide.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

As the global economy shifts towards low-carbon solutions, the electrification of transport has increased the demand for electric motors with maximised power and torque density, and reduced weight to enhance efficiency. Critical to this development are advanced materials for electrical insulation, such as slot liners and coatings, which are essential to e-motors. The push for faster vehicle charging speed requires higher system voltages, introducing significant challenges for insulation materials, especially as 800 V technology becomes mainstream. These materials must withstand high temperatures, electrical stresses, and exposure to cooling fluids while maintaining high breakdown voltages (BDV) and partial discharge inception voltages (PDIV), ensuring long-term reliability. Traditional high-temperature insulation materials, such as ceramics and polyimides, present significant limitations including prone to crack, complex processing conditions, and limited recyclability. In contrast, polyaryletherketones (PAEKs) have emerged as promising candidates for insulating electric wires and hairpins in e-motors due to its non-polar nature. PAEKs offer exceptional thermal endurance and chemical resistance, enhancing the reliability of e-motors, particularly in high-voltage systems. Moreover, PAEKs are lightweight, recyclable, offering less hazardous and more energy efficient manufacturing processes compared to ceramics and polyimides. Despite these advantages, the underlying mechanisms of how these semi-crystalline polymers behave under high-voltage conditions are currently less understood. The aim of this research is to fundamentally understand the development of the microstructure of PAEKs during wire processing and wire forming, and their subsequent impact on dielectric properties such as BDV and PDIV. To achieve this, the first objective will be conducting a systematic investigation to benchmark detailed correlations between crystallinity, crystal morphology, and amorphous composition with BDV and PDIV under both ambient and elevated temperatures. The second and third objectives will be analysing the complex microstructures presented in commercial wires, as well as the mechanical conditions during the wire forming process. Predictive models will be developed to forecast their insulation performance. We will replicate the thermal and mechanical conditions observed in industrial wire processing to establish direct links between processing and forming parameters and the resulting microstructure. The knowledge obtained from these investigations will enable us to make reliable predictions and optimisation strategies of the final insulation quality, providing superior breakdown voltage strength and minimal discharge occurrences. This project will advance our fundamental understanding of the impact of microstructure on the dielectric properties and electrical failure mechanisms of PAEKs under high-voltage conditions. The collaboration with the Winding Centre of Excellence (WCE) at the HVMC will provide direct access to both discrete and continuous hairpin winding facilities, enabling in-process testing of electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties. This collaboration is crucial for optimising the design and manufacturing processes of PAEK-coated wires, ultimately contributing to the development of more efficient and reliable e-motors. The results from this project will facilitate the development of tailored PAEK grades for e-motor applications, optimising wire production and forming processes. This knowledge will accelerate innovation cycles, providing tools for OEMs and tier suppliers to rapidly assess and address their performance requirements. It will enable materials and e-machine companies to explore new design approaches with thinner coatings, enhancing their ability to meet evolving industry standards and performance needs in transport electrification. The project’s outcomes will have broader applications extending beyond automotive e-motors to include aerospace and marine e-motors, and cables and power transmission systems that also endure high electrical stresses and temperatures.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Context Achieving sustainable land use within the farmed environment – defined as enabling a multi-functional landscape producing food security and life supporting ecosystem services – is proving an intractable public policy challenge in the UK. Dialogue between opposing viewpoints has never been more polarised. The premise of our project is that there are valuable lessons available from the verifiable past to inform the debate and help unblock the current impasse. Insight from the UK’s unusually well-preserved records of land-management remains an untapped resource able to sharpen the focus of current scenario planning. Whilst our proposed research localities are within England, the results will have UK wide relevance (and beyond). The challenge Environmental scientists describe achieving sustainable land use as a ‘wicked’ problem, characterised by ill defined and contested aims and objectives.  This tension is exemplified by two very different implementation visions: the ‘land sharing’ model (food production and the production of environmental 'goods' coexist on the same land) and the ‘land sparing’ alternative (land parcel allocation for either food or environment).  Viewpoints have become entrenched preventing stakeholders from coalescing around an agreed action plan. Aims/objectives The project will provide a systematic sustainability appraisal of land use systems at different historical reference periods providing insights into changes over time. This review will be complemented by an analysis of the geo-physical, socio-economic, technical and political drivers that shaped these systems. By cross referencing the sustainability appraisal with the drivers analysis, it will be possible to better understand the relationship between these variables. A new methodologically sophisticated historical assessment can play a pivotal role in helping to visualise and define what an (un)sustainable land use system looks like in practice.  The provision of historical 'reference points' will help to release stakeholders from predetermined positions and consider new ways of thinking in relation to definitions of sustainability.  By analysing historical system drivers, both endogenous and exogenous to the farm, it will be possible to use the past to highlight examples of enabling conditions and barriers to sustainability outcomes.  Our ultimate goal is to provide insight into how this learning can be applied within a 21st century context. Application/benefits This research has multiple real-world applications - see letters of support.  For example, a better understanding of the relationship between historical (un)sustainable land use scenarios and different top-down/bottom-up governance regimes will inform policy makers currently designing institutional arrangements to facilitate land use change. Crucially, our research will provide a new space (new ideas) where government, farmers, conservationists and other voices (e.g. consumer, animal welfare, greenspace interest groups) can constructively (re)engage to design optimal land use trajectories.  For farmers and their advisors, the project will provide historical insight into topics such as share farming opportunities, nutrient optimisation, agro-forestry, business diversification and farmer collaboration models; all of which are pertinent to current sustainability pathway discussions. Our analytical architecture will provide landscape historians and archaeologists with a new methodology to better understand the forces that shaped the sustainability of farming systems from the medieval to the early modern period.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Skin diseases have a high global prevalence. Although usually not lethal, they significantly limit the well-being of those affected and consequently are listed the 4th greatest non-fatal disabling condition, with atopic dermatitis (AD) and dermatomycoses ranking among the most frequent skin pathologies. AD is a chronic-relapsing pruritic disorder affecting up to 20% of children and 10% of adults in developed countries. AD often precedes other allergic morbidities, (allergic rhinitis, asthma), thereby significantly enhancing the disease burden with high psycho-social (anxiety, depression, social withdrawal) and socio-economic burden. There is currently no cure for AD. While the introduction of targeted systemic immunomodulatory therapy has been a game-changer for many moderate/severe AD patients, we still face 10-25% treatment failures. AD therefore represents a major public health issue with a large unmet medical need and requires research investment to generate tractable innovations to mitigate these health burdens. AD skin is characterized by barrier defects and sensitization against normally harmless environmental antigens, including components of an individual’s own microbiota. While the pathogenic role of Staphylococcus aureus in AD is well established, that of skin fungi is not. The skin mycobiota is unique as it is dominated by members of a single fungal genus, Malassezia, which display remarkable diversity. Understanding how the prevalent commensal skin fungus Malassezia becomes a target of the hypersensitivity response in atopic skin and thereby contributes to disease pathogenesis will open new avenues in AD therapy that target the mycobiome to overcome current treatment failures. Given the emergence of antifungal resistance and the pre-existing resistance of many Malassezia strains to common antifungal agents, more specific strategies to target Malassezia are required, and for this, a better understanding of the dysfunctional fungus-host interaction in AD is essential. This programme builds on established collaborations and brings together world-leading experts in immunology, mycology, and dermatology to test the hypothesis that in addition to host factors, variation in Malassezia genotype or phenotype contributes to the dysfunctional host-fungus interaction underlying AD. In support of this hypothesis, Malassezia exhibits a remarkable degree of strain variation which segregates according to their healthy vs. atopic skin habitat. The key objectives of this programme are to: Define the fungus-host interface responsible for driving immunosurveillance of the skin commensal yeast Malassezia during homeostasis. Identify fungal pathogenicity determinants underlying the dysfunctional host-microbe interaction in AD that results in sensitization to Malassezia. Inform whether modulating the skin mycobiome, and targeting the Malassezia-host interface in particular, may benefit difficult-to-treat AD patients and overcome treatment failure. Using Malassezia isolates from AD patients and genetically tractable laboratory strains of Malassezia in combination with clinical data and experimental disease models we aim to identify key fungal determinants underlying the immunopathological outcome of the fungus-host interaction in AD skin. At the intersection of medical mycology, dermatology, and allergology and by combining basic and clinical research, this programme will generate fundamental new insights into the host-fungus crosstalk in skin, providing a new perspective on the pathogenesis of AD. It will further propose new targets for the prevention and treatment of one of the most common skin diseases including treatment resistant AD. This in turn will pave the way for precision medicine interventions in patient management through preventive or therapeutic targeting of the mycobiome or altered downstream host-interaction pathways.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Since the post-Cold War era, economic and financial sanctions have become dominant tools of foreign policy for addressing national and global security threats. However, they remain largely under-explored through a critical feminist lens. Examining sanctions through a feminist lens is increasingly urgent—not only due to their growing use but also in light of key developments in international policies. Notably, since 2000, UN resolutions on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) have urged member countries to prioritise gender perspectives in all policymaking, including foreign and security policy. Notwithstanding this urgency, existing literature on sanctions remains largely gender-blind. In rare occasions when gender is considered, studies tend to rely on quantitative methods (e.g., Drury & Peksen, 2014), which fail to capture the gendered processes shaping these outcomes. Crucially, they overlook the role of the state, which, as a highly gendered entity (Peterson, 1992; Parashar et al., 2018), can respond to sanctions in ways that disproportionately affect women. This lack of attention to the state can hinder feminist advocacy and policymaking on WPS and foreign policy. For example, sanctions are sometimes uncritically viewed by feminist organisations as the most appropriate tools to punish state violations of women’s rights. My research addresses these scholarly and policy gaps by examining Iran, one of the most heavily sanctioned countries, particularly since 2012. It develops a novel qualitative feminist framework to analyse the gendered effects of sanctions across the everyday and state policy levels. Drawing on feminist IPE debates on the state, economic crises, and social reproduction, I show how sanctions have reinforced gendered structures of inequality and violence in Iran. My work also develops a feminist political economy of gendered violence in Iran by examining the often-overlooked role of material conditions in shaping gendered violence and inequality. As the first book-length feminist analysis of sanctions on Iran, it makes significant theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to debates on sanctions, gendered violence, and social reproduction. My PhD thesis has received the prestigious PSA Award and has been nominated for the DSA PhD Prize in recognition of its originality and quality. So far, I have published one paper based on this research, providing the first analysis of sanctions' impact on gendered regimes of labour in Iran. The Fellowship will enable me to further consolidate my thesis into a book, to be published by the leading academic press, CUP. It will also allow me to publish two further articles (one solo and another co-authored) with leading academic journals. The Fellowship offers a unique opportunity to maximise the policy and public impact of my research. Leveraging my existing connections, I will write a policy brief on gender and sanctions for the UN Women Policy Brief Series. I will also translate my findings for key feminist organisations and policymaking on Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) and the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agendas through three policy blogs and a one-day academic-practitioner workshop. I will undertake an institutional visit to Johns Hopkins University to be mentored and receive feedback on my work from leading scholars on sanctions and Iran. Additionally, I will publish four blogs on gender relations in Iran in English and Farsi on widely-read public platforms. The fellowship will also be pivotal for refining a new research agenda and developing grant applications for the next stage of my academic career.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDs) pose a significant global public health challenge, affecting millions of children worldwide, with premature infants being particularly vulnerable. Current care pathways often involve delayed diagnosis and missed opportunities for early intervention. To address this, we propose an innovative approach using electroencephalography (EEG)-based digital twins (DTs) to transform neonatal neurodevelopmental care through quantitative, precision prediction. Our vision is to develop mathematical models (DTs) derived from EEG that can quantify, predict, and understand neurodevelopment. These DTs will simulate individual infants' brain maturation trajectories, enabling fine-scale quantitative prediction of typical and atypical neurodevelopmental outcomes. This predictive capability will guide follow-up assessments, inform resource allocation, and facilitate personalised interventions. The project has three key aims: Foster a dynamic, cross-disciplinary team to advance the construction and clinical use of DTs for childhood brain development, while developing future leaders in AI for healthcare. Collect longitudinal EEG data to calibrate models at different time points, ensuring model validity and understanding practical DT deployment. Develop DTs capable of simulating brain developmental trajectories with quantified uncertainty. To achieve this we need to develop new mathematical models of infant brains at different stages of neurodevelopment, addressing a current gap in this field. Another crucial component of our work involves matching model output to EEG (model calibration), which presents challenges due to the complex nature of the brain itself and models of the brain, which are nonlinear, non-identifiable, and stochastic. Crucially, we will develop novel calibration methods that enable us to quantify uncertainty in predictions. Our interdisciplinary team combines expertise in mathematics, paediatrics, statistics, data ethics, and industry. We will collaborate with Huru, an industrial partner developing innovative wireless EEG recording solutions, to facilitate data collection and explore potential clinical applications. Our work has significant potential for societal impact. By enabling early diagnosis, individualised prognosis, and personalised treatment planning, our DT technology will provide a powerful tool for precision medicine in neonatal care. This could lead to improved outcomes, enhanced quality of life, and substantial societal and economic benefits through optimised neurodevelopmental outcomes at a population level. In conclusion, our project aims to transform neonatal neurodevelopmental care through the development of EEG-based digital twins. By combining mathematical modelling, clinical expertise, and innovative technology, we seek to enable earlier identification of at-risk infants, provide quantitative predictions of developmental trajectories, and support informed decision-making and personalised interventions. This groundbreaking approach has the potential to significantly improve outcomes for infants at risk of neurodevelopmental disorders and their families.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Judges shape the law… but how far is too far? You might think that Parliament makes the law and judges simply apply it, but judges actually have significant power to shape legal rules. Statutes leave gaps and ambiguities that judges must interpret, creating precedents that must be followed in future cases. Because legal reasoning allows for multiple interpretations, judges have significant leeway to select and frame prior cases in ways that support their preferred outcomes—a practice I call outcome-oriented citation. Scholars have long debated what influences judges to do this, from political and social factors to personal beliefs. What has been missing is a way to systematically assess whether judges are using precedent faithfully or stretching it beyond legitimate legal reasoning. In my PhD, I created Judicial Citation Analysis (JCA), an innovative method for uncovering hidden judicial influences. By analysing patterns in how judges cite and interpret past cases, JCA brings transparency and accountability to judicial decision-making by helping to distinguish between legitimate legal development and precedent misuse. JCA takes us beyond recognising that outcome-oriented citation is a feature of the system to providing a systematic method for uncovering and analysing it, providing a transformative tool for legal scholarship and practice. In my PhD, I applied JCA to the law of financial remedies, which governs how property is divided on divorce. I found that lower courts had distorted Supreme Court rulings on non-discrimination, maintaining an appearance of fidelity to precedent while shifting the law in ways that reinforced systemic gender bias. This raises an important question: how widespread is this practice? JCA can be applied to other areas where judicial discretion plays a large role (eg child law, tort law) and to other common law jurisdictions (eg Ireland, Australia, USA) to assess whether judges are going too far in shaping the law. By exposing the mechanisms of judicial agency, JCA has the potential to improve transparency, consistency, and fairness in the legal system. The fellowship has two main aims: Aim 1: Influence the debate on reforming financial remedies law The Law Commission recently concluded that financial remedies law should be reformed, without making specific recommendations. During this timely fellowship, I will disseminate my findings on systemic gender discrimination and engage with scholars to ensure that this issue is central to reform discussions. In exposing how judicial reasoning reinforces bias in financial remedies law, this work offers a crucial new perspective at a pivotal moment for policy discussions. Aim 2: Establish JCA as a key legal method Judicial integrity is essential to a fair legal system. While many judges perform their roles diligently, without scrutiny of how precedent is actually used, others may reshape the law unchecked. I will establish JCA as a key legal method by: Publishing an article and monograph that explain its key innovations and how to apply it. Sharing my findings with other scholars and exploring ways to improve judicial transparency and accountability. Developing and submitting a funding application for an ambitious large-scale project expanding JCA across different areas of law and jurisdictions, ensuring its findings inform judicial training, legal practice, and public understanding. By equipping scholars, practitioners, and policymakers with a concrete method to assess judicial reasoning, JCA has the potential to drive meaningful change in how precedent is understood and applied.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Mine waste is a major problem worldwide, having detrimental effects on human health as well as the environment. In a drive for low carbon technologies, metal demand is projected to increase >450% by 2050. There is thus a pressing need to develop long-term sustainable remediation strategies. Microbes play key roles in geochemical processes and their vast metabolic diversity may aid in the clean-up of mine-degraded soils. Detoxification in microbial communities not only depends on individual behaviour, but also on interactions between different species. However, we have limited understanding of metal-detoxification in multi-species contexts, severely curtailing their effective use in remediation. My FLF explores siderophore-mediated bioremediation, with a focus on divisions of labour within soil communities to maximise detoxification. Bacteria release siderophores into the environment which bind toxic metals, preventing diffusion into cells. Mine-degraded soils typically contain multiple toxic metals. In theory, if different species specialise to detoxify different metals, this can improve species coexistence and remediation. However, such cooperation can also break down when cheats (individuals that do not produce siderophores but reap benefits from others) are able to displace siderophore producers. From work on single species, we know that cheats should be less successful in structured environments as this restricts their access to siderophores. My original FLF tested this prediction using a combination of theory and controlled experiments with synthetic and natural soil communities. By tracking ecological and evolutionary changes, my work so far has shown that species stably coexist when they specialise to detoxify different metals, increasing community-wide siderophore levels. However, coexistence quickly breaks down when cheats newly evolve or when they can freely disperse into local patches of producers. The relative speed of ecological and evolutionary change is thus crucial to the maintenance of divisions of labour. My team and I are currently identifying the molecular mechanisms underpinning changes in siderophore production. During the renewal, I will build on these results and further increase realism by examining another key ecological factor underpinning bacterial divisions of labour: plants. Plant-microbe feedbacks are ubiquitous in nature and have important implications for phytoremediation. In theory, plant roots can alter social behaviour by providing structure and nutrients, both of which are predicted to affect cooperation by altering the relative costs and benefits of siderophores. We have limited knowledge of how cooperation and conflict within soil bacterial communities feeds back to influence plant fitness, for example by altering metal solubility. In the renewal I will fill these knowledge gaps by addressing five objectives: (1) as individuals can regulate siderophore production in response to environmental cues, I will determine the role of phenotypic plasticity versus mutation in underpinning siderophore changes; (2) I will test whether siderophore production is increased in relatively nutrient-rich root-associated communities versus bulk soil communities; (3) I will determine how variation in siderophore production affects plant fitness and plant metal uptake by increasing metal solubility; (4) I will assess the impact of adaptation to local environmental conditions on plant-microbe interactions, as and (5) I will focus on the effect of land management on metal mobility, using a citizen science approach. The data obtained in the renewal will result in a major advance in our understanding of plant-microbe interactions and phytoremediation. The insights gained will be of great interest to policy practitioners aiming to optimise microbiomes for environmental function and health.