Keele University

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-12

Vector-borne diseases (VBD) pose a major health and socio-economic burden particularly on countries in tropical and sub-tropical areas. Arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) such as dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever virus are a major contributor to the overall burden of VBD and both the emergence of new and re-emergence of known arboviruses are noted with concern due to their epidemic and even pandemic potential. Climate, economic and social factors expand the global distribution of their vectors and thereby extend the geographical range of arboviruses. To date, the most effective way to control transmission of arboviruses is vector control, predominantly by use of insecticides. However, concerns over insecticide resistance plus their detrimental effect on the ecosystem has prompted research into more sustainable and eco-friendly solutions. The most advanced of these next-generation strategies that are currently under development uses various mechanisms to force traits through a target vector population (e.g. gene drives) which can be used either to reduce the mosquito population or to replace the population with individuals less competent to transmit arboviruses. Depending on the specific technology, possible issues are the very narrow range of viruses they work against (mostly just one), insufficient efficiency for field use, high costs, and the risk of resistance development due to fitness effects of the integrated genetic information on the mosquito. Here I am proposing a completely novel approach to vector control – a two-component system leveraging the replication strategy of the virus. It combines the advantages of the above-mentioned conventional and novel control strategies, while mitigating the stated drawbacks. Only if both two components come together in the mosquito cell will the system take effect and kill the vector. This allows widespread application of the first component to target a large number of mosquitoes (as insecticides do), while the second component, a limiting factor, will provide the system with specificity and flexibility. I aim to develop two different application strategies of this technology, one will provide large-scale population suppression, the other will target only vectors infected with specific viruses. Both are sustainable, eco-friendly, likely to be cheaper than some currently used/developed technologies and have a lower risk of resistance development as the mosquitoes will not carry a cargo affecting their fitness. Over 150 countries are located in the tropical and subtropical zones of our planet. The approximately 3.9 billion people living in these regions are particularly affected by diseases  vectored by mosquitoes and would substantially benefit from improved vector control. Particularly in densely populated areas and megacities, application of the first strategy of my proposed technology could provide relief not only from the disease vector but also from the health risk insecticides pose to the residents as well as to beneficial insect species. The second strategy is a highly cost-effective alternative and would be particularly beneficial around transport hubs such as airports, ports, or large train stations, in urbanised areas during an outbreak scenario or as a long-term control measure in zones with increased virus spill-over risk such as deforestation areas. This version of my proposed technology can also be utilized for surveillance using a visual marker protein. In summary, if applied, my technology would significantly advance the vector-control field, positively impact human health, reduce environmental degradation and likely do this more economically than currently developed mosquito control technologies.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Globally, early marriage is considered harmful for young women’s health as it pushes them into early childbearing and results in poor reproductive health outcomes. My doctorate looked at the Indian state of Bihar where, according to government data, 40% of all women are married before 18, and the maternal mortality ratio is 118 deaths per 100,000 live births, the highest in India. Against this background, I examined the marital household as a site where women’s access to healthcare is shaped and contested. Among the 38 women I interviewed, all of whom had married in adolescence, 19 had a ‘love marriage’, the prevalence and implications of which have not been adequately studied. My postdoctoral project, therefore, accounts for the role of love, care, neglect and abuse in young women’s marital relationships, foregrounding how women navigate a multitude of emotions and dynamics to claim care. Through the fellowship, I aim to disseminate the findings from my doctoral research and develop future research.   I aim to publish three journal articles. In the first two, I will break down two predominant ideas: that age is the most significant determinant of married adolescent women’s poor reproductive health, and that early marriage is inevitably violative and a barrier to women’s care. The first paper will challenge the policy preoccupation with the adolescent body becoming a reproductive body upon marriage, by tracing the impacts of sexual activity itself (repeated, unsafe, unwanted), the burden of unrelenting household labour in marriage, and the physical and mental depletion they cause together. The paper, therefore, will show the implications of the nature of such marriage and not only the age at which it occurs. The second paper will prompt an imagination of young women’s marriage as relationships where husbands exercise authority in both benevolent and abusive ways, determining the terms of women’s access to care. Here, I highlight how women navigate such authority, evoking it, accepting it or resisting it to maximise their care and also to feel cared for by their husbands. In the third paper, I will document my design of a research project inspired by the Feminist Participatory Action Research framework, and discuss how participation and action emerged outside of the activities curated within this framework, even posing challenges to it.   I will supplement the publications with two roundtables on early marriage, involving a range of stakeholders: researchers, feminist activists, policy-analysts, medical practitioners, and crucially, adolescent girls and women navigating the realities and registers of early marriage: love, autonomy, honour, force. The first of these roundtables will be hosted in Bihar in India with Project Potential, a regional NGO, with the aim to enable grassroot conversations, and the second in the UK, to examine the transnational regulation of age at marriage and its disciplinary underpinnings in development and human rights discourses.   The final component of the fellowship is a research proposal for a new project on women’s health in India. The project will examine how women’s experience of fertility—forged and challenged in the household—translates to feminist advocacy around fertility, which is usually positioned in relation to the sites of state, biomedicine and international development. I will use qualitative methods, ethnographically studying sites of fertility negotiation and control, along with advocacy spaces. The fellowship, therefore, will set me up for a career in critical feminist health research.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

This project will draw on the oral history archives and food industry literature in the British Library to explore food and its production, with a focus on the interplay between American food systems and the creation of British culinary culture since 1945. It will examine labour conditions, attitudes to different foodstuffs and their novelty and/or ubiquity; it will provide a unique view of the negotiations of structure and agency in food purchasing and consumption. Research into the British Library’s oral history archive will enable an analysis of the attitudes and motivations of the people involved in food production across US-UK foodways. Research into the food industry literature will show how foods travelled and were marketed. The student will benefit from the expert training they receive at the British Library (in oral interviews, for example), as well as training at Keele, and insights gained in the PhD research will feed into their BL activities, including new oral histories and public workshops. Food's meanings have always been contested, and as American culture – newly on television screens, already here in literature and film – became recognisable and present, food was at the centre of the cultural shift. We will examine the effect this already-hereness and concurrent strangeness had on the ways people viewed American food and its production, as well as the ways people viewed British food as compared with, or in contrast to, their imaginings and experience of US food cultures. We will consider the ways US-UK foodways shifted during the Cold War and post-Cold War period. For instance, when and to what extent did British views of American foods shift from privileging the abundance of American capitalism to stressing excessive consumption, and the health costs of cheap, calorie-dense food; and how did those in the food industry adapt to these shifting opinions? Building upon the studies of scholars such as Nelson Lichtenstein (Retail Revolution), oral histories and food industry materials will also offer insight into the ways models of working associated with major US food corporations were adopted, adapted or rejected in the UK. This attention to labour and production will allow our study also to shed light on global influences shaping the late twentieth and early twenty-first century proliferation of low-wage work in post-industrial Britain (see, for instance, Lee, Green and Sissons, ‘Low-wage sectors, earnings mobility and economic policy in the UK’). The student might also choose to focus on the adoption of American food production systems in Britain: automation, industrial agricultural practices, supermarket and retail consolidation, branding and marketing. We intend for the CDP-holder to analyse two networks of meaning: oral histories of food production and the foodways by which food travelled, as well as work patterns and production methods relating to those foodways. We are not only interested in fast food, or in food explicitly coded ‘American.’ The PGR will be enabled to examine cultural foodways from China, via the US, to the UK and China to the UK, to the US; Southern soul food and its heritage in African and European traditions; European food adapted in the US and then repackaged as ‘American' in the UK. Ultimately the PGR’s focus will depend on what they find and we will encourage them to develop their interests.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

This project is the first detailed exploration of the creation, organisation and use of the British Library’s Harleian Collection, one of the original collections which comprised the British Museum upon its formation in 1753. The Collection was created by the first two Earls of Oxford, Robert and Edward Harley, as well as their librarian Humfrey Wanley, in the first four decades of the century, then purchased for the nation.  It will consider how the Collection illuminates knowledge work: that is, the labour done by a wide variety of individuals to produce and preserve scholarly understanding. The project addresses private collecting and institutional custodianship, the professionalisation of knowledge work, and the ideological work these performed. It asks how the Collection came into being and developed; how it was shaped by actors including the Harleys, Wanley, and those whose work has been obscured; and how its integration into a national collection and later-century usage relate to practices of knowledge production that intersect with discourses of nation-building. The project works with the understanding (Drucker 1999) that knowledge workers bring their own understanding/interests to their work. It will attend to the predilections and professional identities of the Harleys, Wanley, and others, situating purchases, gifts, and bequests within broader cultures of collection. It will examine Wanley’s professional background, and his procurement, cataloguing, and indexing of the Collection. It will examine Robert Harley’s interests in genealogy and politics, relating his public career to the ideas of English and world history evinced in his library. It will explore Edward Harley’s literary milieu as an impetus for his expansion of the Collection. Mindful of scholarly networks and the necessity of redressing occlusions and biases in archives, it will set these activities in a broader cultural moment. The Collection’s purchase—with Robert Cotton’s and Hans Sloane’s—for the British Museum raises questions about conceptions of national heritage, methods of antiquarian research, and professional practices in knowledge work. The project will consider the implications of the principle that the Collection was to be available “to be consulted by the Curious, and for public Use to all Posterity” (1763 Catalogue Preface). It will analyse the parliamentary debates and public discourse about the Collection to learn how its status was viewed by contemporaries. It will examine the transfer to Montagu House, establishment of the running numbers, and evidence of early use. It will situate the 1759–63 catalogue/index in context as products of the labours of Wanley, David Casley, William Hocker, Andrew Gifford, Charles Morton, Thomas Astle, and others who await recovery. In the period 1763–1812 the Collection was viewed as “the most complete and extensive Fund of national Antiquities that any Kingdom can boast”. Knowledge work was thus bound up with national identity in ways that require investigation. Machlup (1962, 167) shows that “in a Knowledge Economy, the relevant stock of knowledge is not what is recorded in books but rather ‘what living people know’,” prompting questions about how public understanding of the past—British and global—was informed by academic and public engagement with Harleian materials, especially in specialisms such as medievalism and orientalism which accelerated in the 19th century. The project will benefit researchers through new, original scholarship, and it will benefit the Library and its audiences, public and academic, by developing new understanding whilst the Collection is being re-catalogued.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-08

Diarrhoea is the second leading cause of death among children in Africa. Hands are the most common mode of diarrhoea transmission and other significant infections for all ages. This study tackles an important cause of the spread of infections in Africa, that has previously attracted little attention: the practice of Communal-Bowl Hand-Rinsing (CB-HR). CB-HR refers to more than one person washing their hands in one shared container of water, without soap and without changing the water between individuals. Common before meals at homes, schools, and social gatherings across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), CB-HR is sometimes performed according to age, often with children being the last to wash in the water bowl, putting them at higher risk. Additionally, mothers continue to hand-feed their children after CB-HR, facilitating the transfer of infection to children. CB-HR can be a response to water scarcity, but is habitual, persisting where water is available, despite decades of general and outbreaks-related hand-hygiene education (such as for cholera, Ebola, and COVID-19). Summary of research, and my 2022 survey of WaterAid and Save-the-Children hygiene experts from 15 offices in SSA (including Ghana), showed that CB-HR occurs in all 15 countries, with no known targeted interventions at academic, non-governmental organisation (NGO), United Nations or governmental levels. Research including during outbreaks of disease and microbiological tests on hand-swabs show that stool and other germs spread during CB-HR as the water bowl becomes contaminated and serves as a transmission medium (including a study in Ghana). My recent research in Mali, and preliminary CB-HR studies I am leading in Ghana, have identified culturally-sensitive and acceptable intervention options targeting social norms to curb CB-HR. My research aims to work with communities and stakeholders in Northern region, Ghana to jointly-develop a culturally acceptable, low-cost pre-meal family-handwashing alternative behaviour option that includes soap and not using a shared water-basin, and its scalable delivery/implementation strategy to drive behaviour change beyond awareness-raising. This will be achieved using contextual information from the community, observations and discussions, plus workshops with communities and stakeholders. Intervention implementation, while focussing on mothers and household-heads, will target whole communities recognising the crucial role of group behaviours. Community members (community/religious leaders, African drummers/actors, school-teachers, women and Water-and-hygiene village committee members and volunteers) at multiple village locations will be involved in delivery of activities. Activities will be engaging, fun and novel, learning from behaviour-change theories, former research, experts such as in WaterAid, and my experience of working in Mali and Ghanaian communities. Specific objectives are to Conduct qualitative formative research to better understand the motivations and context for CB-HR in Northern Ghana where CB-HR is common. Work with community members and stakeholders to identify culturally acceptable alternative-behaviours (solutions) to CB-HR at homes, and strategies for their delivery/implementation. Test the effectiveness of the intervention (solution and their delivery strategy) in a 12-village randomised controlled trial. Benefits/Impacts: An immediate benefit could be improved food hygiene and possibly diarrhoea reduction outcomes. If the proposed intervention is effective, it can be scaled nationally or adapted for other SSA countries, the impact on reducing the spread of infection in cases of diarrhoea, and outbreaks affected by handwashing (e.g. cholera, hepatitis, Covid-like and other organisms) can be significant. Given that diarrhoea is a leading cause of under-5 year illness and death, scaling of the intervention could impact related United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-08

We will combine the advantages of bespoke colloidal quantum dots, and the wafer-scale manufacture of integrated photonic chips to create a platform for studying optical processes in single dots and on chip generation of quantum light. Integrated photonic circuits offer a versatile toolbox for advanced quantum optics applications, such as quantum communications. This requires bright, deterministic and spectrally pure sources of quantum light (single photons). Quantum dots (QDs), Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023, can provide single photons with the required characteristics and importantly can be engineered into integrated photonic devices. When a semiconductor QD absorbs energy, an electron is excited to a higher energy level, leaving a hole behind. This electron-hole pair, an exciton, is confined leading to discrete energy levels. When the electron can efficiently recombine with the hole, bright photons are released that have a specific wavelength proportional to the difference between the energy levels. This energy can be tuned during manufacturing by careful control of the size of the QD resulting in  spectrally pure photon emission. As QDs are small, there is generally only one exciton at a time, and so QDs only emit single photons on demand (and so deterministically) – which allows their utility in quantum optics. Indium Phosphide (InP) QDs are a versatile platform, with emission wavelengths ranging from 450-700 nm, through tuning size and composition. Current manufacturing processes use randomly distributed self-assembled QDs which require waveguide devices to be subsequently built around the QD. This is time consuming, costly, and limits scalability. Solution based techniques provide an alternative manufacturing route, as they are typically fast, cheap, and scalable. This project will combine the strengths of solution processed QDs (Keele) with the chip processing skills of the Compound Semiconductor Manufacturing Hub for a Sustainable Future (Cardiff) to develop QD-based integrated photonic circuits in GaN and AlN materials systems. These nitride materials are transparent at the wavelength of the InP QDs, so can guide and manipulate light with low loss. Incorporation of QDs inside carefully-designed photonic circuits will allow for electrical operation via monolithically integrated InGaN LEDs, enhanced photon emission into single modes via the Purcell effect and advancement of these materials for low loss, high efficiency emission. The materials challenges in creating low-loss photonic circuits builds on expertise in Cardiff on semiconductor processing and etching, which is complemented by Keele’s expertise in synthesising InP QDs. This project, “SPIQuE: Semiconductor Photonics with InP Quantum Emitters”, will empower an innovative approach to advance the manufacture of InP based integrated photonics. It will combine solution processed QDs with scalable semiconductor processing to manufacture inexpensive and accessible single quantum emitters for quantum devices and exploit a major gap in a critical market. In this project we will develop materials that offer route to functional, efficient integrated photonic circuits which can be mass-manufactured at low cost. We will functionalise specific points on these circuits so that we can add our separately prepared QDs in carefully selected locations through simple techniques that can easily be built into large scale manufacturing processes. In doing so, this research ties into the UK government’s National Semiconductor and Quantum Strategies, which aims to develop the UK as a world leader in these technologies.               We wanted to play up the “advanced materials” angle of the scheme, which I think is important

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-07

Context Patient and public involvement in shaping research that has practical benefits to health and healthcare (often called ‘applied health research’) has become common in recent decades. Organisations that fund applied health research expect researchers to involve the public in their research because the public should have a say in how public funds are spent and because their research directly affects patients. These organisations also fund fundamental scientific research and increasingly expect fundamental scientist-researchers to involve the public in their research. Fundamental research (also called ‘basic’ or ‘discovery science’) involves essential work that forms the foundation of new understanding and new techniques that might eventually be used in practical applications. Unlike applied health or clinical researchers, fundamental scientist-researchers are less likely to encounter patients or the public and some might not yet know how their research could have a practical application. The challenge the project addresses Public involvement in fundamental scientific research is much less common than in applied health research. Previous studies suggest that fundamental scientist-researchers think that involving the public is not feasible and/or necessary. These studies also suggest that fundamental scientist-researchers find it challenging to communicate with the public about their research because of the technical procedures and specialist terminology involved. Although resources are available to support researchers to undertake public involvement in applied health research it is unclear how relevant these are to researchers working in fundamental science. The few resources aimed at fundamental scientist-researchers tend to focus on a specific research field, again making it unclear whether they are useful to all fundamental scientist-researchers. There is also a lack of resources targeted at public contributors and public involvement experts (staff who support public involvement activities) to help them understand fundamental science research and how they can get involved. We are a team of public involvement experts, public contributors and fundamental scientist-researchers and together, we will address these challenges in this project. Aims and objectives The main objective of this project is to form a partnership between stakeholders (public involvement experts, the public and fundamental scientist-researchers) to co-produce a toolkit to equip teams with the practical resources and information needed to carry out public involvement at all stages of their research, supporting them to overcome challenges and undertake meaningful and inclusive involvement. The EXEMPLAR toolkit will be unique because it will: be developed, tested and revised by all stakeholders across a range of fundamental science settings include content aimed at the public, fundamental scientist-researchers and public involvement experts include content broadly applicable to different types of public involvement, public contributor roles and fundamental science include adaptable and optional content We will determine toolkit content based on our findings in partnership with stakeholders but is likely to include public involvement guiding principles, decision-making flowcharts, practical resources, implementation strategies, and examples of public involvement in fundamental science. Potential applications and benefits This project will advance public involvement practice by improving our understanding of which public involvement principles and approaches are applicable and useful across all settings, which principles and approaches can and should be modified (and how) for fundamental science research, and by identifying the types of factors (e.g. stage of research) requiring different approaches to public involvement. This will form the basis of an implementation and impact strategy for the transferability and scalability of the EXEMPLAR toolkit.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-06

The PLATO mission is on-schedule to launch in 2026 with the goal to study the evolution of planetary systems in our Galaxy, including Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. With the stellar models currently available, the mission cannot yet deliver on the specified requirement to measure the age of these planetary systems to an accuracy of 10%. This is why hundreds of researchers are currently working on new stellar models for the PLATO mission. The PLATO "Benchmark star" work package that I co-lead has the responsibility to deliver the new data for benchmark stars that is needed to validate and calibrate the next generation of stellar models. This project will apply methods that I have developed in recent years to measure the properties stars in exoplanet and binary systems to generate accurate fundamental data for Sun-like stars of lasting value and unprecedented precision. These high-quality data will be used with advanced Bayesian and machine-learning techniques that we will develop to calibrate the new physics in the next generation of stellar evolution models. These improved stellar models will be needed so that the PLATO mission can deliver on its goal to study the evolution of exoplanet systems in our Galaxy. The outcomes of this project will benefit all areas of stellar astrophysics and Galactic research, particularly those that rely on stellar models to interpret data from surveys such as Gaia, WEAVE, 4MOST, etc. The main objectives of this project are: i. to create a library of high-quality spectra for 20 stars with direct and precise mass, radius and luminosity measurements to calibrate mixing and diffusion effects in stellar models; ii. to characterise white-dwarf companions on wide orbits to PLATO targets that will be used for end-to-end tests of the age estimates from asteroseismology; iii. to use advanced statistical methods to fully exploit the high-precision data now available for stars in eclipsing binary systems combined with asteroseismology to calibrate new physics in the next generation of stellar models. This project will benefit from support by members of PLATO stellar and exoplanet science teams and the PLATO ground-based observing programme. This project also enables citizen scientists with access to small (~0.4-m) telescopes to make a useful contribution to the PLATO mission by observing benchmark eclipsing binary systems.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-06

FRAME will use creative methods to foster a different vision of migrant mobilities across the Mediterranean, bringing the findings of the MADAR project to new audiences in the centre of Europe to shape polices and shift perspectives. Context: Across the Maghreb (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya), Europe, and beyond, migration continues to be a highly contentious issue, recently mobilised by the Tunisian President and in elections to the European parliament. Civil society organisations, activists and researchers highlighted hostile migration politics and their nefarious consequences, notably the steadily rising number of deaths caused by violent border measures. Policies and practices foster a world where the ability to freely circulate and settle is often denied to racialised migrants portrayed as unwelcome villains. Rising xenophobia and racism are illustrated by the prevalence of anti-migration far-right tropes in public discourses on both sides of the Mediterranean (in north Africa and Southern Europe). FRAME, builds on established MADAR collaborations across countries (Morocco Algeria, Tunisia and the UK), sectors and disciplines. This follow-on project takes advantage of new, unpredictable opportunities for impact; it enhances and widens MADAR Network-Plus' benefits beyond its original objectives for new academic and non-academic beneficiaries. Challenge: Crisis-focused debates about migration peddle dehistoricizing and depoliticizing tropes which obscure the responsibilities of state-actors collaborating in border regimes that stoke anti-immigration sentiments and violence, increase vulnerabilities, and infringe on migrants' rights. In contrast, FRAME revolves around an imposing, life-size elephant-shaped sculpture that will act as both a representation and advocate for another vision of mobility challenging dominant discourses and practices that foster the exclusion of the global majority, and highlighting continuities and ruptures between the Maghreb and Europe. In reappropriating the ubiquitous migrants-as-animals imagery in anti-immigration rhetoric, the elephant catalyses creative engagements. Informed by quantitative and qualitative research findings from MADAR, FRAME aims to: a) transform MADAR's impact in shifting opinions and sparking further policy debates about migration through the use of arts; b) address the ongoing escalation of xenophobic and racist violence targeting migrants by foregrounding connections between the Maghreb and Europe in hostile migration politics. FRAME brings a lifesize elephant sculpture from Morocco to Brussels - de facto EU capital - where it will be at the heart of live performances and workshops in the city before returning to Casablanca as a permanent public sculpture. FRAME has 3 interlinked, challenge-driven, impactful objectives: Generate discussions among the general public on discrimination, violent bordering regimes, and migrants' rights, through open-space, interactive performances; Engage key stakeholders to influence policy affecting migration in the Maghreb and beyond; Build lasting legacies based on the elephant and its journey to shape public understandings of discrimination and violence beyond the project's lifecycle. FRAME includes 3 Work Packages, directly mapped to its 3 Objectives and corresponding Outputs (public performances; workshops; documentary; exhibition). FRAME demonstrates tangible potential for impact by raising awareness, empowering communities, and shaping policies across Europe and the Maghreb. It will challenge European decision-makers and public opinion by exposing the violence of border regimes.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-03

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are characterised by abnormal levels of naturally occurring proteins that clump together to form dense deposits in the brain. In Alzheimer's these deposits are formed from the amyloid-beta protein, and often termed amyloid plaques. The ways in which these plaques influence the onset and progression of the disease are still not fully understood. However, detailed studies of amyloid plaques have revealed a prevalence for them to contain microscopic particles (called nanoparticles) of different metals. It is not surprising to find metals in the brain, as the human body needs an incredible range of at least 10 different metallic elements in its everyday function, with much of our iron present as tiny nanoparticles of iron oxide (a form of rust). What is far more surprising is that the iron and copper nanoparticles we have observed within amyloid plaques, are not typical of oxidized metals such as rust. Instead, using sophisticated x-ray microscopy methods, we found that these particles were in fact stabilized in what are called low-oxidation states, including pure metallic elemental forms. This discovery is akin to finding a shiny metallic iron nail after it has been left in a field for many years. Just as we would expect the nail to oxidize over time due to the chemical reactivity of the metal surface, the nanoparticles (which have a much higher surface area relative to their size) are even more likely to oxidize. This surface reactivity can also result in toxicity when such nanoparticles are exposed to living tissue. Therefore, understanding how nanoparticles in this low-oxidation state are stabilized within the protein deposits found in the brain, could provide crucial insight into the interplay between metals and proteins in the brain and how this contributes to aging and disease. It is possible that the metal oxide nanoparticles themselves could drive the abnormal protein deposition, and in the process be transformed to low-oxidation states. Looking for evidence that these metal-protein interactions occur in brain tissue, as well as investigating the mechanisms by which the transformations could proceed, is one of the key aims of this project. Equally important though is finding the source of the oxidised metal particles that are transformed by the proteins. Interactions could occur between proteins and biological sources of metal oxides already present in the brain, but it is also possible that sources from outside the body are involved. Substantial evidence now exists suggesting ultrafine metal oxide particles that are present in some airborne forms of pollution, can enter the brain. It seems they do this via routes that bypass the brain's natural defences that normally prevent foreign material entering. A further aim of this project is therefore to investigate environmental nanoparticles collected from sites of known pollution in the UK, and to assess the likelihood that such particles are transformed to low-oxidation states in the brain. The project will use new state-of-the-art methods combined with physical science approaches, to build fundamental new knowledge regarding the biochemical processes that connect metals and proteins with aging and disease in the human brain. This will be of particular importance in the development of new drugs to treat diseases such as Alzheimer's, which currently focus only on the protein deposits with modest levels of success. Combined strategies that also target metals will offer new hope for effective treatments, whilst knowledge of how iron oxides are transformed could help develop more sensitive MRI diagnosis. The latter could use the accumulation of metallic forms of iron during protein aggregation to detect key changes in the brain prior to brain atrophy. Ultimately this could have huge impact on early interventions, with treatments tailored to target specific metal forms.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-03

The Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL) is a widely used open-source data standard for reproducible and reusable genetic circuit designs. The latest version of this standard, SBOL3, supersedes previous versions. SBOL3 has several new features and allows for capturing a wider range of essential biological design information concisely and more accurately across different design-build-test-learn workflows. It also enables the creation and integration of a network of information using graph-based technologies. However, SBOL3 is incompatible with the previous versions due to the significant changes, and data exchange and the development of software tools are hindered by the lack of necessary infrastructure. There is an urgent need to develop essential enabling technologies to create, validate, analyse, and visualise designs, taking advantage of SBOL3's new and extended features while supporting existing software tools for migration. Synthetic biologists work with software tools for tasks such as design and visualisation. These tools rely on standard libraries to abstract the details of data standards. However, the community has limited resources. Developing SBOL3 libraries for different programming languages, validation approaches, and compliance is not feasible. Migrating existing tools is challenging also due to the lack of libraries, especially when there are existing and large amounts of information. Providing higher-level interfaces for reusability, automation and best practices is crucial. Moreover, as the SBOL data model evolves to accommodate different and additional types of information, new and extensible visualisation strategies and approaches to intuitively represent and capture data are needed. This project aims to provide a much-needed and one-stop synthetic biology infrastructure. A web-based platform called SynBioKit will be established to create, visualise and validate design information using SBOL3. SynBioKit will be designed as a lightweight and easy-to-use application by actively engaging with the stakeholders. Features will also be accessible computationally to facilitate the emergence of other useful tools and workflows. In addition, SynBioKit will include online resources for community engagement and impact-related activities. Currently, there are no tools providing the services offered by the proposed SynBioKit platform. The following objectives are defined. These objectives will be applied to real-world biological use cases working closely with wet-lab biologists. 1- Enhance the reproducibility and reusability of synthetic biology designs by facilitating their creation easily and intuitively. 2- Research and develop innovative visualisation strategies focusing on different aspects of biological designs across multiple scales. 3- Validate biological designs and visualise issues and errors efficiently for compliance. 4- Support the synthetic biology community in the UK and internationally by making SBOL3 accessible to the wider community via an online platform with standalone and web APIs, backward compatibility features, and community resources. Synthetic biology is a priority area for research councils, including BBSRC. BBSRC promotes knowledge exchange through data standards. Data science, computational and transformative technologies and the development of new tools for data-intensive biological tasks are key components for fostering innovation and world-class research for UK Bioscience. SBOL is an essential enabling technology to support data-related activities, and SynBioKit is expected to be a widely used resource by the community to achieve these goals and support the national vision for engineering biology.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-02

This UKRI Fellowship renewal will continue to support my development of new scientific expertise at Keele University which interfaces chemistry and biology. The overarching goal of the research is to establish efficient technologies to provide biologically important carbohydrates. Such biomolecules are positioned to modulate or mediate a huge variety of biological processes and as a result there is a sustained interest from the scientific community around the synthesis of carbohydrate structures. I will harness flow biocatalysis to enable controlled and reproducible production of the building blocks essential to carbohydrate biosynthesis, sugar nucleotides. Secondly, I seek to expand the frontier of glycoconjugate chemical biology through exploration of a novel prodrug approach, combining sugar nucleotide donors and nucleoside analogues. In undertaking this research, I will adopt a multidisciplinary approach consisting of a fusion between traditional organic chemistry, biocatalysis, the evolving field of synthesis automation, and the innovative field of chemoenzymatic synthesis. This combination will facilitate the development of a faster and greener approach to explore biologically relevant carbohydrates. This is a rapidly evolving worldwide field which is currently underrepresented in UK science. The important materials provided by the technology and knowledge developed during this Fellowship renewal will be used to probe underpinning carbohydrate biology connected to disease and aid in the design and development of new therapeutic strategies.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

ARTS-CHANGE reviews the existing evidence on gender based violence (GBV), learns from the experiences of the victims across the gender spectrum, co-develops new research, and co-creates art-based interventions to curb GVB and capacitate care and advocacy. According to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Latin America represents the 81% of global cases of gender based violence (GBV) globally. Four countries - Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia- that are connected via Andean mountains and form the Andean group of countries stand out. In Colombia and Peru, women, LGBTQIA+, and even men have been victimized by GBV perpetuated during the past and ongoing military conflicts. In Peru feminicide affects all women irrespective of level of education, age, and regions (ECLAC, 2022). In Bolivia, 2 out 3 women faces GBV. Ecuador declines to undersign to protect refugee rights concerning 500k Venezuelan refugees' half of which are young girls and women. Reports by various governmental and non-governmental agencies and our interviews with experts (Marcela Huaita MH, former Minister of Women-Peru and current president of experts' commission of Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention-MESECVI; Karen Lopez Tello, KLT special adviser to the Ministry of Inclusion, Peru) reveal that GBV in these countries ranges from mild bullying at schools to sexual harassment to feminicide and armed conflict related GBV (ECLAC, 2022). Despite comprehensive legislation and regulations to eradicate it, GBV continues to impact millions of females and LGBTQIA+ individuals in these countries. Moreover, three recent challenges have dramatically hampered the attempts. First, the COVID-19 pandemic created inescapable conditions for the victims. Second, local contexts (e.g. the ongoing conflict in Colombia, lack of resources, corruption, inefficient legal systems) have so far permitted the perpetrators to weaponise sexual violence as a repressive tool and enjoy unaccountability. Third, and most importantly, the Venezuelan refugee crisis, have created severely disadvantaged and vulnerable groups in all four countries. According to UNCHR Colombia hosts the highest number of Venezuelan refugees 2,5 million, Peru 1,5 million, and Ecuador 500 k, respectively. Despite these differences, all four countries also share some characteristics. For instance, suffer from very low levels of state capacity resulting from unequal political and economic structures as well civil and interstate conflicts and diverse geographies which further exacerbate the consequences of GBV. More importantly, LGBTQIA+ communities and non-binary individuals suffer from restrictions to access healthcare, legal system, education, abuse by authorities, sextortion, and direct violence despite legal advances in all four countries (Reuters, 2020). Taken together, these have stretched the societal pressure and the resources to unsustainable levels and have triggered a GBV crisis with catastrophic consequences. This presents one of the most urgent health and societal challenges in the Andean region. Accordingly, the project aims to (a) establish an interdisciplinary and multi-actor (victims, researchers, NGOs, and governmental actors) taskforce to identify roots of GBV in the culturally and societal specific context; b) based on the findings, to co-create a conceptual framework that considers the historical and present day conditions that perpetuate GBV in all four countries and across the entire gender spectrum with the involvement of both historically (women, young girls, indigenous peoples, armed conflict victims) and more recent (LGBTQIA+ and refugee groups) groups affected by it; c) co-develop art (performative or otherwise) based interventions to reduce GVB and support the victims' recovery.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-08

Our vision is to tackle the core topics of vector-borne viral and bacterial diseases (VBD) in agriculture and horticulture, creating a roadmap for research, growers, business and policymakers to focus efforts. Our proposed research can be directly linked to four UKRI research councils' strategic themes, central to the remits of BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC and NERC. We will host a stakeholder event at Chatham House, planned for September 2024 and led by the former Champion for the UK's Global Food Security programme, Professor Tim Benton. There, we will seek views from stakeholders to the overarching question of what grower activities, scientific tools and social and policy devices are needed to improve the timeliness of first detection of a disease and to identify methods of mitigation to avoid a multi-bacterium, multi-virus epidemic outbreak. We will use sugar beet as an exemplar system in which Virus Yellows (VY) and Syndrome Basses Richesses (SBR), a bacterium complex, threaten UK and European productivity. VY last reached epidemic levels in the UK in 2020, when infections caused £67 million in losses, initiating a policy response by Defra that remains today. SBR is outbreaking in Europe and was last recorded in the UK in 1998. The threat of SBR is elevated due to the predicted El Nino 'super event' that increases the risk of continental vector-borne pathogen drift in 2024. Leading up to the Chatham event, researchers across the molecular biosciences, robotics, hyperspectral imaging, mathematics, policy, geography and social sciences will collect and review evidence of what is currently known and identify the future challenges in VBD research. The team will be supported by BBRO, KWS, ZEPP and MetOffice partners, who have expertise in plant pathology and meteorological scenario modelling. The project team will focus on 5 research activities: Stakeholder engagement interviews: We will undertake interviews with key stakeholders from sugar beet and related industries. The interviews will be exploratory dialogues, designed to contextualise and understand what 'preparedness' means for different stakeholder groups in the sector. Stakeholder engagement using past disease containment examples: We will identify farmer responses to preparedness triggers for containment, examining social triggers and decision tools that did or did not work e.g. forms of messaging, systems for advice and risk communication, incentives, fines, nudges, collective actions. Identify and review currently available molecular and serological diagnostics for the viral and bacterial components of SBR and VY. We will identify challenges to creating and deploying molecular diagnostics for use by growers as well as the barriers to widescale and routine adoption. Media preparedness. We will discuss with stakeholders the content and the optimal social media devices to best inform growers about SBR, its symptoms and impacts. We will then develop content to elevate preparedness. Options for routine vector/pathogen surveillance strategies. We will examine the role of robotics, hyperspectral imaging and modelling atmospheric movements to inform growers of within-season threats. We will seek to understand how complex outputs can be simplified and disseminated to growers and policy makers to enact positive change. The engagement process and outcomes from the Chatham event will be captured by a Theory of Change approach, an effective tool for identifying future research, industry and societal needs. It is expected that the remaining 4-5 months will be dominated by preparation for phase 2 submission as well as identifying new datasets and models.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

The South America and Southeast Asia (SASA) Project is led by a multidisciplinary, cross-sectors, international team across Brazil, Malaysia, and the UK. Based on equitable partnerships, with horizontal leadership shared across the three countries, SASA mobilises local, regional and indigenous knowledges and expertise to identify priority areas, challenge current structures, and shape future funding opportunities in arts and humanities.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

Four Corners was an independent film workshop originally formed in 1974 by a group of students at the London Film School. What made Four Corners' work distinctive was its engagement with local communities in London's East End and a film practice that sought to represent marginalised lives and experiences in the workshop's immediate environment. Alongside its film productions, Four Corners organised film workshops (a practice which continues today) and an ambitious series of film screenings and discussion groups exploring issues that remain resonant and pressing today - including women's lives, representations of gender, sexuality and race, poverty and political activism. This project will explore Four Corners' experimental film production and exhibition work in the 1970s and 1980s through an understanding of the social, cultural and political contexts in which they were making and showing films. It will explore the workshop as part of a growing independent film culture in the 1970s and alongside other collectives and workshops supported by new funding from the Greater London Council, Channel 4 and the BFI. It will pay particular attention to Four Corners' locality in Bethnal Green, East London: the quintessential site of social investigation epitomised by Michael Young and Peter Willmott's 1957 book Family and Kinship in East London, and a socio-political landscape for industrial working-class and minority ethnic communities being reshaped under Margaret Thatcher's Conservative governments. Four Corners' paper archive is held in the special collections at the BFI and Bishopsgate Institute, and was digitised thanks to a 2016 Heritage Lottery Fund grant. The digital archive holds a fascinating array of production files, photographs and film screening posters, which the project will use to explore the film workshop's history. These cover Four Corners' film projects - including, for instance, On Allotments (1976), a poetic documentary about a Newham allotment site facing demise in the form of an international lorry park development, and Bred and Born (1983), a feminist documentary centring on three generations of women in the same family living in Shadwell, which was developed from a series of public workshops exploring the theme of mothers and daughters held in Bethnal Green. The posters for film seasons and programmes held in the archive are testament to the way in which film exhibition was a key part of Four Corners' practice, offering vivid evidence of the workshop's social concerns, their intersecting work with political groups and their relationships with other film collectives and workshops in this period. Through a series of public events - including film screenings, talks and discussion groups - and publications, the project's aim is to develop a new history of the Four Corners' Film Workshop focusing on its work in East London from 1975 to 1990. Drawing on the collections held at the BFI and Bishopsgate Institute, as well as other archives including Tower Hamlets Local History Library and the LSE Women's Library, this project will contribute to a flourishing field of study exploring British independent film culture in the 1970s and 80s. It will interrogate the significance of Four Corners' work in the local area in which it was originally based; specifically, it will contextualise the workshop in relation to local, community histories, memories and issues facing audiences living in Tower Hamlets and neighbouring boroughs today.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

This project builds directly on a BBSRC grant that resulted in the discovery of novel anti-fungal and anti-oomycete bioactivities within brown algae (seaweeds). The biomass of brown algae is a rich source of structurally diverse, high-value polysaccharides, known as sulphated fucans which have wide-ranging bioactive properties - many of which are desirable for use in biotechnology applications. The structure of the polysaccharides changes between species, algal lifecycles, and ecophysiological changes to the environment. This gives each species of algae a unique repertoire of glycan structural diversity, imparting unique bioactivities based on structure-function relationships. We have shown that different polysaccharides are effective in inhibiting the growth of specific plant pathogens, and that these form preservative coatings on fresh fruits. Interactions with industrial suppliers and growers via BBSRC-sponsored networks have highlighted the demand for anti-fungal compounds in managing crop pathogens. This project will translate our findings into plant protection products for use on fresh fruits and vegetables. Obtaining this proof of concept will provide vital data for the patent filing, development of a licensing deal with our industrial partners, and subsequent commercial exploitation. Exploiting the natural abundance of brown algae available around the UK coastline for applied crop protection will reduce pre- and post- harvest food loss, improves UK food security, add value to commercial seaweed harvests.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

Studies demonstrated that animals can perceive the Earth's magnetic field (EMF) and use it for migration and navigation. Yet, the magnetic sense's underlying mechanism remains poorly understood. Although there exists evidence indirectly supporting several potential mechanisms, the primary magnetosensory cells (magnetoreceptors), their ultracellular structure, perceptive principle, and functional characteristics remain elusive. Birds are the most studied models in the area but they are difficult for finding magnetoreceptors due to high maintenance costs, the complexity of sourcing large samples, doing genetic editing and invasive interventions. Simpler migratory organisms, e.g., insects, might be good models due to their less complicated central nervous system, an opportunity to breed in a laboratory, create knockout animals and perform behavioural experiments in small setups. The ability to use magnetic sense for finding direction has been recently shown in North American and Australian migratory Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) but never in European species. It also remains unknown whether migratory Lepidoptera can use EMF for navigation (position finding). The project's aim: to better understand how European migratory butterflies use EMF for orientation and navigation. Objective 1: to examine whether Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta), a diurnal migrant, possesses an ability to find migratory direction by EMF. Objective 2: to test whether Red Underwing (Catocala nupta), a nocturnal migratory moth, can use EMF for navigation. The project will be delivered through non-invasive behavioural experiments using migratory individuals of both species captured and tested at 2 established field sites in Europe (Austria and East Baltic). Behavioural responses to a changed magnetic field will be tested with Flight Simulator, a setup testing insect's migratory orientation of a tethered animals while it is exposed to controlled navigational cues (sun, stars and EMF).

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

Civil, aerospace and automotive engineering are nowadays facing exciting industrial developments, inspiring new multifunctional and sustainable materials to be implemented within structural components. A key area, experiencing major technological changes, is concerned with design of multi-layered structures which are often characterised by a high contrast in mechanical and geometric properties of the layers. A diverse variety of such composites arises in numerous applications, including lightweight structural components widely exploited in automotive engineering which is currently strongly focused on green car production. In addition, the modern aerospace industry benefits from making use of multi-layered structures incorporating new lightweight multifunctional materials, such as aerogels, providing both thermal and acoustical insulation in aircrafts. In spite of rapidly growing industrial demands, a consistent mathematical approach for modelling of thin elastic laminates with a strong vertical inhomogeneity has not yet been developed. The main reason for this is presence of the contrast in mechanical and geometrical characteristics, resulting in numerous extra problem parameters. Another fundamental problem is that the most practically important low-frequency vibrations of high-contrast laminates manifest novel features which has not been previously observed for homogeneous or weakly inhomogeneous structures. A sophisticated low-frequency response significantly complicates interpretation of numerical and experimental data aimed at structural optimisation and non-destructive evaluation. This project will provide a fairly universal approximate model for high-contrast multi-layered thin plates covering a broad range of problem parameters and involving the mathematically consistent equations of the low-frequency motion and the boundary conditions along the edges. The derivation of the boundary conditions is traditionally the main challenge in the rigorous theories for thin elastic structures and have been attempted only within the homogeneous framework.