Northumbria University

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2027 · 2027-03

Planetary radiation belts are regions of space where the magnetic field of a planet can “trap” high-energy electrons and protons, forcing them to orbit the planet for days, months, or even years.  In these extreme environments, a small fraction of electrons and protons can have velocities very close to the speed of light. Radiation belts can vary enormously over timescales of hours or days in response to disturbances in the solar wind. However, the nature of their response – whether they intensify or weaken, expand or shrink in size – is currently unpredictable. There has been significant recent international scientific attention to this problem. The NASA Van Allen Probe mission (2012-2019) directly sampled the harsh environment with two heavily instrumented spacecraft. Large international teams of experts have used this enormous dataset, alongside advances in numerical modelling, to try to advance our understanding. Yet the reasons for large enhancements or depletions in the terrestrial radiation belt remain elusive. The aim of this Large Grant is to determine why the terrestrial radiation belt environment is so unpredictable. First, the radiation belt may be unpredictable because we do not fully understand the chain of subsystems in Earth’s magnetosphere that feed the radiation belt. Energy is transported from the solar wind to the nightside magnetotail, and then sporadically redirected Earthwards in a substorm injection, but we don’t know how much energy is injected or which factors control the process. In other words, the outer radiation belt may be unpredictable because we don’t understand the system well enough. Second, the radiation belt may be unpredictable because the physical processes involved are highly sensitive to boundary conditions (e.g. the injection) or initial conditions (i.e. the time history of the system). The magnetosphere is a complex interdependent system with many different subsystems, and the sensitivity of each subsystem to energy throughput has not been studied or quantified. That is, the outer radiation belt may be unpredictable because parts of the system are chaotic. This leads to two important and interconnected objectives: What factors control the amount of energy injected from the nightside magnetotail to the radiation belt? How sensitive are different subsystems of the magnetosphere in the chain of energy transfer from the solar wind to the outer radiation belt? We will use the extensive legacy of spacecraft data from international missions to build the required statistical maps of energy transfer through the magnetosphere. We will also use a range of physics-based numerical models of subsystems of the magnetosphere to determine the sensitivity of each subsystem to different initial or boundary conditions. The ambitious combination of observations and numerical modelling, coupled with a focus on important subsystems in isolation and in concert, will ensure the success of the project. The study of the terrestrial radiation belt is important as it is the only place in the universe where we can sample such a high-energy astrophysical environment directly. Our lack of understanding also severely impacts our ability to predict the space weather conditions for satellites in the harsh radiation environment of the outer radiation belt. This project will yield crucial information required to turn scientific numerical models into operational forecasting tools, including recommendations for where to include data directly in models to improve forecasting accuracy, and how to effectively use ensemble modelling to provide useful probabilistic forecasts.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-09

We propose a £9.6M Doctoral Focal Award in Net-Zero Polar Science supporting 49 students with £2.5M funding from NERC, £5.8M from us and £1.3M from 42 external partners. Our vision is to train leaders who will address grand polar science challenges [1] sustainably, creating low-carbon technological solutions for all areas of NERC science proven in the most challenging physical environment. Our students will acquire expertise that is urgently needed to plug the UK’s green skills gaps in academia, industry, and government [2,3]. Our proposal is timely, given the creation of the Department for Energy Security and Net-Zero (DESNZ) in 2023 and recognising that the polar regions are a major source of risk and uncertainty in UK climate projections [4]. It presents a golden opportunity for NERC to create practical ways to address climate change. Despite its prominence within the climate and ecological emergencies, polar science has major knowledge gaps owing to the difficulty of surveying remote environments. Traditional approaches do not address these challenges with the urgency society demands. A step change in capability is needed, including increased use of digital twins, satellite observations, AI, and autonomous sensing. Investment in skills training focused on sustainable technologies is crucial. The UK has committed to reach net-zero by 2050 and establishing DESNZ was a pivotal moment. Although up to 725,000 green jobs could be created in the UK by 2030, IEMA estimates a shortfall of 200,000 workers to meet the net-zero target [2] and UKSA found 61% of employers report high-level skills gaps among applicants [3] - confirming OECD predictions [5]. UKRI and NERC aim to play a central role by supporting the development of technological solutions and training skilled leaders to ensure that they are effectively deployed [6,7]. To address these gaps, we will train students in the core skills essential for net-zero polar science; sustainable research, polar environmental science, and low carbon technologies. We will do this with 42 industrial partners, governmental agencies and research institutes, who jointly employ 421,000 staff and generate £136 billion annually, ensuring our students benefit from experiential learning and work on applications of broad sectoral appeal. Our unique proposal will train the first generation of doctoral graduates with the skills to drive innovation in sustainable environmental science, supporting the UK’s 2050 net zero ambition. While our programme is topically focused on the polar regions, it spans all areas of environmental science and technology, benefiting the entire NERC community. We will create industry-ready doctoral leaders with outstanding problem-solving abilities to enable commercial development and implementation of solutions to allow an orderly transition of industry to sustainable business practices. As leaders of the UK’s polar science national capability, leaders of aligned doctoral training programmes in renewable energy [8], satellite data in environmental science [9], AI for environmental risk [10], citizen-centred AI [11], maths for climate [12], and environmental science [13-24], members of the NERC Net-Zero Oceanographic and Aerial Capability Teams, and co-chairs of the Diversity in UK Polar Science Initiative, we are uniquely able to provide this critical and progressive training.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-08

The current trajectory of climate change indicates that global temperatures are likely to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels within the next decade. This increases the likelihood of crossing critical climate tipping points, including irreversible loss of ice from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Such changes would accelerate sea-level rise and potentially disrupt global ocean circulation, with profound consequences for global climate, coastal communities, infrastructure and ecosystems. Accurate projections of ice-sheet dynamics are therefore a societal imperative for informed adaptation, risk planning, and policy development. The Fellowship, led by Dr. Jan De Rydt, addresses these challenges by integrating satellite observations with advanced numerical modelling to improve long-term sea-level rise forecasts from Antarctica and Greenland. Early achievements include a widely cited paper on West Antarctic ice loss, and the development of international benchmarking standards for ice-ocean models. The team has organised a major international symposium on cryospheric modelling, established new high-impact collaborations (OCEAN ICE and PRECISE), and published ten influential papers. Both phases of the Fellowship are structured around three work packages (WPs) aimed at improving model fidelity: WP1 enhances model initialisation using satellite data and machine learning; WP2 explores physical model uncertainties; and WP3 projects long-term changes under evolving climate scenarios. A core focus across all WPs is the interaction between ice sheets and the ocean, which drives the majority of observed ice loss. The team, now five strong, brings complementary expertise in ice-sheet modelling and ocean–ice interactions, forming the foundation for the proposed second phase of the Fellowship. Two new research strands will be introduced: (1) modelling the impact of ice-shelf collapse in North Greenland, and (2) incorporating dynamic ice-shelf margins into coupled ice–ocean models of West Antarctica. Both aim to refine near-term and post-2100 sea-level rise projections. Four new objectives (O7–O10) will guide the renewal phase, harnessing novel data assimilation, improved coupling techniques, and emerging capabilities in simulating ice-shelf dynamics. These outcomes will feed directly into international efforts such as ISMIP7, future IPCC reports, and broader climate policy discussions. During the renewal phase, I will focus on strengthening and expanding my research team by extending two PDRA contracts and supporting team members in securing independent funding. Building on international collaborations through EU Horizon, NSF/NERC, and other projects, I aim to grow our global network, particularly through leadership of MISOMIP2. I will prioritise stakeholder and policy engagement by participating in FLF Development Network sessions and applying to the Royal Society Pairing Scheme to deepen science–policy links. Applying for a professorship and preparing an ERC Advanced Grant application will mark the next milestones in my longer-term academic leadership journey.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2026 · 2026-02

Turbulence is a fundamental, ubiquitous and, at the same time, notoriously difficult problem of classical physics. The existing theories of strong (hydrodynamic) and weak (wave) turbulence rely on various approximations and assumptions and, despite many theoretical successes and an enormous literature on the subject, there is no general approach nor exactly solvable scenarios, and turbulence largely remains an unsolved problem of classical physics. It was realised recently that many questions and concepts pertaining to hydrodynamic and wave turbulence can also be meaningfully posed and interpreted in the framework of infinite-dimensional Hamiltonian integrable systems, constituting a new kind of nonlinear multiscale wave motion, dubbed integrable turbulence in the foundational 2009 paper by V. Zakharov. Mathematically, integrable turbulence can be viewed as the theory of multiscale random solutions to integrable partial differential equations such as the Korteweg - de Vries (KdV), nonlinear Schrodinger (NLS) and other equations. Integrability provides a unique set of analytical tools that enable, in principle, a precise description of complex fully nonlinear wave dynamics. Extending these tools to the realm of statistical mechanics of nonlinear waves is one of the major challenges of the modern theory of integrable systems. This project focuses on one key aspect of integrable turbulence:  the wave-mean field interaction. In classical turbulence, wave-mean flow is only solvable when the waves are linear. In contrast, the integrable turbulence framework does not involve small amplitude restrictions and allows for the description of fully nonlinear regimes including solitons -- the localised nonlinear waves that exhibit particle-like properties such as elastic, pairwise interactions. Solitons can be viewed as natural “normal modes'' of nonlinear wave fields in integrable systems. This motivates the study of wave-mean field interaction for soliton-dominated integrable turbulence, commonly called soliton gas. The concept of soliton gas as an infinite random ensemble of interacting solitons has recently emerged as a new and powerful tool for understanding nonlinear random wave fields in the language of statistical physics and hydrodynamics. The emergent, macroscopic, dynamics of soliton gases for a broad range of integrable models are universally described by a nonlinear integro-differential kinetic equation which provides a general analytical framework for this project. Project Objectives To derive and analyse a solvable turbulence-mean field interaction model for the KdV and NLS equation (focusing and defocusing cases) in the framework of kinetic theory of soliton gases; To apply the analytical model derived in O.1 to the description of the interaction of soliton gases with rarefaction wave and DSW mean fields initiated by Riemann step data and compare with numerical solutions; To explore physical applications of the developed theory and facilitate experimental realisation of the soliton gas-mean field interaction. The significance of the proposed research lies in the fact that it will be the first solvable model of turbulence-mean interaction with applications to a broad class of nonlinear physical systems modelled by integrable partial differential equations. The project results will benefit broad UK and international research communities involved in nonlinear waves and applied integrable systems research.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-12

REMAID will develop a transferable methodology for integrating climate information from Indigenous oral traditions into frameworks for improving contemporary climate models. Our goal is to improve projections of future climate change in data scarce Global South regions and support adaptation of vulnerable populations to the impacts of global warming. Many Global Southern regions lack the historic weather station records needed to evaluate climate model simulations and provide detailed understanding of local-scale climate processes. This hinders generation of high-resolution outputs for impact studies and early warning systems. Meteorological data scarcity is extreme in Saharan Africa, undermining climate risk reduction through adaptation, as acknowledged by the UN. However, several Saharan regions have rich oral traditions that encapsulate historical weather back to the late nineteenth century. REMAID will harness these oral traditions to improve reconstructions of historic climate variability and extremes, and climate projections in data-scarce regions. This will have groundbreaking impact on physical climate science, in demonstrating the value of Indigenous poetry as a climatic information source, on policy development in affected communities, and on scholars of Hassaniya poetry, who will benefit from physical explanations of historical climate conditions that can transform poetry interpretations. In the absence of instrumental and documentary records, or climate proxies (such as tree rings), we innovate in using historic climate information drawn from a nomadic oral tradition. Saharan nomads use poetry to pass knowledge between generations, including histories of climatic patterns dateable using the Saharawi calendar back to the 19th century, before human-caused climate change effects became noticeable. By interpreting poetic accounts of the seasonality of historic rains, temperatures, and climatic indicators recorded in descriptions of phenology and grazing patterns, we will illuminate past climate trends and shifts in the timing, duration and character of seasons. This information can be used to test climate model performance, by evaluating simulations of past climatic conditions in terms of their cycles of variability and trends over time. Additionally, to support robust monitoring and recording of regional climate, we will establish a new climate monitoring network in western Sahara using state-of-the-art weather sensors. This will provide unprecedented insight into the contemporary Saharan climate as well as immediate and valuable benefits for climate risk reduction (e.g., through improved early warning). The project addresses three linked interdisciplinary Research Objectives (ROs): RO1. Co-developing a transferable methodology for using Indigenous meteorological knowledge to evaluate reanalyses and climate models (lead: JA). RO2. Establishing an interdisciplinary climate monitoring and modelling network “Climate Network” in western Sahara (lead: BB). RO3. Exchanging project findings and methodological developments with key stakeholders and co-developing adaptation strategies using improved projections (leads: JA and BB).  These objectives will be achieved through the following activities: 1. Recording and analysing poetry from the Hassaniya oral tradition (a poetic tradition spanning all Western Sahara and Mauritania) and translating relevant climatic information into a matrix usable for climate scientists. 2. Designing the Climate Network with Saharawi nomads and partners and training local communities to monitor and maintain it 3 Targeting key stakeholders (climate modelling communities, other Indigenous communities with rich oral traditions, the African Union and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) with dissemination materials and methods that go beyond academic outputs and events. 4. Developing a group ethnography charting our development of anti-colonial, interdisciplinary working methods to highlight and challenge team and disciplinary hierarchies.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-12

On 28 November 2025, Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds >295 km/h, made landfall on Jamaica's south-western coast as the most powerful hurricane on record (since 1851) and the third most intense Atlantic hurricane, damaging six tropical forest ecosystems. These include the Blue Mountains (BM) cloud forest, John Crow Mountains (JCM) wet montane forest, Cockpit Country (CC) moist forest, Portland Ridge (PR) and Hellshire Hills (HH) (the last remaining habitat for the critically endangered Jamaican iguana) dry forests, and the Black River Lower Morass (BRLM) herbaceous wetland. Two sites (CC and BRLM) experienced significant damage. Melissa's impact was compounded by Hurricane Beryl, (Category 4, 3 July 2024) that damaged the BRLM and PR. All sites are internationally recognized biodiversity hotspots and protected areas including a National Park (BM and JCM), World Heritage site (BM and JCM), tentative World Heritage Site (CC), and RAMSAR wetland (BRLM). The frequency of high-intensity hurricane impacts has increased due to climate change. The JCM is the most frequently impacted – five hurricanes in 21 years (2004-2025) versus nine in 153 years (1851-2003) – while the CC is the least frequently impacted – two hurricanes in 37 years (1988-2025) versus three in 136 years (1851-1987). Past hurricane damage at three sites (PR, HH and CC) was never assessed and species/ecosystem vulnerability remains unknown. Hurricanes alter plant species composition through differential mortality and recruitment over years or decades. Compounding impacts reduce populations of vulnerable species. Jamaica has a high diversity of endemic frogs (23 species), many threatened with extinction. Many use bromeliads - funnel/vase-shaped rosette plants growing in trees and on the ground that holds water - as habitats. Most have fallen or are buried, and recovery may take decades. Accurate pre-recovery damage mapping is essential for tracking these changes and identifying vulnerable plant and frog species. Current mapping methods have limitations. Pre- and post-hurricane satellite image differencing is limited by image availability and cloud cover and validated using qualitative, subjective categories. Maps from our hurricane damage model can track forest structural changes and predict frog population responses but were validated using a subjective, site-specific parameter. To generalize our model across forest types and scales, we need data from objective, three-dimensional (3D) measurement methods. We have pre-hurricane data from 217 permanent plots (13.8 ha) monitoring 20,000+ stems of 200+ plant species across five impacted ecosystems, with recent surveys (2011-2025) including 3D data, plus 32 additional BM plots (1.426 ha), some monitored since 1974. Consequently, we have an unprecedented opportunity to quantify damage from a single Category 5 hurricane – the first in 174 years – and compounding hurricanes and identify accurate damage metrics and vulnerable species. With existing and newly established plots, we will (1) characterize hurricane damage across six tropical forest types using 3D data, (2) validate our damage model and satellite image differencing maps for broader applications, (3) assess frog populations at damaged and undamaged sites, and (4) identify plant and frog species vulnerable to damage from single catastrophic and compounding hurricanes. Follow-up surveys over 1-2, 2-5, and >5 years will track species responses to identify vulnerable/resilient species for conservation prioritization. Findings from our rapid and medium to longer term assessments will guide conservation and management initiatives aimed at reducing ecosystem vulnerability and supporting recovery in an era of intensifying hurricanes.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-12

Arctic regions are warming around three times faster than other parts of the Earth, causing vast tracts of these sensitive landscapes to rapidly change. The Arctic contains large quantities of frozen carbon in the ground, known as permafrost (representing 50% of global soil organic carbon), which is now thawing and becoming available to the atmosphere. Warmer Arctic air temperatures, and thawing permafrost, are increasing the amount of carbon being emitted into the atmosphere leading to accelerated rates of global climate change. To assess the importance of these carbon emissions and to model how much carbon will be emitted in future decades, we must monitor how processes controlling carbon emissions are changing and refine computer models to incorporate these processes. Arctic winter seasons can extend over nine months of the year and are warming at a faster rate than other seasons. Our understanding of ecosystem processes controlling carbon emissions during long winter periods are, however, severely limited by our lack of field measurements across different Arctic landscape types such as tundra and boreal forest. Furthermore, current computer models poorly simulate winter snowpack and energy exchanges between the air and land, causing them to poorly estimate winter carbon emissions from the ground. The S3 project will address these challenges. We will conduct extensive field measurement campaigns and harness novel low-cost instrumentation, to measure carbon fluxes through snowpacks across diverse and rapidly changing Arctic landscapes. Field measurements will be used to evaluate and improve the way we represent ecosystem processes, which control winter carbon emissions from soil to the atmosphere in climate models. Combining our results with others measured elsewhere in the Arctic, we will then create and test a new, computationally fast statistical model of ecosystem processes, which reproduces the functions controlling carbon emissions in a full climate model. This statistical model, known as an emulator, can be used to isolate and attribute how much each process contributes to the overall uncertainty in simulations of carbon emissions. The attribution of uncertainty in each process cannot currently be achieved by just repeatedly running a climate model; instead, an emulator will allow us to understand which processes are most important for accurate future projections of winter carbon emissions. This will help determine what causes the Arctic land surface to act as an annual carbon emitter (source) or carbon absorber (sink), and assess how this will change in the future across different regions of the Arctic. Policymakers and scientists will benefit from improvements made to an open-source community climate model and the attribution of uncertainty to individual ecosystem processes. This will help improve confidence in projections of future carbon emissions at policy-relevant timescales. Accurate projections are critical for forthcoming decades, as land subsidence, increased shrub growth, forest disturbance, and hydrological change are all profound environmental consequences expected because of permafrost thaw in Arctic regions. These consequences will directly affect local communities in Arctic regions. Improved projections of future change will inform community mitigation and adaptation land management strategies, as well as evidencing the urgent need for national and international carbon emission policy-making.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-12

Aims: This Rapid Evidence Review (RER) project will map and synthesise existing research on the legal, ethical and societal implications of automated approaches to harm prevention in gambling. In doing so, it will identify gaps in the evidence base in order to inform the direction of future research and policy development to address this critical issue. Context: The online gambling environment offers significant opportunities for identifying and responding to gambling harm in near real time. In recent years, rapid developments in automated technology, together with the ever-increasing availability of account-based and third-party data, have enabled the introduction of smarter, more sophisticated player protection strategies. These include: Single Customer View, financial vulnerability checks, and harm detection algorithms which monitor gambling activity to spot signs of risk and trigger interventions without human input. This data-driven approach has become central to the regulatory strategy for protecting vulnerable players; the 2023 White Paper setting out its vision to maximise the use of technology and data to protect people in a targeted way at all stages of the customer journey. Research has, in parallel, focused more narrowly on evaluating the technical validity of these methods in the context of gambling harm; however, the broader terrain with regard to fundamental legal, ethical and societal concerns remains largely unmapped. Academic literature on data-driven public health interventions more generally has given greater consideration to the legal and ethical concerns involved. These concerns include: privacy, transparency, algorithmic bias, fairness and equality, accountability, trust, autonomy and the potential for misuse of sensitive personal health data. In the context of gambling, however, the majority of studies on digital interventions do not explicitly or substantively address ethical and legal issues. The challenge this project addresses: As Rogers et al (2023) highlighted in their letter to the editor of Addiction, whilst initiatives like affordability checks are a logical way to address gambling harm, ‘there are questions regarding proportionality and inequity if those who are vulnerable and disadvantaged financially are subject to excessive surveillance and limitations on their freedoms’. Given the rapid pace of technological and regulatory development in this space, there is a clear need for an up-to-date review of the broader legal and ethics risks, which reflects recent innovations and emerging practices in gambling. While the incentive for moving forward at pace with these digital innovations is clear, developing and deploying automated technology without appropriate, in-depth consideration of the surrounding context and resulting interventions brings a risk of unintended consequences for individuals and society more broadly. These risks are especially pronounced and often disproportionately affect more disadvantaged, and potentially vulnerable, sections of the population, some of whom already have low levels of public trust. There is thus a significant and urgent need to transparently scope the legal, ethical and societal risks involved, not least in view of the fact that players have raised trust issues regarding tracked play in the past. Application and benefits: This project will provide the required first step, to inform the direction of the future research which is urgently needed to enable appropriate safeguards to be put in place, ensure meaningful consent and preserve public trust. This RER will ensure that findings are both academically robust and practically relevant to UK policymakers, regulators and service providers working to reduce gambling harms.  

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-11

The global textile industry is among the most polluting sectors, responsible for 10% of global emissions and generating vast volumes of wastewater and microplastics. This impact is driven by the widespread use of petrochemical-derived adhesives, synthetic dyes, and water-repellent treatments, many of which contain toxic or persistent chemicals. Despite growing demand for sustainable alternatives, current bio-based options often fall short in terms of performance, durability, or compatibility with existing industrial processes, limiting their adoption. This project addresses that challenge by building on BBSRC- and EPSRC-funded research to develop biologically produced adhesives and pigments that are biodegradable, high-performing, and compatible with established manufacturing systems. Our research has shown that recombinant hydrophobic proteins can significantly enhance hydrophobicity and fire resistance in cellulosic materials, and that biologically produced pigments such as melanin and indigo offer colourfast, UV-protective, and non-toxic alternatives to synthetic dyes. Importantly, these innovations are designed as ‘plug-in’ solutions that work within existing textile workflows, removing the need for disruptive changes to manufacturing infrastructure. The project will validate the scalability by optimising the production of these biomolecules through fermentation, refine application techniques for roll-to-roll manufacturing, and assess environmental and economic impact through life cycle and techno-economic analysis. It is structured around four objectives: (1) technical optimisation of biomolecule production; (2) performance validation in real-world textile settings; (3) assessment of environmental and economic impact; and (4) stakeholder engagement to support commercial adoption. The work has been co-developed with Sequinova, a sustainable fashion company producing biodegradable cellulose sequins. Early-stage trials have shown that protein-based adhesives and microbial pigments can be successfully integrated into Sequinova’s materials, enhancing water resistance, heat resistance and colour stability without the need for synthetic additives. This collaboration not only provides an immediate commercial use case, but also a route to wider market engagement across fashion, packaging, and cosmetics. Potential applications extend beyond sequins to non-fibrous textiles, technical garments, cosmetic formulations, and compostable packaging—supporting sectors seeking to eliminate fossil-derived materials. Our bio-based solutions offer enhanced performance, environmental safety, and circularity. As regulatory frameworks tighten and consumers demand cleaner products, the urgency and opportunity for this innovation continue to grow. The anticipated benefits are considerable: reduced environmental impact, improved occupational safety, and the development of new UK-based value chains within the bioeconomy. This project directly supports BBSRC’s strategic objectives for clean growth and sustainable manufacturing. By translating lab-scale innovations into market-ready solutions, we will help catalyse a shift towards more sustainable, biologically derived materials, ensuring the UK remains at the forefront of bio-based innovation.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-10

In collaboration with Royal Museums Greenwich ('RMG') and Historic Royal Palaces ('HRP'), members of the REACH CDP Consortium, this project investigates gender nonconformity and race-making in the court masques of Henrietta Maria (queen consort to Charles I). It will (1) bring scholarship on women’s performance, race-making and gender nonconformity to bear on the texts and archival materials of the Caroline masque in which Henrietta Maria and her women – some of the most important women performers in seventeenth-century England – performed; and (2) create new materials for the inclusive curation of the Queen’s House (one of RMG's core sites). The Queen’s House is of tremendous significance as an object of architectural and women’s history, and a site for the performance of Stuart queenship. It is the last non-ecclesiastical building completed for Henrietta Maria and the only remaining trace of the lost Greenwich Palace. However, because of a paucity of archival records, much about its early use remains elusive. This project analyses the rich records of court performance and conducts comparative work between the Queen’s House and the Banqueting House (built for James VI & I by Inigo Jones and used by the late Jacobean and Caroline courts) to reassess the relationship of Henrietta Maria’s Queen’s House to culture, art and performance. It assesses the extent and limits of the House as a performative ‘House of Delights’, and the relationship of these dynamics to Henrietta Maria’s broader artistic patronage. To investigate Henrietta Maria’s performances, the project draws on performance, gender, queer and trans studies, on theatre history, and on pre-modern critical race studies. Inigo Jones’ lighting techniques and costumes will be analysed for the discourses of racialised whiteness and fairness that surround the Queen; discourses of blackness will be analysed in the depiction of people of colour in scenic representations and theatrical machines. Costume and dance will be analysed to explore what Noémie Ndiaye calls the ‘scripts of blackness’ inherent in the cosmetic, textile, and danced representation of the Americans, Persians, Indians, Ottomans and others who people Stuart antimasques. Gender nonconformity will be analysed in moments like the confrontation between Pallas and Circe in Tempe Restored (1632) – in which Circe, played by one Madame Coniack, tells Pallas, played by an unnamed boy-actor, ‘Man-maid, begone!’ – and in cross-casting in Artenice (1626) and The Shepherds’ Paradise (1633), in which court women perform in beards and breastplates. This project will form part of RMG’s ongoing reconsideration of Henrietta Maria’s career in the Queen’s House. This CDP project is an ideal opportunity for the student to feed into these activities through a proposed placement at the Museum. The collaboration with HRP offers important additional benefits and opportunities. The Banqueting House will re-open to the public in 2025 and, following the extremely popular ‘Long Live Queen James’ event of 2018, HRP plans ‘summer seasons’ of live public programming and fresh inclusive interpretation. The student will have the chance to bring their findings and expertise to this programming, in a proposed placement at HRP to work on inclusive public engagement for the Banqueting House.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

The rapid growth in portable devices, including sensors and consumable electronics defines a new era for photovoltaics (PVs) because of the demand for innovative and sustainable power sources that can be easily integrated with high-value products. The integrated PV device can also act as an optical signal receiver, enabling the establishment of a simultaneous optical wireless communication (OWC) network among the interconnected IoT devices while harvesting energy from surrounding light sources. This Overseas Travel Grant aims to access the required specialist facilities and related expertise at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia and perform a series experiments to improve the power conversation efficiency and communication bandwidth of my solar cells. The objectives of my visit will be (i) study the surface passivation pathways using ultrathin alumina capping layer as well as Cd-free buffers to achieve low-cost, environmentally friendly, and high efficiency solar cells; (ii) optimise local chemical environment engineering to assess my designs for solar cells as low-speed OWC receivers; (iii) organise an innovation workshop during my visit to create a valuable platform at UNSW to promote project outputs in energy natural OWC and forge sustainable collaborations between academics, engineers and wider energy/telecommunication companies in Australia. Through the proposed novel approaches, we aim to achieve 15% kesterite solar cells with its communication bandwidth significantly increased from its current kHz to several hundred MHz. Importantly, this international collaboration will allow me to establish new partnerships with world-leading experts in thin film solar cells. By the exchange of knowledge and skills, it provides a special opportunity for professional growth that I will use to advance scientific research and innovation in Northumbria university. This will be achieved by generating essential feasibility data for a more extensive collaborative research programme that will include industrial partners from both UK and Australia. Moreover, the scientific findings will be disseminated widely through gold open access where possible, conferences and outreach events to maximum the benefit to researchers in the field and wider public.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Women’s labour has always underpinned the production of books, though they are infrequently credited with their work and leadership. In 2014, after 100 years, the International Publishers Association announced its first female president and in 2022 reported that ‘Diversity and inclusion requires more attention’. The book production trades in the UK, including the ink (£300M), paper (£3.5B), printing (£5.5B), and combined publishing industries (£9.8B GVA), significantly contribute to the economy. However, gender diversity remains a significant challenge in the worldwide printing, ink and paper industries, where women represent between 20% and 30% of the workforce. Even in the female-dominated publishing industry, there remains underrepresentation of women at the highest levels, and in the UK this is compounded by a lack of cultural and regional diversity. This feminist reconsideration of how women's work in the trades associated with book production is represented and recorded, now and in the future, is one of the many ongoing ways in which diverse voices can be preserved and recovered in the archives and celebrated more publicly. National histories of women and the book have thrived in recent years, especially for the fields of printing and bookselling. But many areas remain unrepresented, and, as a transnational or global discipline, Women’s Book History remains in its infancy. Despite books across the world being mostly products of the interwoven sectors of domesticity and trade from 1600-1900, feminist scholars must counter the fact that historiography, record-keeping, and archival policies and practice have been androcentric. Women's book history scholarship has predominantly privileged reading, literary, and editorial labour over that of ink and papermaking, calligraphy, xylography, and binding—trades in which women were more likely to labour, though recent work on engraving begins to redress this. Moreover, scholarship has been sufficiently Eurocentric to preclude non-printed texts and to focus on metal typography, when across much of the globe before 1900 manuscript publication and xylography remained the primary modes. This project will enable the PI to establish a new sub-discipline: global women's book history. It centres women's contribution to the production of books both historically, through archival research, and in the present, by recognising that collections policies and politics shape history and whose work is recognised. It combines feminist, archival, literary, historical, and material cultural approaches and concentrates on four areas of book production to deliver comparative and transnational women's histories: ink, paper, impression, and binding. It will draw together case-studies from Europe (PI), the Islamic World (Postdoc 1), and East Asia (Postdoc 2) in the period before the rapid adoption and industrialisation of the printed book: 1600 to 1900. Academic outputs will include four co-authored articles, an ambitious editorial project—a 3-volume Global History of Women in Book Production 1600-1900—based on an international project conference, and a PhD co-supervised with the British Library exploring the past, present, and future of feminist recovery. An illustrated children’s book will celebrate unsung women in global book production with a new generation of readers. A global history of women in book production is a work of feminist activism. The project drives the development of gender-inclusive library and archival practice, with bespoke training and an Inclusive Records Forum facilitating knowledge exchange between libraries and archives and the ink, paper, printing, and publishing industries, to help build accessible and inclusive book histories and futures.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Context & Challenge At a point when what belongs in museum fashion collections is increasingly scrutinised and debated, this project explores not what these collections contain, but what is absent from them: what is missing, lost, or was never acquired. Dress is central to human experience, a medium through which individual and collective identities and histories are constructed and performed. Thus, museum clothing collections are sites through which multiple histories are communicated and defined. Yet these collections are only ever partial reflections of dress history; shaped by past collecting policies often predicated upon hegemonic and Eurocentric definitions of fashion, and changing understandings of what merits preservation. Thus, historic clothing collections are rarely reflective of the communities they now serve; a dissonance which can reduce engagement amongst communities underrepresented in museum collections and perpetuate ideas that fashionable historic dress was the preserve of the few. As museums increasingly work to broaden and decolonise their collections through revised collecting policies (see, Museums Association’s Empowering Collections, 2019 and Decolonising Museums, 2022), historic dress presents a particular challenge, because the fragile and disposable nature of clothing means that uncollected historic garments often do not survive. Consequently, museums need novel approaches to the problem of uncollected and now uncollectible historic dress. Aims & Benefits Working with London Museum’s Dress and Textile Collection this project explores how absences inform the ways audiences and museum staff engage with, manage, and care for museum fashion collections. In turn, it asks how museums can address these absences without accessioning new objects and through that engage new and broader audiences. As such the project does not seek to replace or recreate absent garments, but instead asks how making visible what cannot and never will be exhibited, can help us to tell different clothing stories, ones reflective of fashion's diverse histories. It asks; What do we learn about the histories of fashion in museums, and current museum practices by mapping what is absent from museum clothing collections? In the context of a drive for greater physical and digital access to museum collections, what are the benefits to and challenges for museums and audiences of making visible what is absent from collections? What role can audience-led practice-based research play in rebalancing historic collections and informing future museum fashion collection policies and practices? Making visible histories which have been omitted or erased is central to creating a more equitable heritage sector. Building on the AHRC objective of conserving and curating cultural infrastructure, this project tackles the problem of objects which cannot be preserved for the future; garments which due to their fragile nature, have already been lost. Taking London Museum as its central case study, through its combined methods (creative data enquiry, participatory workshops, film-making) and outputs (artworks, exhibitions, publications), the project seeks to inform sector wide approaches to addressing historic curatorial bias in museum clothing collections, asking audiences, communities currently underrepresented by these collections, and museum workers how gaps left by absent garments should be filled. We will share experience, insights, and outcomes from the research through a symposium, conference presentations and KE workshops with regional, national and international museums, and museum organisations (ICOM Costume, DATS), launching a toolkit and ongoing open-access repository of case studies for using audience-led participatory creative practice to address gaps in historic clothing collections.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a significant economic burden to NHS; costing the UK government ~£180 million annually. It also presents a vital detriment to human welfare and health. Diagnose and treating AMR represent significant challenges in health care industry globally. However, there is an opportunity to develop disruptive approaches to identifying AMR at earlier stage, to guide doctors to treat patient. Current AMR testing methods include (1) culture-based technology, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), (2) DNA microarray, and (3) whole-genome sequencing and metagenomics. Culture-based method is the golden standard in clinic testing, however it suffers disadvantage of long operation time (typically 1-3 days), which significantly delays treatment to patients and thus results in increased mortality (such as sepsis patient). All above tests require dedicated clinical laboratory, expensive instrument and highly skilled staff. Significant concerns have been raised on the rising of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae including K. Pneumoniae and E. Coli due to the acquisition of carbapenemase. The rate of hospital-acquired carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterale infection was 15% and all carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterale were multi-drug resistant in a recent report from Ethiopia. The carbapenemase-producing E. Coli and K. Pneumoniae are also reported in hospital-acquired infection in UK. Developing sensitive and affordable method to test for such resistance is a key for early diagnosing the carbapenem resistance infection among patient with hospital-acquired infection. In addition to K. Pneumoniae and E. Coli, other bacteria such as Pseudomonas Aeruginosa can also gain the trait and exhibit resistance not only to b-lactam, but also to other groups of antibiotics. Carbapenemase can be recognized to several classes including class A (KPC), Class B (VIM, IMP, NDM) and class D (OXA-48). NDM and KPC are the two most prevalent carbapenemases in many countries including UK, while OXA-48 type carbapeneses are the most challenging resistant mechanisms for clinical detection using the culture method due to their weak enzymatic activity. VIM commonly present in the Enterobacteriaceae but also highly prevalent in non-glucose-fermenting bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa. There is an urgent need in developing a low cost, high sensitivity, easy to operate sensing system for early detection of these microbials and stopping their spreading. The overarching aim of the project is to develop a fast-response, ultra-sensitive and affordable fibre optic biosensor platform for rapid point of care test (POCT) of antimicrobial resistance with reasonable cost. The specific objectives of this project are: Optimisation of antibodies' functionalization process with a very high binding efficiency. Develop data processing algorithm for automatic reading of portable demodulation system. Demonstration of the fast detection (<20 minutes) of KPC, VIM and OXA-48 in biological samples, with a LoD under 1 pg/mL. Applying the developed TFI biosensor for clinic AMR test, and verifying it using commercial test methods. The success of this project will benefit researchers working in all diagnostics fields in which extremely high sensitivity is required, or where measurements are used in models or meta-analyses. This project will benefit the medical diagnostic industry in general by providing an accurate, easy-to-use tool for fast AMR diagnostics, and supporting public health. This will relieve the economic burden on NHS for effective treatment of patients and save lives.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

The Blackborne collection at the Bowes Museum, donated in 2007, is one of the largest and most important lace collections in the world. It comprises 7000 items, dating from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries, from the remaining stock and study collection of the Victorian-era father and son lace dealers, A. Blackborne and Company of London, who supplied antique lace to collectors, museums like the Met, and fashionable clients. The collection features many rare pieces of lace, including a man’s needle lace collar made in England around 1635,a large selection of lappets (part of a woman’s headdress) from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, and spectacular dress flounces and veils from the late nineteenth century. All the major lace-making centres and techniques are represented in the collection. Despite its historical value, only a third of the collection has been catalogued, leaving critical aspects of its unique history and cultural significance unexplored. This project will provide the first comprehensive study of the collection, focusing on the 19th-century antique lace trade and its influence on fashion and society. During this period, the rise of machine-made lace disrupted the handmade lace industry, yet created a new demand among affluent buyers for antique handmade lace as markers of distinction. Antique lace became a valuable and coveted commodity, collected for its craftsmanship, adapted into contemporary garments, or used in costume and interior design. The project addresses three key themes: 1.     The Antique Lace Trade: Examining the lace trade’s operation outside of major fashion centres and the impact of regional craftsmanship on 19th-century dress. 2.     Collecting and Fashion: Investigating how and why collecting antique lace and its perceived value influenced fashionable dress and societal practices. 3.     Valuation and Adaptation: Exploring motivations for collecting lace, its use in contemporary fashion, and the rationale for value-based comparisons between antique and machine-made lace. The project supports the second of The National Gallery/Bowes Museum Research Priorities, The Making of Meaning with its emphasis on object-based research and exploration of the structure and makers of lace, as well as its societal and commercial impact in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Through historical research, speculative methods, and digital humanities, the study will map the hidden histories of this international textile trade. Research stages include, cataloguing the collection, analysing lace origins, techniques and adaptations, and contextualizing the trade through visual and literary sources. The outcome of this project will be the first complete survey of the Blackborne lace collection, presenting a fuller understanding of both its scope and significance and relationship to other major lace collections in museums. Outputs will include a thesis contextualizing the collection’s importance, an interactive digital atlas mapping trade routes and object histories, and a curated exhibition at The Bowes Museum.  These outputs will highlight the cultural and economic significance of antique lace, tracing its journey from craftsmanship to collectibles. The research will also create new knowledge of the collection, enhancing The Bowes Museum’s documentation and understanding of its significance, especially within the context of the wider museum collection as well as widening opportunities for interpretation.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-09

In space science there is a lack of understanding of the link between a comet’s inner coma and the cometary plasma tail. With the COMMIT fellowship (Cometary Observation and Modelling of Mass-loading Ions in the Tail) I will answer the question: What is the role of mass-loading in creating and sustaining cometary tail structures? Comets are small solar system bodies made up of ice and dust. As they approach the Sun, the ices sublimate and are ionised to form a plasma cloud around the comet. This plasma cloud presents an obstacle to the solar wind and forms the cometary plasma environment. Mass-loading describes the processes that transfer energy and momentum from the solar wind to the cometary ions which eventually results in a full incorporation of the cometary ions into the solar wind flow. This is visible as the plasma tail via remote observations. The plasma tail is home to fundamental, unsolved questions in cometary physics. We lack the ability to link structures observed in the plasma tail with mass-loading processes in the inner coma. This is because telescopic observations of the plasma tail have been sparse despite great advances in cometary science from recent in-situ observations. One of the main transient features of the tail are disconnection events that in literature are often related to reconnection near the nucleus. However, in a previous publication, I speculated that mass-loading inefficiencies induced by solar wind magnetic field changes can also be the cause of tail disconnections. Me and my team will combine numerical simulations, in-situ observations and remote observations of cometary tails to establish the missing link between large scale structures in the tail and their origin in the inner coma. Plasma tail observations are challenging due to interference from the dust and low water ion emission rates, but it has been shown in the past that they can be accomplished with less capable telescopes than what is available now. During the fellowship, I will procure and install a new filter to observe water ions at a suitable telescope, which will allow us to measure the ion density distribution in cometary tails. Simulations will provide a link between spacecraft measurements in the inner coma and the tail features seen in remote observations. We will exploit a well-tested hybrid code that is ideally suited to this, as it can track ions in the simulation and relate their trajectories to tail disconnections and other tail structures, while maintaining high spatial resolution at the same time. My team will also examine reconnection occurrence at comet 67P using Rosetta data, to investigate sources of disconnection events. The tools I develop throughout this fellowship will also be crucial to enhance the scientific return of ESA’s Comet Interceptor mission, which will launch in 2029. The main aim of the fellowship also directly addresses two of the open questions posed by the community in a White Paper on cometary science. More broadly, the interaction of two different ion species like the cometary ions and the solar wind ions is a fundamental process in many astrophysical plasmas, within and outside of the solar system. The fellowship will contribute to the wider strategic goals of UKRI and answer questions of energy and momentum transfer in multi-species plasmas.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-08

Technology can support people living with dementia to maintain their independence through staying physically, cognitively and socially active; monitoring dementia progression and early detection of changes; and being connected to services and resources. Currently there is no dementia pathway connecting people living with dementia to technology or services and no connection between services to support people living with dementia. This transdisciplinary, multisectoral Network Plus brings together stakeholders across the North East and North Cumbria (NENC) region to co-produce a vision of life with dementia connected by technology. The NENC region is an ideal location and testbed  to co-create and demonstrate what a joined-up life with dementia could look like for several reasons. NENC has the highest proportion of people living with dementia per head of the population in England. NENC is the largest Integrated Care System in England, with over 3.1million people. Over 60% of the NENC population is classed as deprived, with many living in rural and remote areas, experiencing inequalities in access to digital tools. The NENC region has a strong record of collaboration and innovation across sectors – NHS, local authorities, universities, and industry – which provide a strong foundation for this Network Plus. Over the three years our network of researchers, people living with dementia, family care partners, health, local authorities, charities and industry will work together to: (i) identify gaps in the current system; (ii) propose solutions to the gaps; and (iii) test out technologies to speed up the process of getting helpful devices to people living with dementia. (i) To identify gaps, we will plot the current life course of a person living with dementia in NENC, including interactions with services, such as unplanned hospital admissions. From this life course we will pinpoint where technology, including data sharing, could be helpful. (ii) To address the gaps, we will pump-prime projects from new teams across the region including people living with dementia and family members, social care, health and charity sector working with researchers, supported by our core studio team of designers, developers, health and dementia experts. (iii) To address inequalities and bring technology to people living with dementia we will trial a model of local technology hubs embedded in communities across NENC. At the hubs people can get advice and recommendations about technology, borrow devices to try at home, and add their voices to the discussion about how technology could help them. We will also work with other Network Pluses to scope how their technologies can fit into the service blueprint. The benefits of this Network Plus will be: increased awareness of and access to digital support and services for people living with dementia to maintain independence; improved communication between different parts of the system to detect signs of change and provide earlier intervention to avoid unplanned hospital admissions or other challenges to staying at home; reduced demands on health and social care services through responding to crisis situations, all of which will improve the lives of people living with dementia and can be replicated across the country.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-06

This research proposal aims to advance our understanding of the physics of our closest star, the Sun, and other solar-like stars. The Sun displays a number of fascinating and dynamic phenomena such as powerful solar flares and giant, planet-sized concentrations of magnetic fields (sunspots). It also provides a unique opportunity to examine in detail how other stars behave. The Sun is made of a plasma (ionised gas) threaded by a strong magnetic field. Such magnetised plasmas are common throughout the universe (e.g. active galaxy nuclei, nebula, interstellar medium), hence the research will also aid advances across multiple research communities. Many stars possess their own weather systems, although these systems are extreme compared to those we experience on Earth. In our solar system, a hot, million degree wind blows off the Sun at colossal speeds reaching millions of miles per hour, washing over the planets. While we are under the protection of the Earth's magnetic field, that deflects the Sun's wind, other planetary bodies in the solar system have been exposed to its influence. For example, the Sun's wind is known to have stripped Mars of its atmosphere. Scientists are also interested in how these winds will influence the habitability of exoplanets around other Sun-like stars. These winds also contribute to how the stars evolve, with the Sun losing over 10 trillion tonnes of material each year via its winds. The objectives of the RiPSAW project are to examine the generation of the hot plasma and powerful winds, focusing on the role of magnetic waves. These magnetic (or Alfvén) waves can transfer energy through a star's atmosphere and are considered an important feature of any magnetic star. During the initial phase of RiPSAW, Dr Morton and his research team pioneered techniques for estimating properties of the magnetic waves. The renewal of the RiPSAW project will see these tools advanced to examine if there is evidence for wave turbulence in the Sun's corona. Turbulence is one possible mechanism for explaining the heating and acceleration of the winds. Hence the proposed work may transform our understanding of how these hot winds behave. To address the fundamental challenges, RiPSAW makes use of advanced mathematical techniques and cutting-edge computer simulations to create models of the Sun based on magnetohydrodynamics. We combine this theoretical effort with the highest quality data of the Sun available from state-of-the-art solar instruments (e.g. National Solar Observatory's DKIST - the world's newest and largest solar telescope); incorporating information from across the electromagnetic spectrum (e.g. infrared, EUV) and analysing this with modern methods drawn from statistics and machine learning.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-05

Context and challenge. Traditional didactic higher education teaching and assessment methods, such as lectures and examinations, do not adequately equip students for an increasingly complex and fast-changing world yet are still commonplace throughout the sector. The growing use of playful learning approaches presents a timely opportunity to change university teaching for the better so that graduates are better equipped to tackle the complex problems faced by future societies. Researchers argue that play can enhance higher-level learning, increase intrinsic motivation, combat fear of failure, improve sense of belonging, and enhance creativity. However, playful learning in higher education lacks a robust and systematic evidence base of what works, in what contexts, why, and what the impacts are. As a result, university leaders and educators may be reluctant to endorse playful approaches, inhibiting the changes needed to enhance education and support the next generation of learners. Playful learning brings together games (engaging experiential learning environments) and play spaces (inclusive safe imagination environments) to create learning where failure is normalised. Eight different playful learning approaches have been identified but there has been no systematic study into the effectivities of these different approaches or their use in different disciplinary contexts. Aims and Objectives. The aim of the RE:PLAY project is to carry out the foundational work to develop a rich and deep quantitative and qualitative exploration of the use of playful learning in UK higher education. It will develop an evidence base on the effectiveness of eight playful learning approaches across Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences and Business, STEM, and Health-related subjects. The objectives are to: O1. explore how playful learning approaches are currently used in UK HE and the perceptions of senior leaders; O2. investigate experiences, benefits, drawbacks, and barriers associated with playful learning for students, academics, learning designers, and academic support staff; O3. design, implement, and evaluate a learning design process, framework, and toolkit for developing effective playful learning experiences; O4. research the effects of playful learning on student learning, intrinsic motivation, fear of failure, sense of belonging, and creativity. As well as providing evidence on the use and value of play, RE:PLAY will implement and evaluate a broad mixed-methods approach that can be used to evidence the value of any higher education learning and teaching innovation. Potential applications and benefits. Evidence of the effectiveness of playful learning will influence how these approaches are used across the higher education sector, and potentially into the wider further education, adult and corporate education sectors. The increased understanding of how best to use and design playful learning will benefit leaders’ decision-making regarding teaching and learning and academics’ teaching practice, improving student learning and experience. The playful learning design guidance, model, and toolkit that we will produce will benefit learning designers, academics, and other teaching staff to develop the skills required to embed playful learning approaches in the most effective ways to ensure that students are best equipped for the future work of work. The research design, data, and instruments will benefit higher education scholars investigating changes to teaching practice. Overall, the evidence provided by the RE:PLAY project will increase the legitimacy of playful learning approaches and facilitate their increased use across the sector, supporting students to embrace play to gain the skills and attitudes they will need to face the global challenges that the future holds.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-04

Internationally, municipal government is struggling to finance local public services and place making objectives. This can be due to the impacts of funding reductions, downloading of responsibilities to the local level, inflation, or structural changes in society - such as age-related dependency. Analyses of these situations typically focus on a single technical element of the finance system, such as nature of local taxation, rather than a wider connected system approach to municipal finance and associated governance. For example, considerations of municipal government take place without consideration of its relationship with regional or central government, or municipal autonomy without consideration of equalisation between relative location. The objective of this project is to synthesise existing knowledge concerning municipal finance systems in England and Canada and centre this in complex adaptive system (CAS) thinking, to improve understanding of the connected complexity of municipal finance, to aid comparison of municipal finance within these broader systems of governance and, indeed, other international jurisdictions. The project has three main components or objectives: 1) We will synthesise existing academic and grey literature on municipal finance and governance in Canada and England, so we can begin to piece together the complex relationship between finance and governance structure. 2) We will synthesise existing studies of governance that utilize complex adaptive systems as their primary framework to develop a framework for mapping municipal finance with larger governance systems. And 3) We will use this framework to create preliminary profiles of the governance systems in England, Canada, and each of its ten provinces. These profiles will facilitate future comparative research and inform policymakers and the public on the place of municipal finance within broader systems of governance. By addressing these objectives, we intend to contribute to multi-disciplinary scholarly conversations around resilient municipal finance strategies, inter-territorial equity, multi-scalar governance coordination, the provision and payment of public services and appropriate methodological perspectives for understanding these practical conundrums. The original blending of the complex adaptive system approach with studies into municipal finance offers a conciliarity position that resolves the regular tension between scales and forms of government through presenting a standpoint that considers all municipalities, provinces, territories and federal or state governments as a connected whole. In addition, using complex adaptive system thinking to link literature and reveal gaps in knowledge is a novel contribution to the review and analysis of literature. Beyond the potential contribution to academia, the jurisdictional profiles and new research framework should be of interest to a wide audience including government professionals at municipal, provincial, territorial and federal/national government levels in each country, elected officials across the same scales of governance, local citizens, businesses who contribute tax-based revenue, and professional organisations associated with public accountancy and audit. To mobilise and share our findings, we have partnered with the Local Government Information Unit (the largest municipal membership organisation in England) and the Institute of Urban Studies, (established in 1969, the IUS is Canada's oldest research institute focusing on municipal and urban governance). These organisations will help broker and catalyse our research dissemination, ensuring that our findings reach the public, practitioners, and academic communities.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-04

Animal pollination is crucial for ecosystem stability and global food security, however declines in many pollinator species have been recorded worldwide. Peru is a global biodiversity hotspot where deforestation and climate change are key threats for many species, including pollinators. With Peru's economy reliant on agriculture, including crops that depend on animal pollination, there exists a juxtaposition between a desire for nature conservation and increased agricultural production. Managing landscapes to benefit pollinator biodiversity is expected to benefit crop yields, however challenges exist in developing sustainable approaches to agricultural land management. In other biodiverse tropical regions, stingless beekeeping (meliponiculture) benefits biodiversity and also crop production through enhanced pollination services. However, there is limited knowledge of the role of stingless bees and other insects for pollination of many crops in Peru, or how agricultural landscapes can be managed to support diverse pollinator communities. Our project will take an interdisciplinary approach to assessing the role of pollinators for coffee production in the Peruvian Amazon, a crop of significant economic value in Peru which is highly vulnerable to climate change. We will: 1) Collect flower-visitor interaction data to identify pollinators important for coffee production on smallholder farms and identify which floral resources across the landscape are utilised by pollinators through plant-pollinator network analyses. 2) Analyse pollen from stingless bee honey to identify floral sources. 3) Undertake participatory community workshops, emphasising gendered and intergenerational knowledges, to gather qualitative data around current practices and knowledge in relation to pollinating insects and stingless bee management in coffee production, including local knowledge of flower-insect interactions. 4) Integrate data across the project components using a network approach to examine how local knowledge maps to the ecological data on pollinating insects. The partnership will integrate expertise across disciplines and share knowledge among partners through workshops and capacity building activities. The project will build links with local communities, critical for the development of future research activities. Project results will be shared with stakeholders, including local communities, via dissemination workshops. Workshop feedback will guide development of research outputs to maximise their impact with smallholder farmers and governmental departments. A toolkit for dissemination with smallholder farmers will synthesise our results and integrate findings with existing knowledge to advise on best practices for sustainable management of agricultural landscapes that benefit pollinators and crop production. The project will develop our understanding of which pollinators are important for a high value crop, which floral resources those pollinators use, and how coffee farms can be better managed to support pollinators in Peru. The co-created methodological framework for this proof-of-concept study of smallholder coffee farms will be adaptable to other regions across the Peruvian Amazon and other crops. We will also expand knowledge of the gender dynamics around stingless beekeeping and the roles of women in sustaining and enhancing economies based around the synergies between coffee production and stingless beekeeping. This new partnership will provide an important foundation for further collaborative studies across the Peruvian Amazon. We intend for these to inform sustainable agricultural practices, bolster conservation efforts, empower local communities, and shape effective strategies and policy making. These actions will protect pollinators and pollination services for crops, supporting the agricultural viability and biodiversity of the region.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-04

The North East Space Communications Accelerator (NESCA) is a collaboration between Northumbria University (Lead Organisation), Durham University, Newcastle University, the North East Mayoral Combined Authority (NEMCA), Space North East England (SNEE), and the North East Space Leadership Group (NESLG), who share a vision for the North East as a world-class, vibrant region for space businesses to grow. NESCA will support the exciting, emerging cluster of world-class space research and development in the North East region (NE) by building on investment in regional space infrastructure, clear civic ambition to deliver high-skilled jobs, opportunities and economic growth, and a growing regional industry presence from space-focused businesses. Nationally, the Space Industrial Plan (SIP) and the National Space Strategy (NSS) outline the government's ambitions for creating a world-class space ecosystem, by integrating local capabilities and excellence into a high-performing network of regional clusters that can deliver on national priorities. The SIP recognises the importance of aligning local priorities for research and innovation to a clear national goal and NESCA's focus directly aligns to the 5 listed Capability Goals. Through the work of SNEE, and the NESLG, the region has established clear civic, industrial, and academic ambitions for the development of the space sector that are fully aligned to the NSS and SIP. These are identified as market opportunities for the region, developed from an evidence base for the absorptive capacity of industry and aligned to the research excellence in our universities with clear ambitions for growth. These regional opportunities are resilient space communications, earth observation, and space sustainability. The timing of this initiative coincides with the establishment of the devolved combined authority, NEMCA, the development of the North East Space Skills and Technology Centre (NESST), the active delivery of the North East Space Strategy and increasing investment and growth in NETpark as a premier UK science park. The NESCA partnership will bridge the gap between high-quality research outputs and delivering the impact required to achieve industrial and civic growth ambitions for the space sector in the region, contributing directly to the growth of the national space ecosystem. NESCA will focus on resilient space communications, following open consultation with our civic and industrial partners which highlighted the central importance of this theme as an enabling function across many space applications. Based on further feedback from industrial partners we have defined a series of Innovation Themes that support and enable, or will directly benefit from, resilient space communications, these include: technologies, space sustainability, in-space opportunities, terrestrial applications, and smart and resilient networks. The mapping between these themes and our research expertise ensures an effective matching of innovation excellence from our universities with industrial demand within the cluster and aligns with regional and national priorities for growth. NESCA is supported directly by 14 industrial partners, leveraging £417k in contributions (17% bid value). With a clear place-based mission, NESCA proposes a series of knowledge exchange activities over a 4-year programme that will provide much needed capacity-building to translate our world-class space research and innovation into impact that will deliver growth for the region. Activities will focus on People, Innovation, and Place as vehicles for delivering economic and social impact and will include a Collaborative Fund component for engaging with partners from outside of the consortium to maximise the reach and value of the programme to the regional cluster.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-03

To avoid catastrophic climate change, scientists now agree that greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels used for home heating, transportation, and so on, must be reduced to "net-zero" by 2050. In the event of global decarbonisation, liquid hydrogen is among the most potential energy carriers for transporting energy from regions with enormous resources, such as Australia, to nations with limited energy supplies, such as the EU. However, liquefaction, transportation, and storage of liquid hydrogen present scientific and economic challenges that must be addressed to deploy it at the scale required to meet the demand. One major limitation is that hydrogen liquefaction is an energy-intensive process. A liquefaction process transforms hydrogen gas at 25 °C to liquid hydrogen at -253 °C at atmospheric pressure using a gas compressor, series of heat exchangers, and Joule–Thompson valve. This transformation requires a huge amount of energy. The current hydrogen liquefiers' energy consumption is between (11.9 and 15.0) kWh/kg, and the liquefaction cost is between (2 and 3) US$/kg. In comparison, liquefied natural gas's (LNG) energy consumption is about 0.33 kWh/Kg and costs less than 0.3 US$/kg. Therefore, significant effort is required to reduce the cost of hydrogen liquefaction to a similar value to LNG. One way to achieve this is using mixed refrigerants (MRs) in hydrogen liquefaction heat exchangers and compressors. Common MRs can content hydrogen, nitrogen, neon, helium, and hydrocarbons ranging from methane to butane. MRs can have evaporation temperatures much closer to the cooling temperatures of the hydrogen gas than the typical refrigerant, such as nitrogen. The reduction in temperature differences between the hydrogen and MRs enhances heat transfer and efficiency. Conceptual liquefaction cycles using process simulation tools have been investigated using MRs, and they found that they can significantly improve efficiency from 13.58 kWh/kg to 5.91 kWh/kg. However, the experimental data, such as density for MRs at temperatures below -173 °C, are very limited. Consequently, the predictions of the existing thermodynamic models in the simulation tools are poor. To improve these models the MR property data with sufficiently high accuracy are needed, so the state-of-the-art experimental techniques should be utilised to obtain them. The most advanced experimental facilities for cryogenic measurements in liquid hydrogen have been developed at the University of Western Australia (UWA). In this context, the objective of this overseas travel grant is to access the experimental facilities at UWA to perform an experimental program to measure the phase behaviour and speed of sound of (hydrogen + helium + neon + nitrogen) mixtures at temperatures between ( -173 and -253) °C and pressures up to 100 bar to improve the accuracy of the thermodynamic models for the development hydrogen liquefaction process. Furthermore, this grant will allow me to establish a new international collaboration between Northumbria University and UWA as well as to expand my research knowledge in liquid hydrogen and my expertise in extremely low-temperature setups that I would be able to transfer to Northumbria University after my visit. The new collaboration will contribute to the UK hydrogen strategy by providing technological expertise, knowledge, and data to support the development of liquid hydrogen technology in the UK, particularly in the North East. In the future, this research line will allow North East companies to engage in hydrogen technology.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-03

Advances in technology have transformed and expanded the ways in which violence against women (VAW) can be perpetrated. Like so many other aspects of life, VAW has become digitalised, with online violence and abuse now ubiquitous in the lives of women and growing at an alarming rate. Digitalised VAW comes in many forms including hacking, threats, surveillance/tracking, harassment and stalking, cyber flashing, child and/or fake pornography, and malicious distribution of intimate photos and messages, also know as image based sexual violence. To date, very little research has been carried out on this phenomenon, leaving significant gaps in the literature around the prevalence of this type of violence in Europe, victim characteristics, reporting practices, the impact on victims wellbeing, recovery and the availability of support services. This project thus proposes an extensive investigation into this issue which, as it continues to go unaddressed, poses a significant risk to women’s ability to safely engage in the online world. To do this, the project will take a mixed methods approach, applying both quantitative survey-based methods and in-depth qualitative interviewing to gain rich and insightful data on the issue. Quantitative data will be used to further understand the nature and scale of DVAW, while qualitative data will focus on the impact, meaning making and support available to victims.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-02

This project connects student mobility to changing migration policies and discourses in Western Europe: it scrutinises how student mobility has developed and changed in the context of local, national and European migration policies. Through this focus, the project makes an original contribution to the literature on immigration in and to Western Europe during the period from the 1960s to the 1980s. It offers fresh insights into the development and transformation of selective migration regimes and the ways their target constituencies experienced them. From the nineteenth century, mobile students constituted a distinct category of migrants because of their ambivalent status. On the one hand, their academic and social backgrounds meant that they were often perceived as cultural ambassadors, educational elites and leaders-in-the-making, rather than as objects of migration policy. Policymakers in both sender and recipient countries treated them as vessels for knowledge transfer, modernisation processes or projections of 'soft power' - considerations that also underpinned the creation of various international scholarship schemes. However, from the 1960s onwards, these favourable perceptions contrasted with tightening migration policies in Western Europe, resulting in selective migration regimes and categorisations for legal, illegal, welcome and unwanted migration. This is the broader subject area to which the project makes a distinct contribution. It explores the transformation of these complex policies over three decades and, for the first time, inserts educational mobility into the picture. It investigates the relationship between restrictive migration policies in Western Europe and schemes that facilitated the transnational mobility of students. Moreover, it shows how such mobility intersected with other forms of migration (such as flight, exile and labour migration) and what this meant for the mobile students who often faced many of the issues that were central to migrant experiences more broadly, from the navigation of visa bureaucracies to personal encounters with racism, xenophobia and discrimination. By integrating Belgium, France, West Germany and the United Kingdom into one analytical framework, the project embeds educational mobility into the history of migration to and within Western Europe. It identifies key features of such mobility and, in doing so, also sets it in relation to comparable or contrasting mobilities to North America and to the state-socialist countries in Eastern Europe. Drawing on sources from national archives, international institutions, universities and non-governmental organisations, the project combines comparative, international and transnational perspectives. By tracing the shifting policies towards, and experiences of, international students to and in Europe across three decades, the project connects phenomena that so far have been treated separately in the academic literature. Moreover, it shows how the politics of student mobility translated broader geopolitical constellations - including Cold War politics, decolonisation, European integration and the changing frameworks for international cooperation - into mobility patterns in ways that have not yet been fully acknowledged. This collaborative project will result in a co-authored monograph on the history of student mobility in Western Europe, journal publications as well as knowledge exchange activities with the European Students' Union and the Global Student Forum. As a whole, the project makes a pioneering contribution to our understanding of migration regimes, the categorisations of mobility and the genealogy of discourses about migration. Thus, the project will identify educational mobility as a phenomenon that both reflected and shaped such processes.