To find out more about our Postdoctoral Fellows, please click on our cohorts below.

To find out about our excellent 2023/24 ESRC-funded Post-Doctoral Fellows, please click on their names below.

SeNSS pathway: Science, Technology and Sustainability Studies
SeNSS university: University of Kent
Primary mentor: Dr Rajindra Puri
Second mentor: Professor Simon Mortimer
Research topic title: Drivers of environmentally friendly farming distribution and their impact on sustainability performance at different scales: a mixed methods approach
Research project description: Brexit presented the UK with an opportunity to reform agricultural policy, in attempt to better address the environmental and social harms that have been associated with modern intensive farming. In England, the initial aims of these reforms placed an emphasis on ‘public money for public goods’ and landscape-scale actions via cooperative management. My ESRC-funded PhD research coincided with this transitional period for farming in England, and so focused on identifying challenges and opportunities in applying these principles to improving agricultural sustainability at scale. One of the main current approaches to studying farmer adoption behaviours explores the role of farmer identities, social status, and cultural ideals of what a ‘good farmer’ should be doing. I applied these concepts by using in-depth interviews to ask how farmers interpret the idea of being providers of public goods and doing so in cooperation with their peers. I complemented this qualitative research with spatial modelling to analyse the distribution of farmer participation in agri-environment schemes at the district level in England, and subsequently conducted a regional sustainability assessment of regenerative agriculture in south-east England. I will use this fellowship to disseminate my findings to academic audiences by converting this research into five peer-reviewed journal articles, to be published in leading journals. These articles will make new connections between disciplines, provide recommendations that could inform implementation of post-Brexit agricultural policy, and advance our understanding of the contribution of alternative farming approaches to regional sustainability – a neglected topic in the literature, which has focused on sustainability primarily at the farm level. My thesis also highlighted the importance of combining analyses at different spatial scales for understanding the adoption and sustainability performance of alternative farming approaches. To build on this, I will also conduct some further research, adapting my methods to incorporate a multi-scale approach, advancing this frontier in agricultural sustainability research, with a view to writing up this work for a sixth journal article. I also plan to use the fellowship to create an interactive web map to present my findings to non-specialist audiences, continue teaching in areas relevant to my academic interests, and prepare grant applications for future research comparing the effectiveness of different mechanisms for landscape-scale environmental management on farmland.

Publications: Matthews, P., Tzanopoulos, J., Henderson, S., et al. 2022. LIFT Deliverable D5.2: Territorial Sustainability of Ecological Farming. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6416193

Planned publications:
5 journal articles based on existing PhD research:
• Farmer identities and perceptions of public good provision
• Farmer identities and landscape level cooperation for public good delivery
• A regional level spatial analysis of agri-environment scheme uptake in England
• A territorial sustainability assessment of ecological farming approaches in south-east England
• Territorial sustainability assessment of ecological farming: insights from 16 case study areas across Europe.
1 journal article based on further research conducted during the fellowship:
• A multi-scale spatial analysis of adoption distribution of ecological farming in Europe

Contact details:
Email: p.matthews@kent.ac.uk

SeNSS pathway: Psychology
SeNSS university: Royal Holloway, University of London
Primary mentor: Manos Tsakiris
Second mentor: Jamie Ward
Research topic title: Using Virtual Reality to Investigate the Sense of Self
Research project description: The sense of self describes the experience of being an “I”, those feelings of ownership and control over one’s own body and actions. This sense can be challenged with Virtual and Extended Reality (VR) technology, which can digitally manipulate your experience of your own body or grant you the ability to experience a virtual body. In this SeNSS project, I will consolidate and build upon my PhD research that highlighted how small time delays created in Extended Reality between the sight and the physical feeling of a touch to the arm can generate a loss of ownership over one’s own body. I aim to publish my PhD research and write a novel literature review of how VR technology can manipulate the sense of self. In addition, I will broaden and deepen my professional networks in the field, cutting across academia and industry. Finally, I will develop my programming skills in VR, culminating in the creation of a new open-source toolkit for researchers to utilise to study the sense of self with VR technology. The growing popularity of VR, spreading from the gaming world to other areas of our social lives, raises questions about how individuals want to experience themselves or their bodies in a virtual world. These are tricky yet timely questions that need to be explored further, and my project aims to contribute to that discussion.

Publications:

  • Alderson-Day, B., Moffatt, J., Lima, C. F., Krishnan, S., Fernyhough, C., Scott, S. K., … & Evans, S. (2022). Susceptibility to auditory hallucinations is associated with spontaneous but not directed modulation of top-down expectations for speech. Neuroscience of consciousness, 2022(1), niac002.
  • Moffatt, J. (2022). Bodily Sensations During Voice-Hearing Experiences. In A.Woods, B. Alderson-Day & C. Fernyhough (Eds.), Voices in Psychosis: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. (pp. 59-65). Oxford University Press.
  • Moseley, P., Aleman, A., Allen, P., Bell, V., Bless, J., Bortolon, C., Moffatt, J., ... & Fernyhough, C. (2021). Correlates of Hallucinatory Experiences in the General Population: An International Multisite Replication Study. Psychological science, 32(7), 1024-1037.
  • Alderson-Day, B., Moffatt, J., Bernini, M., Mitrenga, K., Yao, B., & Fernyhough, C. (2020). Processing Speech and Thoughts during Silent Reading: Direct Reference Effects for Speech by Fictional Characters in Voice-Selective Auditory Cortex and a Theory-of-Mind Network. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 1-17.
  • Moffatt, J., Mitrenga, K. J., Alderson-Day, B., Moseley, P., & Fernyhough, C. (2020). Inner experience differs in rumination and distraction without a change in electromyographical correlates of inner speech. Plos one, 15(9), e0238920.
  • Alderson-Day, B., Smailes, D., Moffatt, J., Mitrenga, K., Moseley, P., & Fernyhough, C. (2019). Intentional inhibition but not source memory is related to hallucination-proneness and intrusive thoughts in a university sample. Cortex, 113, 267-278.

Planned publications:
• Moffatt, J., Finotti, G., & Tsakiris, M. (Under Review). With hand on heart: a cardiac rubber hand illusion.
• Moffatt, J., Garfinkel, S, N., Lesur, M.R., Weijs, M.L, Lenggenhager, B., Maglianella, V., Critchley, H., & Greenwood, K. Dissociative experiences arise from disrupted multi-sensory integration.
• Moffatt, J., Garfinkel, S, N. & Greenwood, K. Trait dissociation associated with reduced multi-sensory effects on a somatic signal detection task.
• Moffatt, J., Garfinkel, S, N. & Greenwood, K. A longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on unusual experiences in the general population.

Contact details:
Email: jamie-moffatt.github.io
Twitter: @JAMoffatt

SeNSS pathway: Human Geography
SeNSS university: Royal Holloway, University of London
Primary mentor: Professor Harriet Hawkins
Second mentor: Professor David Stirrup
Research topic title: Overlapping currents: navigating (anti)colonial water geographies via geopoetics
Research project description: From the deep Atlantic Ocean to lead water pipes in Flint, Michigan, plantation ditches in Hawaii, port infrastructures in London, and militarised coastlines in Guåhan, how waters circulate through bodies and environments is shaped by colonial and capitalist forms of organising, mapping, and knowing waters. During the fellowship, I will produce an academic monograph, Submerged Bearings: Anti-Colonial Poetics and Watery Spacetime, which builds on my doctoral research. The book will consider ways that Black and Indigenous poetic work navigates and resists forms of dispossession, extraction, and exhaustion in watery places in Turtle Island/North America, the Pacific islands, and the UK. In dialogue with Black and Indigenous queer feminisms, the book attends to the poetic methods used to perceive enduring, multi-scalar colonial, racial, gendered and environmental violences in watery spaces, and to assemble other ways of knowing and relating with waters. Elaborating an interdisciplinary methodology, I read poetic work alongside creative performance, water protection, and infrastructural interventions, considering how formal elements of poetry reciprocally feed into and complicate processes of spatial relation, knowledge-making, and politics. Alongside the monograph, I will also use the fellowship to build the practice-based and collaborative elements of my research through geopoetic workshops.

Publications:
Peer Reviewed Articles:

Planned publications:
• Submerged Bearings: Anti-Colonial Poetics and Watery Spacetime (monograph)

Contact details:
Email: kate.lewishood@rhul.ac.uk
Instagram: @coneffluents

SeNSS pathway: Sociology
SeNSS university: Goldsmiths, University of London
Primary mentor: Dr Michael Guggenheim
Second mentor: Professor Phillip Crang
Research topic title: Food and Faith: Material Practices in a Multicultural Suburb of West London
Research project description: This research project consolidates and advances the contributions of my interdisciplinary doctoral research on food and religious diversity in Ealing, West London, involving participatory and biographical creative outputs. These demonstrate that food practices, recipes and cookbooks are key for religious communities, identities and education, where food operates as a rhythmic and affective marker of religious practices, and connects people, places and temporalities. This project builds on this study and further develops its findings and impact, through writing three academic articles and a book proposal, which support my research trajectory and vision, and contribute to relevant social debates, concerning: food, diversity and urban conviviality; embodied faith practices in everyday settings, and; visual and participatory practice-led research.The Fellowship adopts different strategies to maximise impact and dissemination to both academic and wider audiences through publications, conferences, seminars, workshops and an exhibition. It holds the potential to influence policy by engaging with issues of urban governance and conviviality, through new research funding proposals in collaboration with Professor Mar Griera in the Department of Sociology in Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) who directs the research centre ISOR (Research in Sociology of Religion).

Publications:

  • Refereed academic articles:
  • Gilbert, D., Dwyer, C., Ahmed, N., Cuch, L., Hyacinth, N. (2019) ‘The hidden geographies of religious creativity: place-making and material culture in West London faith communities’. Cultural Geographies 26(1):23-41. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474018787278

  • Gilbert, D., Cuch, L., Dwyer, C. and Ahmed, N. (2016) ‘The Sacred and the Suburban: Atmospherics, numinosity, and 1930s interiors in Ealing, London’. Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture 6(3):211-234 https://doi.org/10.1080/20419112.2015.1125616

  • Other Academic Publications:

  • Cuch, L (2020) ‘Agnes’ recipe of Easter Żurek soup with blessed salt’. Feast Journal 5(2), 19 ISSN: 2397-785X
  • Guggenheim, M., Cuch, L. (2018) ‘Encounter, create and eat the world: a meal’. EASST Review 37(4): 31-33 ISSN 1384-5160
  • Cuch, L. (2018) ‘Spiritual Flavours: Meals’. Feast Journal 2(4), 14 ISSN 2397-785X

  • Cuch, L. (2017) ‘Arda’s Choreg Recipe’. Feast Journal 2(3), 4 ISSN 2397-785X

  • Academic Evaluation Reports:

  • Modalities of Exchange: A Report on the Serpentine Gallery Project Skills Exchange: Urban Transformation and the Politics of Care. (2013).

  • Making it Together: An evaluative study of Creative Families, an arts and mental health partnership between the South London Gallery and the Parental Mental Health Team (2015).

  • Artist Books:

  • Cuch, L (2019) Spiritual Flavours. Signed Limited Edition, 132 copies, London, UK. ISBN: 978-1-5272-4332-3
  • Cuch, L (2011): ‘A Trilogy: Sleepless, No Ma, Trans’. Signed Limited Edition 100 Copies (+10 Author Proofs), Barcelona. ISBN O.C. (Trilogy): 978-84-615-6109-4.

Planned publications:
• ‘Eating with Other: Food, faith and spaces of multicultural and multi-faith conviviality’ for City Journal.
• ‘Sacred liminality: Food religious practices and thresholds in a (sub)urban setting’ for Social and Cultural Geography.
• ‘Visual research practice and material performativity: exploring food and religion in a multi-faith suburb’ for Qualitative Research.
• Monograph proposal on the relationship of food and faith for the book series Food and Society, Bristol University Press.

Other information: www.spiritualflavours.com Contact details:
Email: l.cuch@gold.ac.uk
Instagram and Twitter: @lakukstudio

SeNSS pathway: Linguistics
SeNSS university: University of Essex
Primary mentor: Hannah Gibson
Second mentor: Naomi Flynn
Research topic title: Challenging language inequalities, bringing linguistic diversity to the forefront in language education practice and policy.
Research project description: While over 40% of the capital’s school students are bilingual and the National Curriculum in England states that abilities in other languages should be considered, there is no statutory guidance on how to effectively engage with students’ other languages, contributing to a neglect of multilingual repertoires in schools today. My PhD research focused on finding more out about the characteristics of bilingual speakers in schools through survey data which revealed a current misrepresentation of the linguistic diversity of schools. There is a wide range of HL proficiencies which should be considered by schools and policy makers as well as characteristics such as attitudes to heritage languages and the extent to which the language is spoken at home and by whom. As part of the Fellowship, a digital version of the survey will be made suitable for use on a large-scale basis. I will administer this on a wider scale and the information collected will be useful for finding out both what the linguistic landscape of school cohorts are, and what is important for their students. Another focus point of my PhD research is the development of strategies to harness the linguistic repertoires of EAL students and to promote multilingualism in schools in England. Students’ attitudes and perceptions of their own multilingualism revealed a strong tendency to devalue minority languages in British mainstream classrooms and attempts to bring multilingualism to the forefront were met with a range of responses including prejudice, shame, protectiveness as well as pride and joy in using their full linguistic repertoires to support their education. To ensure that stakeholders have an opportunity to benefit from my research I will carry out a range of impact activities with teacher training institutions, policy makers and the development of a public website. I will establish links with teacher training providers to offer input into Initial Teacher Training curricula on the importance of harnessing linguistic diversity in schools. I will set up a website that gives teachers free access to the resources I use in my projects, including the one I used in my case study research. I will present my findings at practitioner and policy maker-facing conferences, and I will make the extended survey accessible in a report format, available to teachers and policy makers. I will organise a workshop for practitioners and academics with an interest in working multilingually in mainstream education at which I will present the findings of my work and invite other researchers and practitioners to present their work or in practice experience of using multilingual pedagogies. I will prepare draft proposals for an ESRC New Investigator Grant and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship to extend the research further. This research is crucial to providing an evidence-based approach to making change in curriculum and teacher training for more representational language development in the UK. Building links with the National Association of Languages Development in the Curriculum (NALDIC) and schools, the development of the resources website and the stakeholder workshop will provide a knowledge hub for practitioners who want to find ways to implement plurilingual pedagogies in their educational settings. These events will also act as sounding board for practitioners to judge potential responses to pedagogies which encompass and harness linguistic diversity, identifying challenges that may be faced in its implementation.

Publications:

  • Liggins, S. (2023) Heritage language speakers’ responses to plurilingual pedagogies in a secondary school context in: Pahl, K., Ainsworth, S., McCrory, G. and Griffiths, D., (eds.) Multilingualism and Multimodality: Working at the Intersection.Multilingual Matters (Channel View Publications), Bristol.

Planned publications:
• An article about students’ perceptions of linguistic diversity in mainstream settings 2) A report presenting the findings of extended questionnaire data to be collected during the Fellowship on heritage language competencies of inner-city secondary school students, and 3) An article based on the researcher-designed instruments used in the survey.
• A report presenting the findings of extended questionnaire data to be collected during the Fellowship on heritage language competencies of inner-city secondary school students
• An article based on the researcher-designed instruments used in the survey.

Contact details:
Email: s.liggins@essex.ac.uk
Website: https://x.com/enhancedlangs?s=20

SeNSS pathway: Psychology
SeNSS university: Royal Holloway, University of London
Primary mentor: Professor Saloni Krishnan
Second mentor: Professor Larissa Samuelson
Research topic title: Interactions between language and cognition in deaf individuals
Research project description: Over 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents. These children are at risk of delays in language and cognitive development due to diminished early language input. Impoverished language access also affects other domains, including cognitive function (e.g. Figueras et al., 2008; Botting et al., 2017). In my PhD thesis, I investigated associations between language skills, performance during cognitive tasks, and brain function in deaf individuals. My research shows that language proficiency is associated with nonverbal cognitive processes, such as switching between different tasks and planning. It demonstrates how language may shape aspects of cognition outside of the language domain, therefore characterising language as one of the critical stepping stones for successful cognitive development. During my fellowship, I will participate in knowledge exchange by publishing research papers based on my PhD work, sharing my findings with academics and forming new connections with researchers who study language development in different populations. This will benefit my long-term aim of bridging the gap between research on deafness and language development in other children with atypical language development experiences. Such research and collaborations can be critical for informing behavioural interventions that aim to facilitate cognitive and language development in children. I will also dedicate substantial time during my fellowship to communicate findings from my thesis to the general public, deaf individuals, and practitioners. My thesis recognises the complexity of the interactions between language, cognition, and emphasises that access to language of any modality supports even nonverbal aspects of cognition. This has implications for the scientific understanding of interactions between language and cognition, for how early intervention and educational programmes may be promoting language and cognitive development in deaf children, and for how these aspects of development are assessed in this population. I will develop my skills as a researcher by creating a task to assess word/sign-learning in deaf individuals and support my future funding proposals. This will allow me to build on my PhD, consolidate plans for my future research programme, and pursue new avenues in research on language development and learning. I will focus my research program on exploring associations between cognitive processes outside of the language domain and language skills in deaf individuals. By achieving these key aims, I will be able to develop a competitive research proposal that builds on my previous work and incorporates other cognitive processes outside of the language domain into the picture. I will focus on what may support the development of language skills in deaf individuals. By targeting children that are at-risk of developmental language delays, by either selecting those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, or from countries where intervention and education do not shield children from issues resulting from inaccessibility of language input (e.g. Georgia), I will be able to provide a better understanding of the relationship between language deprivation, learning and cognition. Better knowledge of the factors that aid language learning in both spoken and signed modalities is critical for designing interventions for these populations.

Publications:

  • Cardin, V., Kremneva, E., Komarova, A., Vinogradova, V., Davidenko, T., Zmeykina, E., Knopkin, P. N., Iriskhanova, K., & Woll, B. (2023). Resting-state functional connectivity in deaf and hearing individuals and its link to executive processing. Neuropsychologia, 185, 108583.
  • Manini, B., Vinogradova, V., Woll, B., Cameron, D., Eimer, M., & Cardin, V. (2022). Sensory experience modulates the reorganization of auditory regions for executive processing. Brain, 145(10), 3698-3710.
  • Kimmelman, V., Komarova, A., Luchkova, L., Vinogradova, V., & Alekseeva, O. (2022). Exploring networks of lexical variation in Russian Sign Language. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 740734.
  • Cardin, V., Grin, K., Vinogradova, V., & Manini, B. (2020). Crossmodal reorganisation in deafness: mechanisms for functional preservation and functional change. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 113, 227-237.

Planned publications:
• Book chapter: ‘Crossmodal plasticity, sensory experience, and cognition’ (co-authored with Dr Velia Cardin), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Neuroscience.
• Journal article: ‘The effects of sensory experience of deafness and language proficiency on task-related networks in the brain’. Working title for an article planned for 2023 .
• Journal article: ‘Functional connectivity of the language network in deaf individuals’ Working title for an article planned for 2023.

Contact details:
Email: valeria.vngrd@gmail.com
Twitter: @ValeriaVngrd

To find out about our exceptional 2022/23 ESRC-funded Post-Doctoral Fellows, please click on their names below.

SeNSS pathway: Politics and International Relations
SeNSS university: University of East Anglia
Primary mentor: Professor Alan Finlayson
Second mentor: Professor Will Davies
Research topic title: Transcendence, fantasy and desire: the affective infrastructures of neoliberalism
Research project description: The global crises of the last fifteen years - from the 2008 financial crash, the 2016 Brexit vote and election of Donald Trump to the current COVID-19 pandemic - have been accompanied by proclamations about the end of neoliberalism. Yet, we keep being surprised by what Colin Crouch evocatively calls "the strange non-death of neoliberalism" (2011). To understand neoliberalism's persistence, we need to understand how neoliberal ideologies are embedded in institutions, imaginaries and everyday lives. My project proposes to do so by analysing neoliberalism’s affective dimensions, psychic powers and embodied effects. It is about understanding how neoliberal ideas shape our desires and our ways of living together; how they may feel attractive, exciting or appealing while at the same time operating through mechanisms of exclusion, violence and dispossession. My critical political economy approach complements existing sociological works on economic imaginaries (Beckert, 2016) and on the experience of economic orders (Dardot and Laval, 2010) with insights from psychoanalytical theory. I examine neoliberalism not just as an economic doctrine, but also as an affective infrastructure that mobilises fantasies of self-realisation, self-control, and self-transcendence. My project has three branches. First, it complements the existing scholarship on neoliberal thought (Mirowski and Plehwe, 2009) by reinterpreting canonical texts of neoliberal theory (Hayek 2011a; 2011b; 2013; Becker 1976) through a psychoanalytically-informed theoretical framework. Second, I am interested in how tropes found in neoliberal economic theory (like the idea of risk-taking as self-realisation) are invested and transformed in popular culture; I will publish my research on two entrepreneurs close to the neoliberal movement, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Lastly, the project will also extend the claims made in my thesis via a broader scope of analysis that incorporates new sources that highlight how economics is practiced and imagined today, specifically recent pop-economics bestsellers (like the Freakonomics series) and discursive representations of financial instruments (like the VIX, a volatility index popularised as the 'fear index'). The overall aim of the project is to denaturalise so as to re-politicise these discursive productions, and thereby to practically contribute to the elaboration of new alternative imaginaries on the left. It will do so by disseminating my research in academic circles via the publication of three peer-reviewed articles in leading journals, as well as the organisation of a conference at the University of East Anglia. I will develop blogpost and podcast series about economic imaginaries with the Political Economy Research Centre. I will also organise a stakeholder workshop about neoliberal calls for the privatisation of space at the World Transformed 2023 Festival in partnership with the think-tank Common Wealth.

Publications:
Article:

  • Ibled, Carla. 2022. “The ‘optimistic cruelty’ of Hayek’s market order: neoliberalism, pain and social selection”, Theory, Culture and Society (E-pub ahead of print). URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221126305

Book review:

Short Articles:

Planned publications:
• 'Founder as Victim, Founder as God': Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and the two bodies of the entrepreneur
• ‘[M]ost (if not all!) deaths are to some extent suicides’: The 'death wish' in the writings of Gary Becker and Richard Posner
• ‘Letting the garden weed itself’: social selection and the repurposing of medieval trials by ordeal in late Chicago School works
• Commercialising the Last Commons: Property Rights in Outer Space

Other information: The first blogpost series – on Silicon Valley ideology - organised as part of the fellowship with Goldsmiths’ Political Economy Research Centre is now live. It can be found on the following link: https://www.perc.org.uk/project_pages/silicon-valley/
Contact details:
Email: c.ibled@uea.ac.uk

SeNSS pathway: Politics and International Relations
SeNSS university: University of Essex
Primary mentor: Professor Rob Johns
Second mentor: Professor Chris Hanretty
Research topic title: The Political Psychology of the Future
Research project description: Speaking at the 2020 Democratic Convention, then presidential hopeful Joe Biden described the upcoming election as ‘a life-changing election that will determine America’s future for a very long time’. In representative democracies, citizens are regularly confronted with such moments of choice, tasked with understanding the potential future paths that politics could take and then choosing which road to go down. The obvious question this raises is one that political psychology is yet to answer: how do voters think about the future? This question matters because the future guides what we do right now, in the present, in our personal as well as our political lives. My long-term goal is to become an internationally recognised authority in political psychology by tackling this question. I have begun to establish a research track record in this area in ESRC-funded PhD research and in my postdoctoral research at the University of Exeter. The next step is to consolidate my early progress and initiate a broader, even more impactful programme of research. To that end, the fellowship will be an invaluable resource in enabling me develop and prepare grant applications for my project on the political psychology of the future. I will also use the fellowship to produce immediate impacts, firmly establishing my credentials to lead a large-scale project of this kind by converting my existing research into academic articles.
Publications:

  • Barnfield, M. 2022. “Misinformation in Experimental Political Science.” Perspectives on Politics.
  • Barnfield, M., and Bale, T. 2022. “‘Leaving the red Tories’: Ideology, leaders, and why party members quit.” Party Politics.
  • Zerback, T., Reinemann, C., and Barnfield, M. 2021. “Total Recall? Examining the Accuracy of Poll Recall during an Election Campaign.” Mass Communication and Society.
  • Barnfield, M. 2020. “Think Twice before Jumping on the Bandwagon: Clarifying Concepts in Research on the Bandwagon Effect.” Political Studies Review.

Planned publications:

  • “Momentum in the Polls Raises Electoral Expectations.”
  • “Electoral Expectations and Democratic Legitimacy in U.S. Presidential Elections.”
  • “Forecasts Can Both Improve and Harm the Accuracy and Precision of Expectations.” (w/ Stoeckel, F., Stöckli, S., Phillips, J., Lyons, B., Mérola, V., Szewach, P., Thompson, J., and Reifler, J.)
  • “Expectations Converge When Uncertainty Subsides.” (w/ Stoeckel, F., Stöckli, S., Phillips, J., Lyons, B., Mérola, V., Szewach, P., Thompson, J., and Reifler, J.)

Other information:
Contact details:
Email: m.g.barnfield@gmail.com
Twitter: @m_barnfield
www.matthewbarnfield.co.uk

SeNSS pathway: Sociology
SeNSS university: Goldsmiths, University of London
Primary mentor: Dr Sara R. Farris
Second mentor: Dr Ben Rogaly
Research topic title: TBC
Research project description: My research aspires to transform the theory and policy understanding of the reality of Roma workers in post-socialist Europe. In particular, it aims to shift the paradigm away from the category of unemployment of racialised Roma workers towards underemployment. During the ESRC fellowship, I focus on a monograph, Roma: The Invisible Workers of Post-socialism. Drawing on eleven months of ethnographic research, which I carried out as part of my PhD among racialised Roma workers in the city of Ostrava in the Czech Republic, the monograph will present an empirical exploration of a racialised “surplus population”. Engaging with recent research on the contemporary applicability of Marx’s category of the surplus population (Endnotes 2010, 2015; Benanav, 2020; Farris, 2019), I make the case that, though Roma workers are integrated among wage labourers but that they remain contained in low-paid, stigmatised and precarious jobs, in a racialised condition of under-employment. This way, I provide an alternative explanation to the dominant trope in the media and political discourse that presents unemployment as a universal fact of Roma lives. Analysing the surplus population empirically, I argue that is both the operation of capital, as well as the interventions of the Czech state that reproduce it.

Publications:

  • Černušáková. B. “Elena” [Online]. The Sociological Review Magazine. (2022, November 8) https://doi.org/10.51428/tsr.ktiw7936
  • Černušáková, B. “Roma Workers under Czech Racial Capitalism: A Post-Socialist Case Study”, JLPE, 2(1), (2021): 28-69
  • Černušáková, B. “Stigma and segregation: containing the Roma of Údol, Czech Republic”, Race & Class, 62(1), (2020): 46–59
  • Černušáková, B. “Glimpses of Life in Indefinite Debt in the Czech Republic”, Allegra Lab, 19 September (2019)
  • Černušáková , B. “Roma: The Invisible Workforce of Ostrava”, Race & Class 58(4), (2017): 98 -105

Planned publications:

  • “Racialised surplus population and predatory debt in postsocialism”. Working title for an article planned for 2023, to be co-authored with Sara Farris.

Other information:
Contact details:
Email: b.cernusakova@gold.ac.uk
Twitter: @BCernusa
Mastodon: @BCernusa@mastodon.social

SeNSS pathway: Education
SeNSS university: University of Sussex
Primary mentor: Prof. Janet Boddy
Second mentor: Prof. Anna Gupta
Research topic title: Understanding What Matters: Developing effective participatory methods from the research into what matters to children living in kinship care.
Research project description: Kinship care is the caring arrangement in the family constellation for children who cannot remain with birth parents. My PhD research was the first to solely focus on the views of children living in kinship care in England and the first to combine critical realism with dialogical participation. It evidenced children's views as vital for research, policy, and practice - particularly for kinship care, where family lives involve multiple, multifaceted, ambivalent relationships. Child participation must take a relational, dialogical, and multidisciplinary approach. Through international sharing of expertise across disciplines, the Fellowship will develop new insights for the effective inclusion of child voice(s) in kinship care and other child welfare contexts.

My research and knowledge exchange activities to date have informed academic, policy, practice, and public debate, but have also highlighted three persistent concerns:

• The value of creating space for children to talk about family is insufficiently realised in policy and practice, especially in child welfare contexts shaped by anxieties around vulnerability.
• Child welfare debates about risk and care still lack nuance, and policy and practice must better align to the lived realities of childhood.
• The complexities of childhood are obscured by monological, either/or, thinking.

Through interconnected work strands, the Fellowship will address these concerns by:

Promoting the value of child voice: Collaborating with the British Association of Social Work, I will devise written and video kinship care practice guidance - coproduced by children, and also continue to promote the value of children's views through podcasts, briefings for policymakers, press releases, and practitioner forums.

My thesis will be reshaped into a Policy Press book reaffirming the importance of attending to children's insights given international interest in kinship care and likely reforms to UK policy and practice. The book ensures the legacy and accessibility of the PhD - and other related research - for a wide audience, including practitioners and families.

Two further journal publications will link learning from the PhD and other Fellowship activities. They will explore intersections between childhood studies and social work to enhance child participation in research, policy, and practice.

A research visit to NOVA (OsloMet) and UiT in Norway will connect me with research leaders in innovative methods of child participation and kinship care. Through workshops, presentations, roundtable discussions, and one-to-one meetings, we will share learning across national and disciplinary boundaries and explore potential further collaborations. These activities will enhance my research capabilities and illuminate the critical intersection of research, policy, and practice across contexts.

Promoting nuanced debate on risk and (kinship) care: Increasing my publication record and other outputs whilst gaining international interdisciplinary perspectives on child participation provides a robust foundation for more nuanced conversations about risk by ensuring children's insights - including on the importance of safety - are the starting point. This work will also be driven by interdisciplinary guidance from my mentors. Psychologist Prof Boddy applies a critical family studies lens in her child welfare research and brings expertise in child participation. Prof Gupta is an internationally renowned expert in critical social work.

Challenging monological thinking: The publications, study visit, mentors, and collaborative dissemination activities will continue to build on the PhD's theoretical on the value of dialogical critical realist approaches and further the interrogation of their effectiveness. The learning will also allow the transfer of new thinking for child participation and kinship care policy and practice to research, policy and practice concerned with other family arrangments.

Publications:

  • Shuttleworth, P.D. (2022), ‘Recognition of family life by children living in kinship care arrangements in England’ The British Journal of Social Work 52(5)
  • Shuttleworth, P.D. (submitted) ‘Children’s valuations of family life in kinship care’, In Reinventing ‘The Family’ in Uncertain Times: Education, Policy & Social Justice, Lee, C., Moreau, M.P, & Okpokiti, C.(eds), Bloomsbury
  • Damman, J.L., Shuttleworth, P., & Ruch, G. (2021). Brighton Oasis Project Reducing Parental Conflict Programme Evaluation: Final Report. Brighton: Department of Social Work and Social Care at the University of Sussex.
  • Shuttleworth, P.D. (2021) 'Can an independent review provide meaningful and ethical participation, Social Work 2020-21 under Covid-19, [online] Available from:https://sw2020covid19.group.shef.ac.uk/category/special-edition/paul-shuttleworth/
  • Shuttleworth, P.D. (2021) What matters to children living in kinship care: ‘another way of being a normal family’, doctoral, University of Sussex, [online] Available from: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/99637/
  • Shuttleworth, P.D. (2021) ‘What matters to children living in kinship care in England’ ESWRA Conference, Bucharest, 1 Dec
  • Shuttleworth, P.D. (2021) ‘What matters to children living in kinship care? How perspectives of the child can help us frame the debates’ EUSARF Conference XVI, Zurich, 1-3 Sep
  • Shuttleworth, P.D. (2020) ‘Keynote - What matters to children living in kinship care: Messages for practitioners, families, and policymakers’ Grandparents Plus Conference, London, 22 Jan
  • Shuttleworth, P.D. (2019) ‘What matters to children living in kinship care – Using children’s valuations and critical realism to inform kinship care social work policy and practice’ International Association for Critical Realism Annual Conference, Southampton, 31 July

Planned publications:
Book: Shuttleworth, P.D. ‘Working title: What Matters and Listening to Kinship Care’, Policy Press

Journal Article: Shuttleworth, P.D. ‘Children’s views on effective child participation using critical realism and dialogical participation’ Children & Youth Services Review

Book Chapter: Shuttleworth, P.D. ‘Kinship care for England and Wales in the 2020s: challenges and opportunities’ In The Future of Children’s Care: Critical Perspectives on Children’s Services Reform, Kerr, C, & Sen, R., (eds), Policy Press

Conference Papers:

  • Shuttleworth, P.D. (2023) Kinship Care Symposium Lead ‘Kinship Care: Renegotiating family relationships’ ESWR 2023
  • Shuttleworth, P.D. (2023) ‘Children’s experiences of kinship care: Relating with rather than being ‘related to you’. ESWR 2023
  • Shuttleworth, P.D. (2023) ‘Building valued relationships through child participation: Developing a new child-centred interdisciplinary ‘what matters’ approach for social work research and practice.’ ESWR 2023
  • Shuttleworth, P.D. (2023) JSWER Conference 2023
  • Shuttleworth, P.D. (2023) EUSARF Conference 2023

Practice Guidance: Paul Shuttleworth and Children from ‘Kinship Carers Liverpool’ – How we can listen and learn from children living in kinship care’, BASW

Other information: Paul, his research, and his innovative child-centred methodology have been featured on various podcasts. He also co-hosts the podcast 'Sarah and Paul Do Do Social Work'. He has also helped set up - and currently chairs - the first UK Jewish Social Worker Group which supports Jewish people working in social care. The JSWG also provides information and statements in order to fight the rise in antisemitism.
Contact details:
Email: pds24@sussex.ac.uk
Twitter: @pshuttle3; @DoDoSocialWork
Listen: @ Do Do Social Work | a podcast by Paul Shuttleworth & Sarah Flagg (podbean.com) - https://rpkp27vtwpz24.podbean.com/

SeNSS pathway: Sociology
SeNSS university: Goldsmiths, University of London
Primary mentor:
Second mentor: Research topic title:
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SeNSS pathway: Sociology
SeNSS university: University of Kent
Primary mentor:
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Research topic title:
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To find out about our exceptional 2021/22 ESRC-funded Post-Doctoral Fellows, please click on their names below.

SeNSS pathway: Sociology
SeNSS university: University of Goldsmiths
Primary mentor: Dr Kiran Grewal
Second mentor: Dr Melanie Richter-Montpetit
Research topic title: Thinking reproductive politics and racial justice together: Muslim women's movement, rights,and ethno-nationalism in contemporary India
Research project description:
Publications:
Planned publications:
Other information:
Contact details: S.Banerjee@gold.ac.uk

SeNSS pathway: Development Studies
SeNSS university: University of Reading
Primary mentor: Prof. Michael Goodman
Second mentor: Dr Amber Huff
Research topic title: Connecting water resilience and climate resilience policy discourses: Advancing advocacy practice and development theories
Research project description:
Publications:
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Other information:
Contact details:

SeNSS pathway: Social Anthropology

SeNSS university: University of Roehampton

Primary mentor: Prof. Garry Marvin

Second mentor: Prof. Rebecca Cassidy

Research topic title: Cultural constructions of fighting birds: The cockfight world in the Canary Islands

Research project description: The programme of activities will contribute to scholarship across the interdisciplinary fields of Human-Animal Studies and Multispecies Ethnography. The academic papers produced during the fellowship will provide a detailed study of Human-Chicken interactions in the particular contextof cockfighting in the Canary Islands (Spain), where Ontillera-Sanchez undertook long-term fieldwork. Although chickens are by far themost abundant of domesticated animals, their social, cultural and environmental impact remains under-researched. Therefore, this fellowship will contribute to lessen the gap.

Moreover, the academic paper addressing the similarities and differences between fighting bulls and fighting birds can be considered as the first analysis of the cultural terms of casta (caste) and raza (race), in terms of understanding and accounting for particular animal behaviour, everundertaken.

The proposed programme of work also includes a Human-Animal Studies course for postgraduate students. The course will contribute to a better understanding of one of the most rapidly growing international fields of research. Specifically, in demonstrating how ethnographic research is one of the tools which allows exploration of the relation between human and nonhuman animals in many different settings.

Publications:

  • Ontillera-Sánchez, R.R. (2020) Of casteadores, gallos y galleras: the cockfight world in the Canary Islands. Doctoral Dissertation. Department of Life Sciences. University of Roehampton (London).

Planned publications:

  • "Cultural constructions of fighting birds and fighting bulls "Target Journal: American Ethnologist.
  • "Canarian cockfights: a very particular case" Target Journal: Journal of-Contemporary Ethnography and Anthrozoos.
  • Ontillera-Sanchez will beone of the authors of a chapter for a Human-Animal Studiesbook edited by Shelly Volsche (Department of Anthropology, Boise State University, USA) called “Cross-Cultural Variation in Human-Animal Interactions” (Forthcoming, 2022).

Other information:

Ontillera-Sanchezhas also worked on research projects relating to the analysis of traditional ecological knowledge, ecosystem services, social networks analysis (SNA) and ethnography in different Spanish contexts, some of which were the home gardens from Sierra Norte de Madrid and the transhumant shepherds of the Conquense Drove Road. For the last ten years, he has been a collaborator for the Spanish Inventory of Traditional Knowledge (SITK).

Contact details:
Email: ricardo.ontillera@roehampton.ac.uk

SeNSS pathway: Business and Management Studies
SeNSS university: University of Surrey
Primary mentor: Prof. Caroline Scarles
Second mentor:
Research topic title: Showering smartly: The impact of real-time feedback to nudge shower users to save water, energy, and carbon emissions
Research project description:
Publications:
Planned publications:
Other information:
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SeNSS pathway: Development Studies
SeNSS university: University of Sussex
Primary mentor: Prof. Paul Gilbert
Second mentor: Dr Clea Bourne
Research topic title: Calculating care: Re-investing in a Burkina Faso market through crisis
Research project description:
Publications:
Planned publications:
Other information:
Contact details:

SeNSS pathway: Business and Management Studies

SeNSS university: University of East Anglia

Primary mentor: Dr Zografia Bika

Second mentor:

Research topic title: A blueprint for entrepreneurial places which are cared for

Research project description:
Is entrepreneurship a matter of place? This was the question that my PhD research undertaken across four case studies in East Anglia, UK (Cambridge, Great Yarmouth, Ipswich, Norwich) answered, showing how, when, and where everyday entrepreneurship occurs and the different mechanisms of entrepreneurial attachment to place in terms of individual entrepreneurs’ temporal orientations: place as it was, place as it is, and place as it could be.

My current research project seeks to connect these emerging theories of entrepreneurial agency with the wider notion of ‘evolving places’ contributing to entrepreneurship literature often insensitive to the subtleties of context. In doing so, my work considers the societal struggles for power and the distribution of resources and opportunities in shaping the policy need to think about maintenance of entrepreneurial attachment if we want places to be cared for by their people and to influence change, bridging gaps between ‘unequal’ stakeholders. This has become increasingly pertinent within a post-Brexit, COVID-19, reduced migratory context as the emphasis has now firmly been placed on local contexts and how they perform.

Publications:

  • Redhead, G. and Bika, Z. (2022).Adopting 'place’: How an entrepreneurial sense of belonging can help revitalise communities. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, (forthcoming).

Planned publications:

  • Redhead, G. and Bika, Z. Is home where the heart is? Investigating the relationship between ‘home’ and entrepreneurship.
  • Redhead, G. and Bika, Z. A rotten orange? Entrepreneurship and taking place for granted.
  • Redhead, G. and Bika, Z. When, where and how does entrepreneurship occur? A temporally sensitive processual model.

Other information:
My research interests are interdisciplinary and influenced by economic sociology incorporating fields such as entrepreneurship, political science, and regional development. I am particularly interested in the sociological side of entrepreneurship, especially concerning its broader forces for change towards the spatial and the various stakeholders within the local context.

Prior to undertaking the Fellowship I gained a BSc in Business Management (starred first class honours) where my long project researched the consumption of parks and public places. Within my Master of Social Science Research Methods (MRes -passed with distinction) my dissertation investigated the relationship between entrepreneurship and place within a depleted community. My doctoral work then expanded upon this with a multiple case study investigation across East Anglia (passed with no corrections).

In my spare time I compete as an amateur boxer and I am a keen runner.

Contact details:
Email: g.redhead@uea.ac.uk

SeNSS pathway: Sociology
SeNSS university: Goldsmiths, University of London
Primary mentor: Dr Mariam Motamedi-Fraser
Second mentor:
Research topic title: "Mickey Mouse science": The politics and practice of knowing animals
Research project description:
Publications:
Planned publications:
Other information:
Contact details:

SeNSS pathway: Psychology

SeNSS university: University of Reading

Primary mentor: Dr Polly Waite

Second mentor: Professor Emeritus Graham Davey

Research topic title: The role of social anxiety on safety-learning: Bridging the gap from the lab to the clinic

Research project description:
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is prevalent, chronic and can lead to significant disability in education, employment, and relationships. Exposure therapy for SAD involves direct and indirect encounters with feared social stimuli (e.g.,giving a presentation). Whilst this therapy leads to clear improvements for individuals with SAD, many patients remain symptomatic or relapse after intervention. Laboratory based research on safety learning, for example learning that something that was once threatening is now safe within an experimental task, can be carried out by researchers to further understanding of why fear may be maintained or return after exposure for people with social anxiety. Findings from this research can be used to inform Clinical Psychologists of potential methods of improving treatment for SAD. Therefore,there is a need to encourage collaboration between laboratory-based researchers and Clinical Psychologists to gather new ideas that might improve treatment outcome for SAD.The primary aim of my fellowship is to maximise the potential of my laboratory-based research to date and bridge the gap between laboratory science and clinical practice.

Publications:

  • Wake, S.,Dodd, H., & Morriss, J. (2021). Intoleranceof uncertainty and novelty facilitated extinction: The impact of reinforcement schedule. British Journal of Psychology.
  • Wake, S.,van Reekum, C. M., & Dodd, H. (2021).The Effect of Social Anxiety on the Acquisition and Extinction of Low-Cost Avoidance. Behaviour, Research and Therapy.
  • Morriss, J., Wake, S.,Elizabeth, C., & van Reekum, C. M. (2021). I doubt it is safe: A meta-analysis of self-reported intolerance of uncertainty and threat extinction training. Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science.
  • Wake. S., Morriss, J., Johnstone, T., van Reekum, C. M., & Dodd, H. (2021). Intolerance of uncertainty, and not social anxiety, is associated with compromised extinction of social threat. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 139, 103818.
  • Morriss, J., Bradford, D. E., Wake, S., Biagi, N., Tanovic, E., Kaye, J. T., & Joormann, J. (2021). Intolerance of uncertainty and physiological responses during instructed uncertain threat: a multi-lab investigation.Biological Psychology, 108223.
  • Littler, J. A., Haffey, A., Wake, S.,& Dodd, H. (2020). The effect of anonymous computer-mediated communication on state anxiety: An experimental study. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking,23, 823-828.
  • Macdonald, B.,Wake, S.,&Johnstone, T. (2020).Selective extinction through cognitive evaluation: Linking emotion regulation and extinction.European Journal of Neuroscience, 52, 2873–2888.
  • Morriss, J., Wake, S.,Lindner, M., McSorley, E., & Dodd, H. (2020). How many times do I need to see to believe? The impact of intolerance of uncertainty and exposure experience on safety-learning and retention in young adults.International Journal of Psychophysiology, 153, 8-17.
  • Wake, S.,Van Reekum, C. M., Dodd, H., & Morriss, J. (2020).The impact of intolerance of uncertainty and cognitive behavioural instructions on safety learning.Cognitive Therapy and Research, 44, 931-942
  • Morriss, J., Hoare, S.,& van Reekum, C. M. (2018). It's time: A commentary on fear extinction in the human brain using fMRI.Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews,94, 321-322. *Joint first Authorship

Planned publications:

  • Wake, S., Dalla Verde, A., Biagi, N., van Reekum, C. M., & Morriss, J. (Under review). Just let me check: The role of individual differences in self-reported anxiety and obsessive-compulsive features on subjective, behavioural, and physiological indices during a checking task. International Journal of Psychophysiology.
  • Wake, S.,van Reekum, C. M., & Dodd, H. (In preparation). Effect of Social Anxiety on Threat Acquisition and Extinction: A Systematic Review.
  • Wake, S.(In preparation). “The effect of social anxiety on safety learning and the extinction of avoidance: A review”

Other information:
Alongside my work that focuses on social anxiety, I have an interest in transdiagnostic traits, such as intolerance of uncertainty, that are related to the development and maintenance anxiety more broadly. Much of my work involves disentangling the role of transdiagnostic (e.g., intolerance of uncertainty) and disorder specific (e.g., social anxiety) features related to processes underlying anxiety.

Contact details:
Email: Shannon.wake@reading.ac.uk
Twitter:@ShannonJWake

To learn more about our outstanding 2020/21 ESRC-funded Post-Doctoral Fellows, please click on their names below.

SeNSS pathway: Social Anthropology

SeNSS university: University of Kent

Primary mentor: Prof Dimitrios Theossodopoulos (University of Kent)

Second mentor: Prof Sophie Day (Goldsmiths, University of London. Dep of Anthropology)

Research topic title: Reconfigurations of care under austerity

Research project description:

Reconfigurations of Care under Austerity is an original project that stems from long-term ethnographic fieldwork I conducted between July 2015 and January 2017 in a self-organised social clinic in Athens. In the critical period of the economic crisis, the public healthcare sector underwent a severe retrenchment programme during which time, starting with 2010, more and more Greek citizens found their medical needs unmet. The social clinics of solidarity represent a local, spontaneous response to the economic crisis: they try to compensate for what the state has been unable to provide during the first years of austerity. In doing so, they mobilise local and culturally inflected ideas about care and biomedicine. While social scientific research has focused on the positive dimensions of volunteering and solidarity, the adverse social and medical effects of free provision of pharmaceuticals have been, so far, overlooked. The project sheds light onto the micropolitics of care hidden behind the circulation and consumption of different classes of medications and explores how access to free medicines has increasingly shaped people’s reliance on, compliance with, and dependence on pharmaceuticals.

Publications:

  • Bonanno, L. (2020) Book Review: Nadia C. Seremetakis, Sensing the Everyday. Dialogues from Austerity Greece. Social Anthropology/ Antrhopologie Sociale.

  • Bonanno L. (2020) Eerie Desires for the Authoritarian State. Covid-19 Updates from Italy. AllegraLab [Online] 30 March 2020.

  • Bonanno, L. (2019) I swear I hated it. A semi- serious, but definitely (autobio-, bio- and ethno-) graphic leap into the ethnographic practice of drawing. Entanglements. Experiments in Multimodal Ethnography 2(2): 39-55

  • Bonanno, L. (2019) ‘Drawing as a mode of translation’ in Atalay, S. Bonanno L. et al., Ethnographic Storytelling: Communicating Research and Exploring Pedagogical Approaches through Graphic Narratives, Drawings and Zines. American Anthropologist, 121(3).

Planned publications:

Building on my previous experience with academic publications and benefitting from my skills as an illustrator and graphic artist, I will combine standard academic outputs (e.g. monograph, articles) with innovative ethnographic media (graphic ethnography, popularisation of key outcomes) to maximise the impact of my research for the benefit of local audiences in Greece (professionals and volunteers in social clinics). I will further pursue opportunities to share the benefits of using artwork for impact generation with the academic community. I aim to use the network established by SeNSS in the Southeast to bring together early-career researchers interested in multimodal ethnography. I am committed both to providing practical and methodological training on alternative media for impactful dissemination and sharing my knowledge with a wider community of researchers.

Other Information:

Some of my “ethnographic” illustrations have been selected and showcased at the RAI online exhibition ‘Illustrating Anthropology’ https://illustratinganthropology.com. I have also organised a couple of labs on drawing as anthropology- making and drawing and ethnographic methods.

Contact details:

Email: Letizia.bonanno@gmail.com

Twitter: @letha_laetitia

SeNSS pathway: Sociology

SeNSS university Goldsmiths, University of London

Primary mentor: Prof Monica Greco (Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London)

Second mentor: Dr Catherine Will (Reader in the Sociology of Science and Technology, University of Sussex)

External Mentor: Dr Richard Milne (Senior Social Scientist, Wellcome Genome Campus)

Research topic title: ‘Doing diagnosis differently’: An exploration of vitality and technology in mental health

Research project description:

How do new methods of detecting neurodegenerative disease map the ‘person-in-time’? How do people come to participate in techno-scientific projects that track cognitive decline and diagnose dementia earlier and more intensively than ever before? What ethical and epistemic challenges do these new measurement and diagnostic practices bring? In this fellowship, I will draw on empirical, methodological, and conceptual insights from my PhD and post-doc to develop a research programme to tackle these pressing questions.

My project speaks to a broader set of interests in the changing face of psychiatric diagnosis, including different or emergent ways of making sense of the 'normal’ and the 'pathological’ in mental health. My PhD was an ethnographic exploration of issues of access to mental health care in the voluntary sector in which I made visible how providers articulate mental health needs in alternative non-diagnostic ways, and how this took place in particular socio-material conditions. I will develop these interests in the intersecting fields of dementia research and ‘digital psychiatry’.

Under the mentorship of Monica Greco in Goldsmiths’ Sociology Department, I will generate creative and ‘live’ ways to engage with the spaces and temporalities of mental health systems in a ‘hyper-cognitive’ society. The outputs combine academic publications of my PhD and emergent post-doc work, user/public engagement, and scoping research with the MRC Dementias Platform UK’s “Deep and Frequent Phenotyping” project.

Publications:

  • Brenman, N.F. (2020) “Pandemic vitality: on living and being alive in lockdown” COVID-19 FORUM Social Anthropology.
  • Brenman, N.F. & Milne, R. (under review) “‘Ready for what?’ Timing and potentiality in Alzheimer’s disease research” Manuscript submitted for publication.
  • Brenman, N.F. & Milne, R. (under review) “Lived time and the affordances of dementia prevention research participation” Manuscript submitted for publication.
  • Brenman, N. F. (forthcoming) “Placing precarity: access and belonging in the shifting landscape of UK mental health care” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry.
  • Brenman, N. F. 2019. “A composite case: Thinking with ‘BME’ categories in UK mental health care” Medicine Anthropology Theory, 6 (4) 291–300.
  • Cowan, H., Brenman, N. F. & Kühlbrandt, C. 2019. “Repoliticizing public health.” Anthropology Today 35(1) 28.
  • Brenman, N. F., Hiddinga, A., & Wright, B. (2017). “Intersecting Cultures in Deaf Mental Health: An Ethnographic Study of NHS Professionals Diagnosing Autism in D/deaf Children.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 41 (3), 431-452.
  • Brenman, N. F., Luitel, N. P., Mall, S., & Jordans, M. J. (2014). “Demand and access to mental health services: a qualitative formative study in Nepal.” BMC International Health and Human Rights, 14 (1) 22.

Planned publications:

  • "Doing need differently: the labour of inclusion in voluntary sector psychotherapy services in the UK" Target journal: Medical Anthropology
  • "Making milieu: a ‘vital’ methodology for studying relations between place and need in mental health care" Target journal: Sociological Review
  • "Where is cognitive decline made to matter? Bringing pre-dementia Alzheimer’s to ‘life’ in the clinical research facility." Target journal: Biosocieties (in co-edited special issue)
  • "Casting long shadows: phenotyping dementia and the making of the digital ageing subject" Target journal: Big Data and Society (invited contribution to special issue)

Other Information:

Public health and bioethics affiliations: I will continue my contributions to ethics and society working groups in the field of ageing and dementia via an honorary contract with Cambridge Public Health the University of Cambridge. My current focus for this is the RECORD study: Researching the Effects of Covid On Research in Dementia in collaboration with the University of Oxford and Dementias Platform UK.

Other academic collaborations: I am currently developing projects with our London-based ‘Vitalities Collective’ research group, and am coordinating an online blog series with colleagues at MIT and the New School NYC on: Tracking Digital Psy: Mental Health and Technology in an Age of Disruption

Contact details:

Email: n.brenman@gold.ac.uk / nkf23@cam.ac.uk

Twitter: @NFBrenman

SeNSS pathway: Science, Technology, and Sustainability Studies

SeNSS university: University of Surrey

Primary mentor: Dr. Kate Burningham (University of Surrey)

Second mentor: Dr. Richard Nunes (University of Reading)

Research topic title: Planning for transitions? Exploring the interface between planning, politics and grassroots sustainability transitions

Research project description:

Amy’s PhD research reveals the politics of using the planning system for more sustainable placemaking (Burnett, 2019), explored through the case study of Frome, Somerset. Frome is a timely and highly interesting case where in 2011 a local, independent non-party political group won 10 out of 17 seats in the town council; since 2015, they hold all 17 seats. This group, the Independents for Frome (IfF), has to various degrees, been influenced by the thinking of ‘Transition’ reflected within the Transition (town) movement. Transition is an alternative, international social movement that seeks to build ‘parallel infrastructure’ to transform communities through principles of permaculture and relocalisation (i.e. ultra-localised action). The lessons on mainstreaming these alternative structures are especially timely during the current coronavirus pandemic.

Exploring Frome’s experiences and reasons for success can give others who seek to cultivate positive environmental action in their communities, through (neighbourhood) planning or local politics, insights into how this can happen. Amy’s research also reveals the politics and the tensions of ‘independent’ actors as protagonists seeking to challenge incumbent ‘regime’ institutions, particularly when the tools made available to local actors under the government’s Localism policy agenda may not always bring the desired benefits promised to them.

The Fellowship will enable Amy to develop several publications that build on the contributions of her PhD (see planned publications). Amy will also work with and bring together identified stakeholders, many of whom may work on different elements of local action - placemaking, politics and planning. She will convene a national-level workshop to share insights, frustrations and opportunities to effect more positive transitions at different scales and in different ‘sectors’, helping to overcome the challenge of institutional silos and encourage more collaborative approaches to cultivate and capture sustainability transitions. Amy will also work with think tanks and policy actors this could help to level up these discussions into concrete actions to support a framework for systemic transitions. For instance, using Frome’s experiences to reconstruct the governance of local politics as a means to question the effectiveness of such an approach and its relevance to post-Brexit politics and resilience responses to the Covid pandemic.

Publications:

  • Burnett, A and Nunes, R (in press) Flatpack Democracy: power and politics at the boundaries of transition. For potential inclusion in an Environmental Policy and Governance Special Issue.
  • Bradley, Q, Burnett, A, Sparling, W (2017) Neighbourhood Planning and the Spatial Practices of Localism. Neighbourhood Planning: Power to the People? Policy Press.
  • Merritt*, A and Stubbs, T (2012) Complementing the Local and the Global: promoting sustainability action through linked local-level formal sustainability funding mechanisms. Public Administration and Development. Volume 32, Issue 3, pp. 278-291. Rio+20 special edition: August 2012.
  • Merritt, A and Stubbs, T (2012) Incentives to Promote Green Citizenship in UK Transition Towns. Development, Issue 55, pp. 96-103. Rio+20 special edition: March 2012. née Merritt.

Other Information:

Amy’s Fellowship involves collaborating with several partners, including ECOLISE (European network for community-led initiatives on climate change), the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) and DRIFT (a network of academic sustainability transitions scholars based in the Netherlands to advance both theoretical and practical contributions in her research field. During her Fellowship, Amy will also play an active role in research network the Centre for Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP).

Contact details:

Email: a.burnett@surrey.ac.uk

SeNSS pathway: Psychology

SeNSS university: University of Essex

Primary mentor: Dr Vanessa Loaiza (University of Essex)

Second mentor: Dr Rachel McCloy (University of Reading)

Research topic title: A smart system to empower healthy food choices

Research project description:

Proper nutrition and healthy diets are a key aspect of health, which mandatory food labelling in the UK tries to address by empowering people with the information to help them make healthier choices. The format of this information (e.g., verbal quantifiers like 'low fat' or numerical quantifiers like '5% fat') affects whether people can easily understand and use food labels. Examining how people's judgements and decisions with respect to food differ depending on food label format therefore has wide-reaching impact for health policy decisions, consumer behaviour, and food industry practice. My project will use computational methods to identify different strategies people use to decide what foods are healthiest (e.g., less fat, or less sugar, etc.) I will evaluate which strategies produce the healthiest choices, use these insights to inform policy and conduct knowledge exchange with an industry partner.

The project will consolidate my PhD, which investigated differences in people's decision-making strategies when using verbal and numerical quantifiers on food labels. Using a mixture of behavioural tasks, surveys, and eye-tracking methodology, I identified that different ways of presenting quantities can lead to people relying on different pieces of information to judge food. I intend to extend this research and maximise its impact in four ways.

First, I will apply new and advanced statistical modelling to my research. To classify and predict food choice strategies in my data, I will learn two modelling techniques: multinomial processing trees, a probability-based method to classify choices, and machine learning, which makes predictions based on patterns in data. Second, I will extend the impact of my work through knowledge exchange with the start-up company Keep Fit Eat Fit Wellbeing Ltd (KFEF). Third, I will disseminate my research findings to academic and non-academic audiences through journal articles, conference presentations, press releases, and engaging with policy-makers. Finally, I will continue to seek grant funding for my work to improve the food choice environment for consumers and empower them to make informed, healthy choices.

Publications:

  • Liu, D., Juanchich, M., & Sirota, M. (2020). The directionality of verbal and numerical quantifiers affects the attribute framing effect. Acta Psychologica, 208, 103088. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103088
  • Liu, D., Juanchich, M., Sirota, M., & Orbell, S. (2020). Differences between decisions made using verbal or numerical quantities. Thinking and Reasoning. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2020.1720813
  • Liu, D., Juanchich, M., Sirota, M., & Orbell, S. (2020). The intuitive use of contextual information in decisions made with verbal and numerical quantities. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73, 481-494. doi: 10.1177/1747021820903439
  • Liu, D., Juanchich, M., Sirota, M., & Orbell, S. (2019). People overestimate verbal quantities of nutrients on nutrition labels. Food Quality and Preference, 78, 103739. doi: 10.1016/j.foodqual.2019.103739
  • Liu, D., & Juanchich, M. (2018). Conceptual understanding and quantity inferences: A new framework for examining consumer understanding of food energy. Public Health Nutrition, 21,3168-3177. doi: 10.1017/S1368980018002021
  • Liu, D., & Juanchich, M. (2017). Want to prime exercise? Calorie labels work better than activity ones! Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, London, UK.

Planned publications:

  • Holford, D.L., Juanchich, M., & Sirota, M. (under review). How much and why do verbal and numerical attribute frames affect judgements? Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
  • Holford, D.L., Juanchich, M., Foulsham, T., Sirota, M., & Clarke, A.D.F. (under review). Eye-tracking evidence for attention asymmetries in verbal and numerical quantifier processing. Psychological Research.
  • Holford, D.L. (in prep). Can suggested alternatives help consumers make better choices?

Other Information:

I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy with teaching experience in Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology. I am also a member of the SciBeh Reconfiguring Behavioural Science project and the Psychological Science Accelerator. In my spare time, I am an avid runner (and used to be a sailor for Singapore).

Contact details:

Email: dawn.liuholford@gmail.com

Twitter: @dlholf

SeNSS pathway: Social Anthropology

SeNSS university: University of Sussex

Primary mentor:

Second mentor:

Research topic title:

Research project description:

Publications:

Planned publications:

Other Information:

Contact details:

SeNSS pathway: Psychology

SeNSS university: University of Sussex

Primary mentor: Professor Chris Bird (University of Sussex)

Second mentor: Dr Louis Renoult (University of Sussex)

Research topic title: Learning of schemas and making sense of complex events.

Research project description:

The world can be confusing. To comprehend an everyday situation we often have to integrate information over time that is coming from our multiple senses. We often rely on our prior knowledge in order to make sense of what is happening around us. For instance, walking into an airport, we might expect to see a lot of people with suitcases and passports. In my thesis I examined the effects prior knowledge has on our understanding of complex events. I used brain scanning and video stimuli to test how we use prior information to understand an everyday conversation. In a separate experiment I trained participants to become knowledgeable about particular characters taken from a TV show and later tested how this affected their memory for clips taken from the same or a different show.

The main aim of this fellowship is to build on my PhD work and test how we learn new information that is related to our prior knowledge. Specifically, I will use brain imaging data from participants collected over the course of weeks that will help me assess how participants extract information from the multiple episodes to acquire knowledge about the characters of the show. The fellowship would allow me to test how incoming information is slowly transformed to knowledge that can later guide our understanding.

The fellowship will allow me to build my research profile and form strong academic connections with researchers from University of Toulouse with which I am collaborating. Furthermore, it will allow me to publish work from my PhD and write a review to consolidate the currently emerging literature on prior knowledge using complex stimuli.

Publications:

  • Raykov, P. P., Keidel, J. L., Oakhill, J., & Bird, C. M. (2020). The brain regions supporting schema-related processing of people’s identities. Cognitive neuropsychology, 37(1-2), 8-24.
  • Raykov, P. P., Keidel, J. L., Oakhill, J., & Bird, C. M. (2018). Shared contextual knowledge strengthens inter-subject synchrony and pattern similarity in the semantic network. BioRxiv, 276683.
  • Farooq, A., Raykov, Y. P., Raykov, P., & Little, M. A. (2020). Latent feature sharing: an adaptive approach to linear decomposition models. arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.12369.

Contact details:

Email address: P.Raykov@sussex.ac.uk

SeNSS pathway: Psychology

SeNSS university: Goldsmiths, University of London

Primary mentor: Prof Lauren Stewart

Second mentor: Prof Susan Ayers

Research topic title: Community Health Interventions through Musical Engagement (CHIME) for Perinatal Mental Health

Research project description:

Mental health problems during pregnancy and after birth (the perinatal period) are of global concern. They affect up to 1 in 5 women worldwide and can be twice as frequent in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).In my PhD work, I developed and piloted a low-cost, non-stigmatizing and culturally-embedded intervention: CHIME (Community Health Intervention through Music Engagement) to support the mental health of pregnant women in The Gambia. There is good evidence from high-income countries that engaging with music can have substantial health benefits including improving symptoms of anxiety and depression and sense of belonging. My PhD work explored how these findings could be applied in The Gambia, where existing musical practices around health provided a strong foundation. We co-developed a brief intervention where community-based women's groups led music sessions with local pregnant women. We evaluated the intervention in terms of its feasibility, acceptability and potential benefit for anxiety and depression, finding positive outcomes in all areas. While the potential for women's groups to improve maternal and newborn health in low-resource contexts is well recognized, the use of participatory music for this purpose is novel and potentially highly impactful, addressing a gap in recommendations for mental health interventions in LMICs.

In the fellowship year, I will conduct a scoping study to ascertain whether the intervention we developed to support perinatal mental health can be generalized to other LMIC. Within this study I will present the challenges, considerations and necessary adaptations that would be required for community music interventions for perinatal mental health to be implemented in other LMICs.

In addition, I will hold a symposium where I will bring together stakeholders from the academic, charity and public sectors from the UK and abroad interested in music interventions as a way to support perinatal mental health. This will provide a unique and multi-disciplinary perspective on how models of community mental health care in LMICs can contribute to frameworks of relevance to high-income contexts, which are under increasing strain.

I will also consolidate and extend the impact of my PhD by helping launch a Gambian Alliance for Maternal Mental Health and hold an online Maternal Mental Health in Africa symposium. This will mobilize key stakeholders to work in a coordinated way to disseminate key messages around perinatal mental health and to lobby the government to include this as a priority in future policies.

Publications:

  • Sanfilippo KRM, McConnell B, Cornelius V, et al (2020) Community psychosocial music intervention (CHIME) to reduce antenatal common mental disorder symptoms in The Gambia: a feasibility trial. BMJ Open, 10(11): e040287. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2020-040287

  • Sanfilippo, K. R. M., Spiro, N., Molina-Solana, M., & Lamont, A. (2020). Do the shuffle: Exploring reasons for music listening through shuffled play. PLOS ONE, 15(2), e0228457. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228457

  • Sanfilippo, K. R. M., McConnell, B., Cornelius, V., Darboe, B., Huma, H. B., Gaye, M., Ramchandani, P., Ceesay, H., Glover, V., Cross, I., & Stewart, L. (2019). A study protocol for testing the feasibility of a randomised stepped wedge cluster design to investigate a Community Health Intervention through Musical Engagement (CHIME) for perinatal mental health in The Gambia. Pilot and Feasibility Studies, 5(1), 124. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40814-019-0515-5

  • Dingle, G. A., Clift, S., Finn, S., Gilbert, R., Groarke, J. M., Irons, J. Y., Jones Bartoli, A., Lamont, A., Launay, J., Martin, E. S., Moss, H., Sanfilippo, K. R. M., Shipton, M., Stewart, L., Talbot, S., Tarrant, M., Tip, L., & Williams, E. J. (2019). An agenda for best practice research on group singing , health , and well-being. Music & Science, 2, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059204319861719

  • Anglada-Tort, M., & Sanfilippo, K. R. M. (2019). Visualizing Music Psychology: A Bibliometric Analysis of Psychology of Music , Music Perception , and Musicae Scientiae from 1973 to 2017. Music & Science, 2, 205920431881178. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059204318811786

  • Sanfilippo, K. R. M., & Spiro, N. (2017). The Third Nordoff Robbins Plus Conference “Exploring music in therapeutic and community settings.” An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy, 9(1), 159-163.

Contact details:

Email: ksanf001@gold.ac.uk

Twitter: @krsanfili

SeNSS pathway: Socio-Legal Studies

SeNSS university: University of Kent

Primary mentor: Prof Amanda Perry-Kessaris

Second mentor: Emily Allbon

Research topic title: Reframing ways of doing, talking and thinking about legal and economic phenomena

Research project description:

The way we talk matters. The grammar and vocabulary we use to do, talk, and think about law and economics has a tangible impact on the way we respond to crises, crashes and catastrophes. As a society, our requirements of both the law and the economy have never been so pressing, but the tools we have to reformulate both are currently limited. In this Fellowship, I will develop doctoral work that examines in detail the example of "embeddedness" in the context of an Economic Sociology of Law (ESL), scaling this up to apply the lessons to wider debates about the ways we currently do, talk and think about law and economics.

Are the law and economy embedded in society? Or is society embedded in the economy and its regulation? While these questions have become fashionable more recently, ultimately neither is helpful because they recycle and re-entrench neoclassical economic ideas and doctrinal legal approaches. My work proposes a new grammar and vocabulary that moves us beyond current mental models, allowing us to respond innovatively and ask which voices and interests that we wish to prioritise as a society.

Publications:

  • "What can ESL offer to the data collector? Describing, defining, designing and deploying an alternative ESL approach", (2014) Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 65(3): 345-55
  • "Appropriating rhetoric: a beginner's guide", (2013) Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 64(3): 383-95

Planned publications:

  • "Economic Sociology of Law Reimagined: Beyond Embeddedness", Routledge (forthcoming, 2021, short form monograph)
  • "Telling Stories: Using personae, vignettes and visual approaches to communicate sociolegal concepts, theories and methods", chapter to be submitted to Allbon E and Perry-Kessaris A (2021) "Legal Design for Legal Education"
  • "Mountains of Metaphor", interactive graphic design and art installation reflecting on the PhD journey, hosted and promoted by TL;DR legal website; forthcoming
  • I will also be setting up a website exploring visual and creative ways of doing, talking and thinking about legal and economic theories, methods and concepts, as well as maintaining my own blog and website (link below).

Other Information:

In addition to the work on doing, talking and thinking about law and economics, I've also been exploring how we might visualise this. I use digital art, 3D modelling and animation to ask what doing, talking and thinking about law and economics differently might look, and sound like. You can see some of work on my website (link below).

Contact details:

Institutional email address: tbc

Email address: clarewilliamsphd@gmail.com

https://claresresearchblog.com

SeNSS pathway: Social Anthropology

SeNSS university: University of Kent

Primary mentor: Prof Dimitrios Theodossopoulos (University of Kent)

Second mentor: Prof Mark Johnson (Goldsmiths, University of London)

Research topic title: Exploitation and Fairtrade in Costa Rica's Banana industry

Research project description:

When the trumpet sounded everything was prepared on earth, and Jehovah gave the world to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda, Ford Motors, and other corporations. The United Fruit Company reserved for itself the juiciest piece, the central coast of my land, the delicate waist of America’. Pablo Neruda La United Fruit Co. from Canto General (1950)

No other commodity symbolizes exploitation in Latin America like the banana. When Pablo Neruda penned the words above in his famous poem of 1950, he was voicing his protest at the creation of ‘Banana Republics’ of Central America. In more recent times, the Fair Trade movement has claimed to offer an alternative, ‘fairer’ type of banana production in the region. But we still don’t know whether this new model is genuinely challenging the exploitation of the so-called Dollar system of banana production in Central America that has long been dominated by U.S. corporations. This project directly addresses this gap by documenting the lives of people working in the region’s banana industry, both on Fair Trade and non-Fair Trade farms.

The present project provides a study of two farms in Costa Rica, one Fair Trade certified and one conventional. Building on my doctoral research, the study demonstrates that Fair Trade, as currently practiced, has only a limited ability to challenge the structural inequalities contained within the Dollar banana industry. I argue that Fair Trade’s current locatedness within neoliberal trade networks, means it is unable to address the structural problems and inequalities that reproduce exploitation. The research is based on a detailed ethnography of the lives of those who work on the banana plantations. Drawing upon a year of fieldwork on the farms, the study exposes how a series of factors - gender, patriarchy, national identity and religious ideology - contribute to the reproduction of inequality and the lack of resistance among workers. The project will be supplemented by new research documenting the responses of Fair Trade policy makers to these challenges.

Publications:

Planned publications:

  • (In preparation) Zaglul Ruiz Layla and Peter Luetchford, (forthcoming 2020) ‘Unpacking Fair Trade Bananas and Coffee: State, Market, and Development in Costa Rica’ Development in Practice. Special Issue for: The Private Sector in the Development Landscape

Other Information:

I hold a BA in Social Anthropology from the University of Costa Rica. After working for several years in Costa Rica I moved to the UK to undertake a MA in Anthropology of Development from SOAS, University of London. My MA dissertation explored the relationship between the consumption of Fairtrade bananas in the UK and its production in Costa Rica. In 2014 I began my PhD in International Development at Sussex. My doctoral work analyses the potential Fair Trade has in transforming the exploitative dynamics in the banana trade in Costa Rica.

Contact details:

To find out more about our brilliant 2019/20 ESRC-funded Post-Doctoral Fellows, please click on their names.

SeNSS pathway: Science, Technology, and Sustainability Studies

SeNSS university: University of Sussex

Primary mentor: Professor Fiona Marshall (University of Sussex)

Second mentor: Dr Neil Dawson (University of East Anglia)

Research topic title: Pathways of crop and livestock intensification for Green Revolution in Africa: Evidence from smallholder farmers in Rwanda

Research project description:

My research investigates the global agricultural intensification agenda and the role of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. More specifically, my work engages with the ongoing debate about the 'Green Revolution for Africa' agenda in Rwanda: a national plan that aims to replace subsistence farming by a fully monetised, commercial agricultural sector by 2020. However, despite continued efforts to transform agricultural and rural livelihood using technology-driven and capital-led innovation policies, many farmers have not achieved intensification. In my PhD work, I critically examined this disjuncture between the long-standing policy objective of modernising agriculture and Rwanda's rural realities.

During this fellowship, I will explore more in-depth the paradox of sustainable intensification of production faced by smallholder farmers. How could a smallholder producer - in particular, one who has limited access to land for crop and livestock production - prioritise and strive for intensification and commercialisation when their current means of production barely cover the household's livelihood demands?

I am excited to work with Professor Fiona Marshall and Dr Neil Dawson during this fellowship. Besides my research work, I will be working closely with Professor Marshall on her ongoing work in 'Knowledge systems innovations for sustainable development' in East Africa. With Dr Neil Dawson, I will have the chance to broaden my engagement and potential collaboration with scholars researching on and in Rwanda. To find out more on my progress, please find below the social media channels, and upcoming public engagement events and publications.

Publications:

  • Kim, S.K. and Sumberg, J. (2015). Assets, ‘asset-ness’ and graduation, IDS Bulletin – Special Issue: Graduation from Social Protection? 46: 2, 124-133.
  • Kim, S.K., Tiessen, K., Beeche, A., Mukankurunziza, J., & Kamatari, A. (2013). Soil fertility and manure management—Lessons from the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of Girinka farmers in the District of Ngoma, Rwanda, Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 37:6, 631-658.
  • Kim, S.K., Tiessen, K., Beeche, A., Mukankurunziza, J., & Kamatari, A. (2011). Cattle manure management in Rwanda–A case of Girinka cow beneficiaries in the District of Ngoma. Rwanda Journal, 24.

Planned publications:

  • Glover, D., Kim, S.K., & Stone, G. (in review). Would farmers adopt Golden rice? A study of seed choice dynamics in Nueva Ecija, Luzon, Philippines, Technology in Society.
  • Kim, S.K. (pre-submission). The pursuit of Green Revolution for Africa and the paradox of sustainable intensification for smallholder farmers in Rwanda. Journal of Peasant Studies.

Other Information:

  • Research visit and presentation – The School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa & International Development Research Centre, Canada (October-November 2019).
  • Public policy dialogue and debate – The 9th IPAR annual research conference in Kigali, Rwanda (January-February 2020).
  • Research conference – The Development Studies Association’s (DSA) annual conference, UK (June 2020).

Contact details:

Email address: s.k.kim@sussex.ac.uk

Twitter: @sun9kyu

LinkedIn: Sung Kyu Kim

SeNSS pathway: Socio-Legal Studies

SeNSS university: University of Kent

Primary mentor: Professor Rosemary Hunter (University of Kent)

Second mentor: Professor Rosemary Auchmuty (University of Reading)

Research topic title: Prosecuting domestic abuse in neoliberal times: Amplifying the survivor’s voice

Research project description:

My work explores how criminal prosecutions have become key to the UK government’s strategy to end violence against women and girls. Domestic abuse is regarded as ‘particularly serious’, and prosecutors are reminded that it will be rare that the ‘public interest’ will not require pursuance of such offences through the criminal courts (Crown Prosecution Service, 2019). As prosecutions are now expected, my research is particularly concerned with the tension that inevitably arises when a victim expresses her wish for case discontinuance (amounting to approximately 7,500 cases annually). The danger in these circumstances is that intimate partner coercion might simply be replaced with state coercion.

Past inattentive treatment by state criminal justice agencies in relation to domestic abuse is now being self-consciously reversed by neoliberal governing agendas intent on denouncing crime and holding offenders to account. ‘Governance feminists’ (Halley, 2018) have worked in tandem with governing neoliberals, providing additional political fuel and theoretical justification for the apparent reliance on criminal justice as a primary means of addressing domestic abuse. In response to feminist calls - to eradicate differing treatment of public and private violence, and to understand abused women as vulnerable subjects in need of protection - a ‘tenacious’ commitment to achieving prosecutions has emerged. At the same time, other strategies to support women in the community to achieve genuine safety have become ancillary, whilst alternative feminist discourses about the structural causes of and solutions to gendered intimate violence receive insufficient attention.

I will be producing a monograph that includes primary qualitative research conducted with prosecutors and abused women that attests to the prosecution commitment to achieve convictions on the one hand, and the impact on women’s lives on the other. During my post-doctoral year, I will conduct a number of focus groups with domestic abuse support workers to explore the distinctive normative conceptual framework I have developed - ‘the ‘thriver-subject’ - through which practitioners might think about women who have experienced domestic abuse. Aside from conference presentations, stakeholder workshops and shorter written pieces, I will be producing a practitioners’ guide and a shareable online animation to disseminate my research findings.

Publications:

  • Porter A., ‘Prosecuting Domestic Abuse: Vulnerability theory as heuristic’ in Gallen J. and Ni Mhuirthile T., (eds), Responsibility and the Vulnerable Society: State Accountability and Responsiveness (Routledge forthcoming).
  • Porter A., ‘Prosecuting Domestic Abuse in England and Wales: Crown Prosecution Service ‘Working Practice’ and New Public Managerialism’ (2019) 28:4 Social & Legal Studies 493-516.
  • Porter A., ‘Media reactions to Lavinia Woodward’s sentence have wrongly amplified class, race and gender bias in the judiciary’ (2017) Countercurrents: Critical Law.

Other Information:

I qualified as a solicitor in 2004, and have practiced both as a criminal defence lawyer and as a Senior Crown Prosecutor. I completed my Masters in Criminal Justice (distinction) in 2015, and my PhD in socio-legal studies in 2018, both at the University of Kent. I have continued to work as a trial advocate for the Crown Prosecution Service, frequently bringing domestic abuse prosecutions.

Contact details:

Email address: a.d.porter-28@kent.ac.uk

Twitter: @AntoniaDPorter1

SeNSS pathway: Politics and International Relations

SeNSS university: Royal Holloway, University of London

Primary mentor: Professor Oliver Heath (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Second mentor: Dr Sofia Collignon (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Research topic title: Party organisation and the success of regional parties at the sub-national level in India.

Research project description:

The primary aim of the post-doctoral fellowship is to consolidate my PhD research. The proposed research is based on a simple research question: why are regional parties successful in some parts of a country, but not others? The most common answer to this question is based on political and economic decentralisation and/or the presence of regionally- based ethnic cleavages. Acknowledging the importance of these explanations, I argue that an unhitherto explored explanation to the proposed research question is based on party organisation. I argue that when national parties give their regional branches autonomy, regional parties find it hard to succeed. This is because the regional branch is able to absorb any underlying regionalism present amongst the regional elites and voters.

To demonstrate that party organisation matters, I use empirical evidence and data from India, the world's largest democracy. India is also a good test case empirically and methodologically speaking. First, a study on regional party success is particularly relevant in India because close to 240 million citizens cast their votes for a regional party in 2014. Through my research, I aim to explain why some Indians vote for regional parties, where others do not.

There exists no data that systematically measures the level of regional branch autonomy within national parties in India. To this end, I began manually coding the level of regional branch autonomy within the two main national parties - the Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - for two Indian states, Gujarat and Maharashtra. However, due to limitations of time, resources, and research skills, I was not able to complete the coding exercise during my PhD. The fellowship will allow me to complete the coding exercise for all the major Indian states in the post-1989 period. Unlike the manual coding exercise I undertook during my PhD, I will employ Quantitative Textual Analysis in R to code the level of regional branch autonomy. The automated coding exercise will result in a panel dataset of regional branch autonomy within the two national parties for the 15 Indian states in the post-1989 period. The dataset will then be used as: (1) a primary dependent variable to understand why some national parties give more autonomy to their regional branches in some Indian states, but not others; (2) a primary independent variable to see whether high regional branch autonomy for national parties at the regional level is causally related to less support for regional parties.

Publications:

  • Shrimankar, D., “Why are regional parties successful in some regions in multi-level settings, but not others: Evidence from the sub-national level in India”. Revised and resubmitted to the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.
  • Shrimankar, D., “Why do polity-wide parties have different levels of intra-party autonomy at the sub-national level in India?”. Under review by Party Politics.
  • Shrimankar, D., and Maiorano, D., “Workfare and empowerment: Has India’s employment guarantee empowered women and Dalits?”. In preparation for submission to Governance.
  • Shrimankar, D., Gupta, P., and Verma, R., “Why do poor vote for right-wing parties? Nationalist rhetoric and the rise of the BJP in India.” In preparation for submission to British Journal of Political Science.

Contact details:

Email address: Dishil.Shrimankar@rhul.ac.uk

Twitter: @Dishil91

SeNSS pathway: Socio-Legal

SeNSS university: University of Sussex

Primary mentor: Professor Lindsay Stirton (University of Sussex)

Second mentor: Professor Karen Hulme (University of Essex)

Research topic title: Bridging the gap between international and domestic law - an interactional analysis of the UK's internalisation of the CBD Aichi Targets

Research project description:

Biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented and alarming rate, and the planet is currently experiencing yet another mass extinction (Ceballos et al. 2015). The delicate balance of biodiversity on our planet includes all living things and their interactions that makes it habitable. If this balance is disturbed, it is predicted to have far reaching consequences beyond just the loss of species. For example, exacerbated climate change, (such as increase in temperatures, water shortages and flooding) are predicted to create food insecurity and increase inequality - all of which could lead to widespread conflict (The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2000). The 1992 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the primary multinational treaty addressing the global level biodiversity loss. The deadline for the CBD’s current strategic plan is 2020, but it is clear that most of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets (ATs) will not be achieved, which means that the system needs to be strengthened to ensure compliance with its legal obligations.

Considering the precarious state of biodiversity globally, the chapters produced as part of the monograph (which will emerge from my PhD thesis), which forms a major part of the research project, will explore what needs to be done to make the legal regime under the CBD more effective at addressing the global biodiversity crisis. The monograph will firstly test the existing multidisciplinary theoretical understandings to probe why the ATs have not been achieved. It will then analyse the dynamics of the CBD, as a source of binding international legal obligations, to achieve the ATs. This analysis spans from the creation of legal obligations to compliance with such obligations at the international level, as well as their implementation at the domestic level. How CBD obligations travel from international to national law and are implemented at the domestic level has not been studied before, and this is the first ever research to explain these dynamics. This not only explains the causes behind the failure to achieve the current targets, but will also guide the development of a future strategic plan.

The research concludes that the current strategic plan failed, in part, due to limitations of processes at the international level. It argues that these limitations are difficult to overcome because of the CBD’s decision making process that requires consensus of all State Parties. It argues that this limitation can be overcome through reversing the process of obligation creation, that is, the development of domestic practices which subsequently develop shared understandings among State Parties, and can influence decision-making in the international arena. As a comprehensive package to tackle the biodiversity crisis, the proposed monograph suggests improvements in legal and policy making processes at all levels of governance. In particular, it argues that there is an opportunity at the domestic level to not only meet the requirements of international obligations that have travelled down to domestic laws and policies, but also to further strengthen them to increase the effectiveness of interactions around them in order to achieve compliance. Secondly, it argues that there is an opportunity for these strengthened understandings - formed at the domestic level - to feed back up to the international level, and to influence and push forward shared understandings at this level.

The research uses a novel mixed methodology combining doctrinal analysis, interviews and a micro-ethnography of CBD Conference of the Parties 13 (CBD COP). The research, therefore, adopts a unique socio-legal approach, using different theories to understand the effect of international legal obligations, and by applying the theory of interactional law to understand the making of international obligations and their travel to domestic level (Brunnée and Toope, 2010).

This pioneering research will likely have high impact value. It will not only help national and international biodiversity policy makers and State representatives at future CBD COPs, but will also have an academic audience as it fills an important gap in the existing literature on the understanding of domestic implementation of international legal obligations. This impact will be further strengthened by the publication of an invited chapter in a book on transforming biodiversity governance, and the publication of academic journal articles. Other impact-orientated activities include presentations at conferences and CBD meetings, as well as engagement with the general public through a blog post. This is a timely opportunity to disseminate research on the CBD as the 2020 date approaches when the next CBD strategic plan will be decided.

Publications:

  • Smallwood, J. “Influence of the 1992 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on UK Law” (2019) 114 UKELA E-Law 23.

Other Information:

Joanna completed a BSc Hons in Tropical Environmental Science and an LLM in Environmental Law at Aberdeen University. Her BSc dissertation was published. She worked at Friends of the Earth UK head offices in the parliamentary and legal departments, where she was involved in public interest cases, including those concerning genetically modified organisms. Inspired by the work at Friends of the Earth, she then went on to qualify as a lawyer (PGDL and LPS; The London College of Law). She completed her training contract, and then practiced as a solicitor at Leigh, Day & Co. in London, with a particular interest in environmental law multi-party actions. She was involved in a group litigation against a multi-national oil company, representing Columbian peasant farmers which was successfully resolved. Following some time out to look after her two children, she returned to university in 2014 and completed an MSc in Social Research Methods and her PhD in international biodiversity law, both at the University of Sussex.

Contact details:

Email address: js631@sussex.ac.uk

Twitter: @BiodiversityJo

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-joanna-miller-smallwood-34196537

SeNSS pathway: Psychology

SeNSS university: University of Essex

Primary mentor: Dr Loes Van Dam (University of Essex)

Second mentor: Dr Peter Scarfe (University of Reading)

Research topic title: The effects of dynamic facial information on sensitivity to facial expressions

Research project description:

Facial emotion recognition is one of the defining aspects of human visual perception. However, for some members of the population, extracting emotion-related information from faces is a challenging task. My current research project incorporates research findings derived from my PhD, and new avenues including Virtual Reality (VR), to explore the potential benefits of VR as an efficient and cost-effective platform for behavioural intervention programmes that can be used to facilitate facial emotion learning. While grounded in a theoretical understanding of how our brains interpret visual information about emotional expressions, this research will have important implications for ensuring that this information is accurately represented in VR and other digital displays.

My PhD research investigated the role of statistical image properties found in faces, and their role in certain aspects of facial emotion perception. In particular, I have used image processing techniques to explore the way in which such low-level stimulus features naturally differ between facial expressions; how these differences influence the subjective experience of emotional facial stimuli; and the degree to which they may be inadvertently altered via the use of popular procedures for standardising facial stimuli. I have also employed a range of psychophysical and behavioural designs (including backward-masking, binocular rivalry, saccadic eye movements, perceptual matching, and image analysis) in measuring how perceptual biases are exhibited differently across different experimental paradigms and, importantly, the consequence of naturally occurring image properties or, indeed, the alteration of these, on efficient and accurate facial emotion perception.

Research articles:

  • Webb, A. L., Hibbard, P. B., & O'Gorman, R. (2018). Natural variation in female reproductive hormones does not affect contrast sensitivity. Royal Society open science, 5(2), 171566.
  • Webb, A. L., & Hibbard, P. B. (in press). The effect of facial expression on contrast sensitivity: a behavioural investigation and extension of Hedger, Adams and Garner (2015). PloS one.

Other:

To see what our 2018/19 Post-Doctoral Fellows did during their fellowships, and what they are doing now, please click on their names.

SeNSS Pathway: Psychology

SeNSS university: University of Sussex

Primary mentor: Professor Jamie Ward, Department of Psychology, University of Sussex

Second mentor: Professor Michael Banissy, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London

Research topic title: Awareness of the bodily self in vicarious perception

Research project description:

In my research I investigate the sense of the bodily self and its relation to vicarious perception of touch and pain. I am particularly interested in an experience known as mirror-sensory synaesthesia, in which people literally feel a sensation of touch or pain on their own body when watching somebody else being touched or in pain. Preliminary work from my PhD indicates that these individuals may also exhibit broader differences in bodily self-awareness.

During the fellowship I will examine several aspects of bodily self-awareness in mirror-sensory synaesthesia, including the stability of implicit and explicit body representations, interoception (the perception of internal bodily states) and symptoms of depersonalisation (a feeling of detachment from the bodily self). To do so I will use behavioural techniques as well as electroencephalography (EEG).

I am passionate about science communication, and during the fellowship I will organise a number of events with the aim of promoting public engagement in my research area and in science more broadly.

Publications:

  • Botan, V., Bowling, N. C., Banissy, M. J., Critchley, H., & Ward, J. (in press). Individual differences in vicarious pain perception linked to heightened socially elicited emotional states. Frontiers in Psychology.
  • Bowling, N. C. & Banissy, M. J. (2017). Modulating vicarious tactile perception with non-invasive brain stimulation. European Journal of Neuroscience, 46(8), 2355-2364.
  • Bowling, N. C. & Banissy, M.J. (2017). Emotion expression modulates perception of animacy from faces. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 71, 83-95.
  • Gillmeister, H.G., Bowling, N., Rigato, S. & Banissy, M.J. (2017). Inter-individual differences in vicarious tactile perception: A view across the lifespan in typical and atypical populations. Multisensory Research, 30(6), 485-508.
  • Holle, H., Banissy, M.J., Wright, T., Bowling, N. & Ward, J. (2011). “That’s not a real body”: Identifying stimulus qualities that modulate synaesthetic experiences of touch. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(3), 720-726.

Contact details:

Email address: n.bowling@sussex.ac.uk

Twitter: @ncbowling

SeNSS Pathway: Politics and International Relations

SeNSS university: Royal Holloway, University of London

Primary mentor: Professor Ben O’Loughlin, School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy, Royal Holloway, University of London

Research topic title: Surveillance Studies

Research project description:

My project uses the conception of freedom as non-domination from republican literature to articulate new harms technologies like surveillance and Artificial Intelligence (AI) may bring to individuals and societies.

Beyond privacy and liberty, Republicans tell us that we are dominated if we are exposed to arbitrary power – which is power that is beyond our control or comprehension. To be free we must be free from exposure to such arbitrary power, which produces harmful behavioural impacts such as self-censorship and anxiety. My project connects this conception of freedom with the intuitive problems produced by opaque and powerful new technologies such as AI surveillance systems beginning to permeate society. If we cannot restrain the power of, or even understand, algorithmically and data driven technologies, the problem does not importantly hinge on privacy violations, but instead on domination.

This will be communicated to academic audiences, government and practitioners such as machine engineers, AI developers and privacy advocacy groups through the production of three journal papers, four academic conference papers, a report document and a monograph.

WorkPlan

Journal Papers

  • How Surveillance Incapacitates the Right to Protest - Key Milestone Submit to Political Studies for review by 04/01/2019
  • Authoritarian Realism and the Protest Pen - Key Milestone Submit to Political Theory for review by 26/02/2019
  • Realism and Robots - Key Milestone Submit to AI and Society by 30/05/2019

Articles

  • Domination and Despondency’ for OpenDemocracy - Key Milestone Submit to OpenDemocracy 24/03/2019

Monograph

  • “Liberal Democracy under Surveillance” - Key Milestone Submit to ‘Digital Politics’ Book Series editor – Professor Andrew Chadwick – by 20/09/2019

Conference Papers

  • Spring/Summer of 2019 (Some dates yet to be confirmed by conference organisers)
  • Conference Paper: The Imbalance of the Privacy Debate: Domination, Illegitimacy and Resistance to Surveillance
  • Key Milestone -The International Privacy and Security Conference – February 2019 date TBC
  • Annual Surveillance Studies Network Conference – date TBC
  • Conference Paper: Technology, Domination and Legitimacy
  • Key Milestone - AI Now Symposium – date TBC; Future of Life Institute Annual Conference - date TBC
  • Key Milestone – Report document for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) - 30/07/2019

Contact details:

Email address: matthew.hall.2012@live.rhul.ac.uk

SeNSS Pathway: Sociology

SeNSS university: Goldsmiths, University of London

Primary mentor: Rebecca Coleman, Reader in Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London

Research topic title: Re-imagining Crisis: Pop-up Cultures and Precarious Lives in Austerity London

Research project description:

Londoners today inhabit a period of ‘crisis-ordinary’. Under on-going austerity measures, poverty and inequality are rising. The housing crisis is worsening and more people are being pushed into precarious labour. It has been argued that this state of crisis is being perpetuated because stakeholders refuse to entertain solutions that contest the neoliberal model (Elledge, 2017). With this in mind, my project examines efforts at re-imagining precarious conditions to present them as positive. Drawing on my existing doctoral and postdoctoral research, as well as through the development of new case studies, I am producing a monograph that examines how precarious ways of working and living in London are being branded positively. Specifically, I examine the importance of “pop-up” culture and its spatial and temporal imaginaries in normalising and glamorising precarity.

If crisis has a particular spatiotemporality, defined, for example, by uncertainty, instability, fractures and gaps, then I conjecture that, through pop-up, a set of more positively framed logics have arisen that correspond to, but optimistically reimagine, these same spatial and temporal conditions. I argue that pop-up, which emerged directly from conditions of recession, has been welcomed by a wide variety of stakeholders because of its ability to rebrand the spatial and temporal markers of precarity, replacing, for example, instability with flexibility or diminishment with the micro. The book traces the development and impact of seven key spatiotemporal logics; immersion, flexibility, interstitiality (in-between-ness), secrecy, surprise, the micro and the meantime.

As well as the monograph, my project involves the creation of a project website, which invites contributions from others working on similar topics, and a stakeholder event about the implications of pop-up for urban futures.

Publications:

Papers

  • Harris, E. Brickell, K and Nowicki, M. (Under Review) “Temporary Fixes: Compensatory and Defiant Homemaking in Pop-up and Rapid Build Housing in Dublin and London” Antipode
  • Nowicki, M. Harris, E and Brickell, K (Under Review) “The hotelisation of the housing crisis: Experiences of family homelessness in Dublin hotels” The Geographical Journal
  • Harris, E. and Nowicki, M. (2018) “Cultural Geographies of Precarity”. Introduction to special issue of Cultural Geographies, 25(3), pp. 387-391 “Cultural Geographies of Precarity” (ed. Harris, E. and Nowicki, M.)
  • Harris, E. Brickell, K. and Nowicki, M. (2018) “On edge in the Impasse: Inhabiting the Housing Crisis as Structure of Feeling”; Invited contribution to special issue of Geoforum, (available online) (ed. Chris Philo, Hester Parr, Ola Soderstrom)
  • Harris, E. (2016) “Exploring Pop-up Cinema and the City: Deleuzian Encounters with Secret Cinema's Pop-up screening of The Third Man”. Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 3(1), pp. 113-133. Invited Contribution to the special issue ‘Cinematicity: Cinema and the city after Deleuze’ (ed. Clarke, D. and Doel, M.)
  • Harris, E. (2016) “Introducing I-Docs to Geography: Exploring Interactive Documentary’s Nonlinear Imaginaries” Area 49(1), pp.25-34
  • Harris, E (2015) “Navigating Pop-up Geographies: Urban Space-Times of Flexibility, Interstitiality and Immersion”. Geography Compass, 9(11), pp. 592-603.

Special Issues (organised and edited)

  • Harris, E and Nowicki, M. (eds). 2018, Cultural Geographies of Precarity, Cultural Geographies

Book chapters

  • Harris, E. (2018) “Encountering Urban Space Live at The Floating Cinema”. Invited contribution to the edited book Live Cinema: Cultures, Economies, Aesthetics, Bloomsbury (eds. Sarah Atkinson and Helen Kennedy)
  • Harris, E. (2018) “Crafted places/places for craft: Pop-up and the Politics of the ‘Crafted City’” Invited contribution to The Craft Economy, Bloomsbury Academic (eds. Susan Luckman and Nicola Thomas)

Reports

  • Forthcoming, Harris, E. Brickell, K and Nowicki M. Temporary Homes, Permanent Progress? Resident Experiences of PLACE/Ladywell
  • 2017 “Home at Last: Everyday life in Dublin’s Rapid Build Housing”. Commissioned report for Dublin City Council (with Katherine Brickell and Mel Nowicki)

Book Reviews

  • Harris, E. (2016) “Mutations of the Container Principle: Containerization Stage Two” on The Container Principle (Alexander Klose) Journal of Science as Culture (Published online May 31st) (invited review essay)
  • Harris, E. (2015) Review of “In the Meantime” (Sarah Sharma) Society and Space (online) (invited review essay)
  • Harris, E. (2015) Review of “Urban Interstices: the aesthetics and the politics of the in-between” (Ed. Andrea Mubi Brighenti). Urban Research and Practice 8(1), pp 136-138.

Other information:

In addition to my individual scholarship I run a collaborative project with Dr Mel Nowicki exploring “Precarious Geographies.” Our outputs have so far included a special issue on Cultural Geographies of Precarity, a film screening and discussion of Nightcrawler, an article for Guardian Cities and several conference sessions. In my spare time I compete nationally and internationally as an amateur boxer.

Contact details:

Email address: E.Harris@gold.ac.uk

Twitter: @CrisisCultures

Website/blog: www.crisiscultures.com

SeNSS Pathway: Socio-Legal Studies

SeNSS university: University of Kent

Primary mentor: Dr Julie McCandless, Kent Law School, University of Kent

Second mentor: Dr Marian Duggan, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent

Research topic title: Crimes of child sexual exploitation in England – A socio-legal project promoting effective approaches to investigation and prosecution

Research project description: The 2012 national inquiry into child sexual exploitation (CSE) in gangs and groups by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England and Wales reported 2409 ‘confirmed victims’ of child sexual exploitation during the 14-month period from August 2010 to October 2011 and further 16,500 children as at risk of child sexual exploitation between April 2010 and March 2011. Although many high profile investigations, such as Operation Retriever (Derby), Operation Span (Rochdale), Operation Bullfinch (Oxford), Operation Central (Rotherham) and Operation Sanctuary (Newcastle) since 2009 have resulted in the prosecution of CSE cases, the numbers of prosecutions are not proportionate to those being reported. This project builds on the learning developed through Aravinda’s doctoral research exploring attrition in cases involving crimes of CSE. Attrition refers to the process where cases get dropped at various stages of the criminal justice system. Aravinda’s thesis developed a nuanced understanding of how attrition occurs in these cases particularly during investigation and prosecution charging stages and highlighted areas within policy and practice that requires critical reflection. This project takes that understanding to a wider audience through publication of research findings and through engaging with key stakeholders. It aims to develop a user-friendly guide for practitioners who are working in the area of CSE such as police officers; child and public protection units; social care workers; health and education teams; young people and family support workers within the voluntary sector; as well as those involved in supporting victims and witnesses. It also aims to publish shorter pieces targeted at service providers, policy makers and general public and to disseminate the learning through presentations at practitioners’ forums and conferences. Through engaging with practitioners this project works towards bridging a significant gap between academic research and practice in the investigation and prosecution of crimes of CSE.

Publications:

  • Kosaraju, A. “Foucauldian Feminist Approach to interrogating child sexual exploitation and the challenges to engaging sexually exploited children in Research – A probe” in (eds) Marjan Ivković, Gazela Pudar Draško , Srđan Prodanović, Engaging Foucault Volume 2 (University of Belgrade, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory 2016).
  • Kosaraju, A Grooming: Myth and Reality of Child Sexual Exploitation, ChildRight (2008) 246, 14-17.
  • Kosaraju, A Trafficking in our midst – Briefing paper, CROP (2006)
  • Kosaraju, A Parents, Children and Pimps: Families speak out about sexual exploitation – Research Report, CROP (2005)
  • Kosaraju, A National Roundtable on Police Reforms– A report (2002), CHRI, New Delhi.

Other information: Aravinda worked for 7 years as the Policy and Research Officer for Parents against Child Sexual Exploitation (PACE), a UK national charity working to support families of sexually exploited children. As a consultant to the Lawyer’s Collective/UNIFEM funded project titled Trafficking of women and children for commercial sexual exploitation, she coordinated research into the socio-legal aspects of prostitution in two of Asia’s largest red light districts of Mumbai and Delhi during 2001-03. She advocated for police reforms in India in her role as Project Officer for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, an international non-governmental organization working to promote human rights across the Commonwealth. Aravinda has extensive experience of developing training for criminal justice practitioners and also teaches modules in law and criminology. She is the founding member of Support After Rape and Sexual Violence Leeds and a former director of National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People.

Contact details:

Email address: a.kosaraju@kent.ac.uk

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/aravinda-kosaraju-3788b853

Twitter: https://twitter.com/a_kosaraju

SeNSS Pathway: Economics

SeNSS university: Royal Holloway, University of London

Primary mentor: Professor Arnaud Chevalier, Department of Economics, Royal Holloway, University of London

Research topic title: Human capital accumulation and skills formation among natives and migrants in the UK

Research project description: My project investigates the impact of migration on human capital accumulation and skills formation of the migrant and the native population.

Contact details:

Email address: greta.morando@rhul.ac.uk

Website/blog: https://gretamorando.weebly.com/

SeNSS Pathway: Social Anthropology

SeNSS university: University of Sussex

Primary mentor: Dr Dinah Rajak, Departments of Anthropology and International Development, University of Sussex

Second mentor: Dr Beth Breeze, Director: Centre for Philanthropy School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research University of Kent

Research topic title: From philanthropy to impact investment: Private sector initiatives for development in Brazil and the UK

Research project description: My PhD explored the work of philanthropic foundations and trusts in Brazil and the UK. It examined the growth of ‘philanthrocapitalism’, which attempts to make philanthropy more ‘businesslike’ and strategic, and the intersections between this global philanthropic trend and localised relationships between wealth elites and third sector organisations in Brazil and the UK, which have shifted in accordance with the changing political landscapes of both countries over recent decades. In parallel, I explored the role played by philanthropy in the creation of ‘socially responsible’ identities of wealth, and the building of historical narratives of corporate social responsibility within family businesses.

During my SeNSS/ESRC postdoctoral fellowship, this doctoral project will be developed through further research on the emerging practice of impact investing among philanthropic investors and development agencies in Brazil and the UK. Impact investing sees investment into social businesses, in pursuit of both financial return and social impact. I will examine how impact investors use metrics and indicators to measure social impact, and how impact investing fosters collaboration between private sector and state actors, shaping development policymaking and practice.

During my fellowship, I will disseminate the findings of my doctoral project and this further research through an academic monograph and journal articles, and the presentation of my research at conferences in the UK, Brazil and elsewhere. I will conduct a research trip to Brazil, and convene a group of scholars to work on a funding proposal for a collaborative project on private financing initiatives for development in diverse geographies. In addition, I will disseminate my research among practitioners in the fields of philanthropy and social investing, through industry publications and presentation of my research in the sector. Finally, I will pursue opportunities for knowledge exchange and impact activities with philanthropists and impact investors in Brazil and the UK.

Publications:

Book

  • Sklair, Jessica. 2010. A Filantropia Paulistana: Açoes sociais em uma cidade segregada. [Philanthropy in São Paulo: Social projects in a segregated city.] São Paulo: Editora Humanitas.

Book Sections

  • Sklair, Jessica. (Accepted, publication due February 2019) Direitos e responsabilidades: Filantropia e a provisão de serviços de saúde em uma favela paulistana. [Rights and Responsibilities: Philanthropy and the provision of healthcare in a São Paulo shanty town]. In: Frúgoli Jr., H., Spaggiari, E. and Aderaldo, G. (eds.) Title tbc. São Paulo: Editora Gramma (Coleção Antropologia Hoje).
  • Frúgoli Jr., Heitor and Sklair, Jessica. 2013. O bairro da Luz (São Paulo) e o Bairro Alto (Lisboa) nos entremeios de mudanças e permanências. [The Luz district and the Bairro Alto district: Caught between change and permanency]. In: Fortuna, C. and Leite, R., (eds.) Diálogos Urbanos: Territórios, culturas, patrimónios. Coimbra: Almedina, 75-103.

Peer Reviewed Articles

  • Gilbert, P. R. and Sklair, J. 2018. Introduction: Ethnographic Engagements with Global Elites: Mutuality, Complicity & Critique. Focaal - Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 81, 1-15.
  • Sklair, J. 2018. Closeness and critique among Brazilian philanthropists: Challenges for a critical ethnography of wealth elites. Focaal - Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 81, 29-42.
  • [For theme section: Gilbert, P. & Sklair, J. (eds.) Mutuality, Complicity & Critique in the Ethnography of Global Elites.]

Other Articles

  • Sklair, Jessica. 2016. Philanthropy as Salvation: Can the rich save the world and should we let them try? Voices from Around the World (Online Journal of the Global South Studies Center Cologne), Jan. 2016 Issue.
  • Frúgoli Jr., Heitor and Sklair, Jessica. 2009. O Bairro da Luz em São Paulo: Questões antropológicas sobre o fenômeno da gentrification. [The Luz District in São Paulo: Anthropological questions on the phenomenon of gentrification] Cuadernos de Antropología Social (Argentina), 30, pp. 119-136.

Other information: I was awarded my PhD in the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths (University of London) in 2017, and held a Stipendiary Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute of Latin American Studies (School of Advanced Study, University of London) from Nov 2017 to April 2018. Prior to my PhD, I worked for six years in Brazil and the UK as a documentary filmmaker, and completed my Masters degree in Anthropology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. During my doctoral fieldwork, I worked part time as Director for Research at the Institute for Philanthropy in London. I am also a board member of Sound and Fair, a UK based social business supplying FSC certified timber from community-managed forests in Tanzania to the global musical instrument market.

Contact details:

Email address: j.sklair@sussex.ac.uk

LinkedIn: Jessica Sklair

_Twitter: @jessie_sklair_