FCDO ODA allocations for 2021/22 were announced on 21 April 2021. Changes to individual programmes are underway. The information on this website may not reflect the latest allocated budgets for this year. This information will be updated in due course.
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Newton International Fellowships 2020/21
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
Scheme supports early-career international researchers to spend two years undertaking research at a host university or research institution in the UK, enabling them to benefit from a period within a first class research environment in some of the UKâs
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-NEWT-AMS_BRA_NIF0007
Start Date:
Activity Status:
Pipeline/identification
Total Budget:
£297,000
Newton Advanced Fellowships 2020/21
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
Awards for early to mid-career international researchers who have already established (or in process of establishing) a research group. Awards support researchers in their own country, providing funding for training and development in collaboration with
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-NEWT-AMS_CHN_NAF0013
Start Date:
Activity Status:
Pipeline/identification
Total Budget:
£333,000
Newton Advanced Fellowships 2020/21
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
Awards for early to mid-career international researchers who have already established (or in process of establishing) a research group. Awards support researchers in their own country, providing funding for training and development in collaboration with
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-NEWT-AMS_BRA_NAF0012
Start Date:
Activity Status:
Pipeline/identification
Total Budget:
£222,000
Newton International Fellowships 2020/21
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
Scheme supports early-career international researchers to spend two years undertaking research at a host university or research institution in the UK, enabling them to benefit from a period within a first class research environment in some of the UKâs
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-NEWT-AMS_IND_NIF0007
Start Date:
Activity Status:
Pipeline/identification
Total Budget:
£297,000
Newton International Fellowships 2020/21
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
Scheme supports early-career international researchers to spend two years undertaking research at a host university or research institution in the UK, enabling them to benefit from a period within a first class research environment in some of the UKâs
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-NEWT-AMS_CHN_NIF0007
Start Date:
Activity Status:
Pipeline/identification
Total Budget:
£297,000
Leaders in Innovation Fellowships Programme v2
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
The Leaders in Innovation Fellowships programme builds technology entrepreneurship capacity of select partner country researchers who are developing a business proposition for their innovation which must meet a development challenge. Selected researchers benefit from focussed short term training and long term support through access to expert mentors and international networks.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-NEWT-RAE_EGY_723
Start Date:
2016-10-01
Activity Status:
Pipeline/identification
Total Budget:
£481,200
Leaders in Innovation Fellowships Programme v3
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
The Leaders in Innovation Fellowships programme builds technology entrepreneurship capacity of select partner country researchers who are developing a business proposition for their innovation which must meet a development challenge. Selected researchers benefit from focussed short term training and long term support through access to expert mentors and international networks.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-NEWT-RAE_ZAF_766
Start Date:
2016-10-01
Activity Status:
Pipeline/identification
Total Budget:
£191,000
Industry Academia Partnership Programme
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
The Industry Academia Partnership Programme aims to build strong and structured partnerships between higher education institutions and locally based industry, focussed around bilateral academic and industry exchanges. These placements improve university curricula and enhance knowledge transfer into industry to enhance prospects for long term economic development within the partner country.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-NEWT-RAE_IDN_732
Start Date:
2017-01-01
Activity Status:
Pipeline/identification
Total Budget:
£436,424.22
Leaders in Innovation Fellowships Programme v3
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
The Leaders in Innovation Fellowships programme builds technology entrepreneurship capacity of select partner country researchers who are developing a business proposition for their innovation which must meet a development challenge. Selected researchers benefit from focussed short term training and long term support through access to expert mentors and international networks.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-NEWT-RAE_VNM_794
Start Date:
2016-10-01
Activity Status:
Pipeline/identification
Total Budget:
£551,000
The Cultural Contexts of Disease Prevention: The Case of Cholangiocarcinoma in Mainland Southeast Asia
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
The Northeast region of Thailand - known locally as Isan - is home to the highest rates of bile duct cancer (cholangiocarcinoma, hereafter CCA) in the world. While CCA is normally rare, Isan reports a record number of over 20,000 cases a year. Furthermore, CCA is also prevalent in most rural communities along the Mekong River in Southeast Asia, in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. CCA in this region of the world results from a neglected tropical disease, chronic liver fluke infection, caused by the consumption of raw or undercooked freshwater fish infected with Opisthorchis viverrini (hereafter OV). OV was identified by the WHO in 2012 as a Class I carcinogen. Infection carries no symptoms and, with each fluke able to live in the bile duct for up to twenty years, the slow development of CCA remains asymptomatic until the later stages of the disease. As a result, less than 5% of cases are operable and five-year survival rates among those treated are also low. In the remaining cases, the only option is palliative care. CCA is a silent killer in Isan and its neighbouring countries, responsible for the devastation of impoverished rural families whose key earners can be struck down by the disease in later life; but it also frustrates medical specialists because the eradication of OV infection would prevent most cases of CCA altogether, hence saving thousands from dying a painful death. The complexity of the problem is not, however, solely a medical one but rather one that requires a sustained and respectful engagement between medicine, the social sciences and the humanities in order to address in the most nuanced and rigorous ways, the range of issues relating to persistent OV infection in the region: most notably the fact that infection occurs as a result of dietary practices associated with deeply ingrained notions of cultural identity relating to the practice of eating ""raw"" that has defined the region for many centuries. In Thailand public health campaigns in operation since the 1950s have had limited success in effecting behaviour change and, crucially, in combatting the prevalence of OV infection and CCA. This may in part be due to the top-down, Bangkok-centric, nature of public health intervention in Thailand, one which is persistently coloured by hierarchical beliefs in the fundamentally ""uncivilised"" nature of cultural and dietary practices in Isan. Nineteenth century history tells of the internally colonising impact of the newly forming Siamese nation-state, the politico-cultural effects of which persist up to the present day. These historical remnants continue to drive all aspects of interaction between the centre and the periphery, the capital and the countryside in contemporary Thailand. To more fully comprehend, and hence be in a position to respond thoughtfully and effectively to, the culturally embedded behaviour and practices at play in persistent OV infection and subsequent CCA, this project proposes a radical multidisciplinary collaboration, the aim of which is to attend holistically to this neglected disease and its causes. By addressing the very specific medical problem of CCA in Isan from a wide variety of differing yet interrelated perspectives (those of public health and hygiene, epidemiology, parasitology, biochemistry, religious and spiritual belief patterns, history, geography, anthropology ecology, psychology, phenomenology, socio-linguistics, postcolonial theory, literature, the arts and and cultural studies) we seek out the connections that pertain across disciplines in the need to tackle diseases that evidently relate to cultural and community-based practices. Our ultimate aim is to draw upon this multidisciplinary approach to effect a wider impact on the current state of knowledge regarding behaviour-related diseases in a range of other LMICs, as well as in the UK.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-FUND--GCRF-AH_R00613X_1
Start Date:
2017-11-01
Activity Status:
Implementation
Total Budget:
£170,961.99
Newton Fund: Applying nature-based coastal defence to the world's largest urban area - from science to practice
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
Project Summary: Nature-based coastal defence solutions have increasingly been recognized as more sustainable alternatives to conventional engineering approaches against climate change. In deltas undergoing fast urbanization, applying nature-based solutions can lead to space competition with other land uses, e.g. land-reclamations. For optimized management, the question of how much space is required by nature-based solutions is important. However, our current knowledge is insufficient in ecosystem size-dependent defence-value and resilience. Additionally, we are lacking insights into ecosystem creation for coastal defence, as previous restoration efforts have suffered low success rates. The current proposal aims to develop process-based understanding and predictive models of ecosystem size requirements and how to create ecosystems for coastal defence, using the world's largest urban area, Pearl River Delta, China, as a model system. Delta-scale mangrove area monitoring and hydrodynamic modelling will be conducted to study wetland area changes and optimization of ecosystem spaces for defence, under contrasting scenarios of climate change and land-reclamations. This large-scaled study will also provide underpinning boundary conditions for local-scaled experiments and modelling. A set of experiments using novel instruments will be conducted to improve our insights on the processes influencing mangrove defence-value and lateral dynamics. Innovative measures of using dredging materials and oyster reefs to facilitate mangrove establishment will also be tested experimentally. Local-scaled models will incorporate the obtained experimental knowledge to predict mangrove biogeomorphic dynamics and provide guidelines for management. The developed models and knowledge will be directly applied in the design of a pilot eco-dike project in collaboration with our partners. Summary of the UK applicants' proposed contribution to the project: The focus of the study is on coastal zone management, including management of sediment and nature-based flood defence. The UK applicants will lead Work Task 1: Wetland area monitoring/hydrodynamic modelling. This work task will provide an over-view of the bio-physical conditions, including the morphological and land-use aspects of the Pearl River Delta and its regional setting. The UK team will implement a high resolution unstructured-grid model (FVCOM) for the Pearl River Delta (PRD) for hydrodynamics, waves and sediment transport which will provide the interface between the larger scale atmospheric and oceanic boundary conditions and the smaller-scale process studies and ecosystem modelling to be carried out by our Dutch and Chinese partners. We will also address some objectives within focus area 1 (Resilient urban planning and management) in terms of combining spatial planning and disaster management by optimizing land use, institutions and mechanisms for more sustainable urbanisation, exploring eco-dynamic design options to provide opportunities for nature as part of urban development processes and reducing urban footprints and developing performance evaluation systems to mitigate environmental impacts. We will explore opportunities to apply management decision tools, such as those recently developed in the EPSRC ARCoES project.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-FUND--Newton-EP_R024553_1
Start Date:
2018-02-01
Activity Status:
Implementation
Total Budget:
£111,626.06
Newton Fund - Natural versus anthropogenically driven behaviour of hydrodynamics and sediment dynamics in Yangtze Estuarian Delta
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
Estuarine deltas are areas where the water and suspended sediment motion are primarily driven by the joint action of input of fresh water by rivers and tide from the sea. Besides being driven by these natural forcing agents, the hydrodynamics and sediment dynamics are frequently affected by a variety of different anthropogenic measures, such as channel dredging, land reclamation, engineering works for flow and sediment controls regulations in the estuaries, and dams in the upstream parts of watersheds. These human activities may lead to strong changes of flow and suspended sediment behaviour in the estuaries. During the last decades many estuarine systems in Europe (e.g. the Elbe, Ems, Loire) have shown increases in tidal range and in turbidity, which seem to be linked to deepening[1] An estuarine delta system that faces similar problems as European estuaries is the Yangtze Estuary Delta(YED). Analysis of field data collected since the middle of the last century show that there are significant variations in morphological patterns of estuarine channels as well as of subaqueous deltas of the YED that are naturally generated over a thousand-year period. Compared to the European estuaries mentioned above, the YED is much larger in scales, experiences much stronger river discharge, and it is subject to a strong seasonal variation in fresh water. Moreover, it is a complex estuarine network with several branches, connecting channels and a complex delta. The changes of the flow and sediment dynamics in the estuary may result from both local and nonlocal human activities. Despite the intense research efforts over the past two decades, it is still unclear which impact (local or nonlocal) is responsible for the changing flow and sediment characteristics in the estuary. The proposed research, through bring together a group of leading scientists with complementary expertise from China, UK and Netherlands, is designed to achieve a more systematic understanding of the mechanisms by which flow and sediment dynamics in YED tidal channels are affected by anthropogenic activities, and use this insight to formulate effective coastal management strategies.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-FUND--Newton-EP_R02491X_1
Start Date:
2018-01-01
Activity Status:
Implementation
Total Budget:
£351,648.85
Newton Fund: Adaptive Urban Transformation (AUT) - Territorial governance, spatial strategy and urban landscape dynamics in the Pearl River Delta
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
This project concerns planning and management for more resilient urban deltas, and in particular, adaptation of the dynamics of urban deltas to address increasing flood risk. The project evaluates innovative territorial governance as an approach to create spatial strategies that may unlock the adaptation options, especially by integrating urban planning and water management, and engaging with stakeholders. The overall aim of the research is to develop an integrative and multiscale design and planning approach for adaptive urban transformation in fast urbanizing deltas. It uses the Pearl River Delta as a case study. The project will combine work in the China, the Netherlands and the UK: (1) to develop a portfolio of integrated adaptation measures based on an assessment of ecological capacity and life cycles of buildings, urban districts and regions; (2) identify potential in territorial governance structures for more integrated approaches and adaptation measures; and (3), develop and test innovative 3D visualisation techniques that facilitate participatory, multi-stakeholder planning approaches. For the first time, established and regular urban transformation processes will be used as opportunities to adapt systems in urbanized deltas at relatively low costs. Furthermore, the research will identify institutional, cultural and financial innovations that are needed in territorial governance to steer the development of urban and rural areas towards more resilient futures. This research provides a unique approach that integrates research in urban landscape systems, territorial governance and visualisation techniques that will help to achieve more integrated and resilient deltas.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-FUND--Newton-EP_R024979_1
Start Date:
2018-02-01
Activity Status:
Implementation
Total Budget:
£291,089.32
Utilising Marine Cultural Heritage in East Africa to help develop sustainable social, economic and cultural benefits
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
The Rising from the Depths network will identify how the tangible submerged and coastal Marine Cultural Heritage (MCH) of Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar, and its associated intangible aspects, can stimulate, ethical, inclusive and sustainable growth in the region. The multidisciplinary project team (experienced in challenge-led research and KE in ODA environments) will determine ways in which MCH can directly benefit East African communities and local economies, building identity, stimulating alternative sources of income (reducing poverty), and enhancing the value and impact of overseas aid in the maritime sector. East Africa is undergoing a period of profound change as the economy of the region gains momentum, driven by changing internal dynamics and by external interests. The region's maritime zone is central to these developments with offshore exploration for oil and gas deposits driving investment, coupled with major financing of new and established ports to facilitate trade with the Gulf countries. In addition to aid and investment from both the UK and other western governments, China and Saudi Arabia are funding major infrastructural and development projects across the region. While these developments have the potential to realise short-term economic, developmental and employment benefits, there has been little consideration of the impact of this work on the region's submerged and coastal heritage. Nascent maritime research in East Africa is just beginning to reveal the extent of maritime cultures and traditions across the region as well as the evidence for wider maritime activity that connected this coast to the broader Indian Ocean region. The sea in East Africa is a connector, a facilitator of communications, a supplier of resources that sustains life and an environment that is rooted in the belief systems of coastal peoples. For millennia this coast has been embedded within broader political and socio-economic domains, and witness to multiple migrations, invasions and trade activity. Its port towns and cities were intrinsically connected to a wider mercantile maritime world, ensuring it became one of the most culturally dynamic and diverse regions throughout history. It was, and continues to be, a region of continuous transformation and subject to a variety of anthropogenic and natural drivers of change. Development agreements very rarely take account of cultural heritage even though access to it is considered a fundamental human right. East African counties currently have little capacity to protect or explore their rich maritime heritage and, as a result, the socio-economic potential of MCH has yet to be realised. Worse, while the submerged resource is being impacted by marine exploitation, commercial salvage and offshore industry, the coastal resource is being threatened by building and development work as well as climatic and environmental change and even some green-energy projects. MCH is a fragile and finite resource, which once destroyed can never be recovered. This project will establish and maintain a transboundary and cross-sector network of arts and humanities-led researchers, government officers, scientists, policy makers, UN officials, NGOs, ICT professionals and specialists working in heritage, infrastructure and the offshore industry, to consider in what ways MCH can create long-lasting social, economic and cultural benefits in the region. The project will identify new opportunities and methodologies for arts and humanities research in an aid context and add value to coastal infrastructure and offshore development projects. Key mechanisms of engagement will be through the co-production of a Research and KE Framework, Innovation Projects and KE activities. The nations of coastal East Africa have aspirations to transform themselves into a thriving maritime gateway of trade and investment. The past has an active role in not only informing this development but in helping drive it.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-FUND--GCRF-AH_R005443_1
Start Date:
2017-10-01
Activity Status:
Implementation
Total Budget:
£1,671,712.38
Community-scale Energy Demand Reduction in India (CEDRI)
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
CEDRI is a consortium of expertise in sustainable buildings, power electronics, demand modelling and energy behaviours across Heriot-Watt University, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, IIT Bombay and the Tiruchirappalli National Institute of Technology. The project will, through the application of demand synthesis models to Indian case-studies, propose clear guidance for demand reduction/management in households to ensure future-resilient provision of electricity to Indian communities. The project sees a neglect of supply limitations as being a key risk that might hamper future demand reduction strategies. Whilst many countries are seeing significant change in the use of energy in homes and the provision of that energy through local energy networks, the pace of change recorded in India is particularly notable. The ""refresh"" rate of the housing stock is high (with new build constituting a much higher percentage of the housing stock than many developed countries) and, simultaneously, the approach to delivering electricity to those homes is changing (e.g. the growth in distributed renewable generation, such as solar photovoltaics). If further change is to be planned amongst this already uncertain landscape, in the form of community-wide energy demand reduction strategies, then a full impact of such measures must be understood. Minimising cooling requirements, controlling/managing appliance loads and encouraging distributed generation should all be promoted in a way that i) is consistent and complementary to a functioning local electricity network and ii) relate to measures that are likely to be accepted across communities, rather than having only niche appeal. The CEDRI project will allow for community electricity demand modelling through applied aggregation algorithms, converting small samples of individual building demand profiles into community-level profiles. After carrying out surveys and workshops with householders, the project will identify the demand-reducing measures likely to succeed in such regions (informed by real case-study communities and empirical data) and apply these to the community demand models to quantify potential impact. The ability of such changes to improve the local energy network will be fully investigated, such that measures deemed to successfully reduce total energy demand can be managed in a way that improves key characteristics of that network (such as frequency, voltage and peak demand). The project will therefore provide guidance that will ensure that approaches to demand reduction ""co-evolve"" with the methods used to supply electricity to residential communities, over future timescales that already have considerable levels of uncertainty.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-FUND--Newton-EP_R008655_1
Start Date:
2017-11-01
Activity Status:
Implementation
Total Budget:
£545,925.92
The Nahrein Network: New Ancient History Research for Education in Iraq and its Neighbours
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
Nahrein is the Arabic word for Mesopotamia - the ancient ""land between two rivers"", centred on modern-day Iraq and northern Syria. The literate, urban cultures of Sumer, Babylonia and Assyria together represent the vital first half of history, millennia before Greece and Rome. Yet they are also a new antiquity, rediscovered archaeologically in the 19th and 20th centuries, irrevocably entangled in the region's messy politics of colonialism and dictatorship, and now threatened by the conflicts tearing the region apart. Millions of dollars of international aid are being pumped into the documentation, digitisation and conservation of threatened and war-damaged cultural heritage sites across the Middle East, with little thought for local interests and impacts. The Nahrein Network by contrast will enable local people to reclaim this heritage as local history, and to put it to constructive use for local communities and economies. It aims to harness interdisciplinary humanities research and education to help Middle Eastern universities, museums, archives and cultural heritage sites build their capacity to contribute to their countries' economic, cultural and social development in the years ahead. The wars in Iraq and Syria spread their deadly effects far beyond the immediate conflict zones. But much-needed emergency relief should not be at the expense of planning for longer-term economic and social regrowth. Network partner UNESCO Iraq identifies education and culture as two key Areas of Action, with gender equality and academic isolation as of particular concern, while UNAMI aims to aid social reconciliation though cultural dialogue. Centred initially on southern Iraq and Kurdistan, Nahrein will run a Research Centre directed by Dr Saad Eskander at the University of Kurdistan Hewler (Erbil) and two collaborative hubs at the University of Baghdad and Basrah Museum. In year 3 it will expand into Turkey, Lebanon and--if safe--Syria and Iran with help from the British Institute at Ankara, the Council for British Research in the Levant and, we hope, the British Institute of Persian Studies. With support from the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, in Strand 1 we will welcome humanities educators and researchers back into the international fold by offering varied options for international, interdisciplinary collaboration, training, mentoring and peer-group support, especially for women, minorities, and early career researchers. In Strand 2 we will issue six-monthly funding calls for interdisciplinary, collaborative projects open to academics, cultural heritage professionals, NGOs and community groups. Each call will address a different selection of five overall themes, related to the core team's own research, chosen to address the Network's five primary Aims (see Objectives). This sequencing will allow research projects to learn from and build on prior findings, and enable Network participants to respond flexibly to new developments in the region. We aim to strike a balance between providing appropriate support and expertise from the project team and allowing Network participants to take the lead on their own research and development. We will encourage a wide range of traditional and innovative methodologies and outputs, both theoretical and practice-based. However, the emphasis will be on open-access, peer-reviewed online publication, for instance via UCL Press and the Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (oracc.org). In this way we will maximise accessibility of the Network's findings while providing authors and readers with the reassurance of high academic quality. In Strand 3 we will set up five working groups, one for each Aim, to evaluate, share and embed good practice, and make policy recommendations across the network's full geographical range. With partners we will secure funding to develop a sustainable new generation of high quality humanities research in and for the benefit of the wider Middle East.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-FUND--GCRF-AH_R005370_1
Start Date:
2017-10-01
Activity Status:
Implementation
Total Budget:
£1,501,281.99
Contexts of Violence in Adolescence Cohort Study (CoVAC)
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
More than one in three adult women globally have experienced physical or sexual violence by their intimate partner. We know that risk of intimate partner violence in adulthood for both women and men is linked to childhood and adolescent experiences of violence. However, less is known about why this is, particularly in low and middle-income countries. Most research on why comes from North America and Europe, where the basic patterns of childhood and adolescent violence exposure are different to many low and middle income country settings, including Uganda. It is important to study why violence in childhood and adolescence and intimate partner violence in adulthood violence are linked so that we can figure out how to more effectively prevent violence across these time periods. Our study has three goals. The first is to get a better understanding of the patterns of prior violence exposure among young adolescents in Uganda, a low-income country setting. The second goal is to understand in more detail which types of violence exposure in early adolescence are associated with violence in later adolescence and young adulthood. The third is to explore how and why these associations occur, with a view to understanding how both characteristics of the individual, and characteristics of the contexts in which individuals find themselves, might amplify or interrupt these associations. In order to do this, we are intending to follow 3438 young adolescents over time. We plan to use a mixture of both survey methods with more in-depth interviews and observations to understand participants' views and practices in relation to violence and experiences of growing up in Uganda. We have already done one survey with young adolescents, their teachers and some of their caregivers in 2014, when the adolescents were aged 11-14 years. We will do a second survey in 2018, when the adolescents are aged 15-18 years, and a third survey in 2021 when they are 18-21 years. In our survey, we ask detailed questions about the use and experience of different forms of violence, the mental health of our participants, and about participants' relationships with different types of people, including romantic relationships. We will gather extensive data on participants' family, school, and other contexts where they spend time, and will analyse how these contexts can support the development of non-violent behaviour and relationships over time. Our qualitative study will involve in-depth work with a sub-sample of about 36 girls and boys, who reported varying experiences of violence in the 2014 survey, when they were 11-14 years, and who will also be followed up over time from 2018 until 2021. We will speak with these core participants individually, and with groups of friends, and conduct observations in and around the schools and communities where participants find themselves. Through building detailed biographical case studies with these young people, we hope to gain insight into how adolescents experience different forms of violence, and the ways in which their social relationships and networks influence their safety and perspectives and practices on violence. As well as working with this core group, we will collect data from a broader sample of young people, school staff, parents, community members and officials, as well as the broader political and socio-economic landscape, in order to analyse the ways in which the contexts in which young people live enhance risks or help protect young people from violence. This research will improve understanding of what types of mechanisms we can target to help effectively prevent violence across adolescence and into adulthood. Our findings will be new and interesting because very few longitudinal studies have been conducted across this age group, and even fewer in low income country settings. We plan to use these results directly to develop programming in Uganda.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-FUND--GCRF-MR_R002827_1
Start Date:
2017-11-01
Activity Status:
Implementation
Total Budget:
£924,004.22
Development of a new national facility for Mexican radio astronomy at Tulancingo
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
This project will transfer skills in radio astronomy technology from the UK to Mexico. The government of the Mexican state of Hidalgo is funding the conversion of a 30-m diameter satellite communications antenna to a radio telescope for the use of the Mexican research community. UK researchers will provide training and assistance to the Mexicans in converting the antenna systems, and in designing and building a state-of-the-art cooled radio receiver for the converted antenna. The new radio telescope will be used for education and research in Mexican universities and research institutes, operated either as a stand-alone telescope or as part of larger arrays. The new facility will also be capable of being used as a deep-space network ground station, opening up new commercial opportunities.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-FUND--Newton-ST_R002320_1
Start Date:
2017-08-01
Activity Status:
Implementation
Total Budget:
£332,894.21
Building Inclusive Civil Societies with, and for, Young People in 5 Post-Conflict Countries
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
The legacy of internal conflict, violence, even genocide poses one of the most intractable obstacles to development in post-conflict states. The on-going lack of resolution of the past is often a very significant factor in the marked fragility of any development gains in such countries. Our project investigates the efficacy of civil society organisations (CSOs, including museums, heritage organizations, community participatory arts and activist groups) in promoting social reconciliation and respect for equality and human rights in the aftermath of conflict in 5 countries from across the DAC list of ODA recipients and from the OECD list of 'fragile states': Colombia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Kosovo and South Africa. Over the last 40 years, these countries have had to confront the material consequences of their violent pasts. Each has a very different relationship to this past, from Colombia, where the processes of reconciliation are only just beginning, to Cambodia where the violence of the Khmer Rouge has passed into history and yet its memory continues to shape contemporary society. The international development community and donor states have invested heavily in the work of CSOs supporting reconciliation initiatives, particularly focussed on children and young people - a disproportionately large part of the population due to the effects of past violence on their parents' generation. This demographic imbalance is often exacerbated by the long-term impact of a wide range of social issues (e.g. HIV/AIDs in South Africa, on-going visa restrictions in Kosovo). CSOs are invariably considered 'an essential component of peace-building work' (Zelizer 2003). For example, the role of community theatre in Rwanda is often cited in efforts to support transitional justice, similarly the growth of inter-ethnic musical groups in post-war Kosovo. Such initiatives can have immediate, therapeutic impact for participants. They are also often considered to play an important role in the building of stable institutions, and stronger societies, raising awareness of human rights in the face of weak state structures. However, given the lack of resources generally available in CSOs and the focus of colleagues in international development on the frontline delivery of services to the communities they support, there is only a weak research evidence base for the efficacy of these interventions. Building on our previous GCRF projects, we will deliver the first large-scale comparative study of CSO practice across a range of post-conflict societies, confronting the challenge of building strong institutions for the delivery of social justice for young people. We will begin by undertaking a critical review of current work by CSOs across these countries, in order to highlight innovative practice, as well as areas that require further investigation. This will lead to 5 'proof of concept' pilot projects, based on lessons learnt from this review. Our initial R&D phase will then lead to the commissioning of 2 rounds of projects, one aimed at ECRs, one at colleagues at all career stages. Adopting quantitative and qualitative, co-production and action-research methodologies, we will work in partnership with researchers at HEIs and IROs across these 5 countries, locally-based CSOs, the British Council (BC) and its in-country network of partners, as well as other international development organisations (including UNICEF, UNESCO, Hope and Homes for Children, Plan International, Salzburg Global Seminar, PAX). We will develop new methods, case studies and practical toolkits, for engaging children and young people with the many ways that violent national pasts continue to impact on their communities and countries. In the process we seek to make a significant intervention both on the ground and at policy level across and beyond our 5 case-study countries.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-FUND--GCRF-AH_R005354_1
Start Date:
2017-10-01
Activity Status:
Implementation
Total Budget:
£3,013,738.14
Improvement of Barley, Rice and Chickpea by Population Sequencing
UK - Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
Background: Climate change, population growth and other emerging challenges mean new, better adapted, varieties of crops need to be developed. To help achieve these goals, we first need to identify and catalogue genetic variations between existing crop strains, and assess or predict the likely impact of these variations on crop yield, drought and disease resistance. This is important in high-yielding environments such as the UK, and particularly urgent for crops that are widely grown in developing counties, but which not yet the focus of intense genetic research. To do this we need to combine an analysis of genetic variation, which we can obtain by sequencing the genomes of as many varieties as possible, with the creation of new populations formed by mixing this variation in a controlled manner. So-called ""MAGIC"" populations, which combine genetic variation from multiple varieties into a unified population, are ideal for establishing the agricultural impact of genetic variants experimentally. Armed with this combination of genetic and phenotypic data we can better predict which existing varieties should be crossed and bred to generate new better-adapted strains. Aims and outputs: Towards this goal, this project focuses on three crops of global importance: rice, barley and chickpea. It combines UK based knowledge in genetic analysis and software development, MAGIC, barley research and pre-breeding (via UCL, NIAB and JHI), with similar expertise in major crops grown in the developing countries India (chickpea, via ICRISAT) and the Philippines (rice, via IRRI) to develop three key biological and software/ analysis resources aimed at boosting crop research and development. 1. We will extend the use of our software called 'STITCH', originally developed in animal species, for use in crops. STITCH allows improved 'genotypic imputation' (prediction of missing genetic information) based on low-coverage genome sequencing of large collections of lines. This will be undertaken using existing sequence data available for MAGIC populations in rice and chickpea via project partners IRRI and ICRISAT, respectively. 2. In order to provide a state-of-the-art resource focused on UK barley R&D, we will generate a barley MAGIC population, consisting of 8 parents and 1,000 derived lines, and characterise the genomes of these lines by low-coverage genomic sequencing. Additionally, we will undertake assessment of the MAGIC lines for informative characteristics relevant to barley production. 3. We will use the resources created in 1 and 2 above, as well as low-coverage sequence data generated within the project for rice MAGIC and chickpea 'landrace' collections (genetically diverse lines that pre-date modern breeding approaches), to generate a detailed map of genetic variation for all three target crops. We will validate these datasets by exploring improved methods that identify and/or predict different combinations of genes on crop performance. All the resources generated will be made publicly available as soon as is practical, to help maximise their impact for research and breeding. Ultimately, the resources and knowledge generated will help the development of improved crop varieties. Barley is the focus of UK improvement, and we have strong support from UK researchers and breeders. Rice and chickpea focus on developing country crop improvement, and has the support of the pre-eminent regional research and breeding centres in the relevant production regions. The potential for such improvement is particularly strong in developing county crops such as chickpea, which have historically suffered from a lack of R&D investment.
Project identifier:
GB-GOV-13-FUND--GCRF-BB_P024726_1
Start Date:
2017-07-01
Activity Status:
Implementation
Total Budget:
£610,773.10