Current and former students from the School for Cross-faculty Studies presented their research on 12-13 April at the British Conference of Undergraduate Research (BCUR) 2021.

Established in 2011, BCUR is the largest conference in the UK dedicated exclusively to undergraduate research, promoting and sharing research in all disciplines. The conference usually takes place each year at a different University. This year, the University of Leeds delivered the conference virtually.

^{Image credit: Payoon Gerinto on Unsplash}

GSD Assistant Professor Marco J Haenssgen is part of a research group that has won a £249,000 award to study how people navigate their social and physical food environments in Thailand and Laos.

Congratulations to our students for securing funding for research projects over the summer!

The Undergraduate Research Support Scheme (URSS) enables undergraduate students to carry out an interdisciplinary summer research public engagement project. The scheme is open to any undergraduate student at Warwick and research can be completed in the UK or abroad.

This year, seven GSD students have successfully secured a bursary: Sara Azeem, Szebasztian Csernik-Tihn, Annabelle Early, Ari Hassan, Isaac McGirr, Virginia Thomas-Pickles and Melissa Yip. Their research projects will be presented in the form of a poster showcase at the annual URSS Celebration Research Showcase, which will take place next academic year.

Dr Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla, Head of the School for Cross-faculty Studies, was recently interviewed for an article published in the Belgian newspaper, De Standaard, to discuss the Cuban COVID-19 vaccine, Soberana-2.

^{Image: A Pat Jasan volunteer group, copyright Kachinland News.}

Three papers produced in the context of Dr Mandy Sadan's Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) projects have recently been made publicly available. The papers have been co-written with local Myanmar researchers and they are available as free downloads for the next month, forming part of a Special Edition which will be available in full soon.

^{Image credit: R9 Studios FL on flickr}

Together with Daud Mohammed Hamidi from Durham University, GSD Assistant Professor Marco J Haenssgen has won a £15,730 Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) award from the Royal Academy of Engineering to explore the uses and social development consequences of low-cost clay-based water filters that can be produced by potters locally.

^{Image credit: Louie Rosencrans/CDC from flickr}

An international team of researchers led by GSD Assistant Professor Dr Marco J Haenssgen have analysed the impact of mass vaccination campaigns, which are often used in global health efforts in low- and middle-income countries. Based on their findings, the researchers warn that there must be a strategy to safeguard and strengthen health systems with fewer resources in low- and middle-income countries if such campaigns are used in the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.

The University of Warwick’s Connecting Cultures Global Research Priority (GRP) has awarded £1,200 to the emerging research project “Learning Space” co-led by GSD Assistant Professor Marco J Haenssgen and Lao researcher Thipphaphone (Kee) Xayavong.

With the support of the Connecting Cultures GRP, the researchers will be able to support the conversion of locally co-produced narratives into creative products for cross-cultural dialogue within and beyond Lao PDR, and to engage critically with mainstream assumptions (automatic links between formal education and Western ideals of health behaviour) and approaches (human capital) in global development agendas.

The project takes place in collaboration with the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement Laos and the University of Health Sciences in Vientiane, and the broader study is supported by the Warwick Institutional Research Support Fund and the Institute of Advanced Study.