Our Research Projects
Our Research Projects
The department of Politics and International Studies is known for its internationally excellent, world leading research.
Please browse our individual and collaborative research projects.
You can search our database of projects using the search bar or you can filter by project type as shown below.
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AdSoLve
Addressing Socio-technical Limitations of LLMs for Medical and Social Computing is an RAI UK, RCUK funded project.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: RAI UK
Start date: April 2024
End date: April 2028
AIO: Assuming Identities Online
This research aimed to bridge the gap between complex theories of the discursive constructions of online identities, and the computational approaches to analysing online communications.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: ESRC
Start date: 2014
End date: 2016
Appearance, Discrimination and Disadvantage
When making appointing to jobs, selectors may prefer a candidate because of their physical characteristics, for example, their height or weight, or because of the style in which they dress. This project addresses these issues using the tools of analytic philosophy.
Key contacts: Andrew Mason
Funding: Leverhulme Trust
Start date: 01.10.2019
End date: 30.09.2022
Art Diplomacy and Nation Branding
The project addresses the intersecting ways that Chinese contemporary art and nation branding are now connected. In particular, the project aims to trace the growing power, cachet and cultural capital of Chinese contemporary art.
Key contacts: Christopher Browning
Funding: AHRC
Start date: 03.10.2020
End date: 03.04.23
Between the EU and Russia
Between the EU and Russia (BEAR) Jean Monnet Network’s key objective is to promote a better understanding of how the EU and Russia influence and inspire minority politics, integration efforts, and societal contestation on the EU’s eastern borders by: 1) stimulating knowledge development through academic collaborations and connections; 2) conducting high-quality teaching activities across Europe, North America and Russia; and 3) disseminating our knowledge to policymakers, the public and other key constituencies.
Key contacts: Maria Koinova (PI)
Funding: Jean Monnet Network of the European Union
Start date: 2017
End date: 2022
Beyond Brexit: UK Net Zero Energy Policy
This project seeks to conceptualise Brexit, and its UK implications, so that we can better understand it, and what it means for energy policy and politics.
Key contacts: Caroline Kuzemko
Funding: EPSRC
Partners: Chatham House
Start date: 01.05.2019
End date: 31.10.2022
Challenging Inequalities
The project aims to contribute an understanding of inequality as a driver of vulnerability in an international development context.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: ESRC
Start date: 2019
End date: 2022
Climate Change and Urban Violence
The aim of the project is to develop new understanding about the interactions between urban violence and climate change risks in urban areas of the Global South.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: UK's Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)
Start date: 2019
End date: 2021
Connecting Legal and Psychosocial Aspects in the Search for Victims of Enforced Disappearance in Colombia and El Salvador
This multidisciplinary research project explored the foundations and practical implementation of the search for victims of enforced disappearance from a legal, psychosocial, and political perspective in the two case study countries of Colombia and El Salvador.
Key contacts: Lisa Ott (swisspeace)
Funding: Swiss Network for International Studies
Start date: 2019
End date: 2021
Contending Cultures of the Anthropocene: Prospects for Political Mobilization
My research investigated the implications for political mobilization of contending representations of the Anthropocene across academic disciplines, popular culture and media reporting, and artistic and cultural production. The overarching aim of the research programme was to explore, harness and develop the ethical and political potential of the Anthropocene concept for mobilizing political action.
Key contacts: Madeleine Fagan
Funding: Leverhulme Trust
Start date: 2020
End date: 2022
Co-POWeR
Co-POWeR investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on practices for well-being and resilience across Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Families and Communities (BAMEFC) in the UK to create a holistic idea of vulnerabilities damaging BAMEFC, broadening/deepening existing work as well as conducting new research.
Key contacts: Professor Shirin M Rai, Dr Shahnaz Akhter, Dr Jayanthi Lingham
Funding: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
Start date: March 2021
End date: August 2022
Coproducing wellbeing public policy
Project overview coming soon
Key contacts: Mark Fabian (PI)
Funding: Participatory Research Fund
Start date: January 2021
Key Partners:- Turn2us, Edinburgh Trust, Edinburgh Council
Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by Boat
Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by Boat critically assesses the EU policy agenda on migration based on in-depth qualitative interviews making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean Sea by boat.
Key Contacts: PI Vicki Squire
Funding: ESRC
Start date: September 2015
End date: February 2019
Data and Displacement
Data and Displacement assesses the data-based humanitarian targeting of assistance to internally displaced persons (IDPs) in two contexts that are characterised by conflict and high levels of displacement: northern Nigeria and South Sudan.
Key contacts: PI Vicki Squire & Co-I Briony Jones
Funding: AHRC-DFID
Start date: October 2020
End date: April 2023
Datafied borders as opaque immigration policy: Demystifying complex data infrastructures at the border
This zine explores the impact of colonial structures and hierarchies of humanity on the distribution of mobility rights within context of Europe’s migration databases.
Key contacts: Philippa Metcalfe
Funding: Economic and Social Research Council
Start date: 1/10/23
End date: 30/9/24
Data Lakes: Emerging Ethical Issues
This is a pump-priming project, funded under a Call that seeks to prepare the ground for more UK Humanities research in Artificial Intelligence. It builds on the ethics research contributed by IERG to the Innovate-UK funded PathLAKE project in computational pathology. This project concerns the use of large pathology data sets to train and test algorithms cancer diagnostics, prognostics and tumour-grading.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: AHRC
Start date: April 2023
End date: April 2024
Democracy and Doom: Investigating the Link Between Political Dissatisfaction and Existential Risk Perception
This research project investigates the link between public perception of existential risk (the risk of man-made or natural catastrophes that could lead to the collapse of human civilisation and the extinction of humanity) and democracy.
Key contacts: Sadi Shanaah
Funding: N/A
Start date: 2023
Democratic Design: modelling political futures
The democratic design project offers and defends a flexible framework for rethinking democratic governance.
Key contacts: Michael Saward (PI)
Funding: Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship
Start date: 2016
End date: 2019
Published volume: M. Saward, Democratic Design (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2021).Winner of the WJM Mackenzie Book Prize 2022-23.
DETECTER
DETECTER identified human rights and other legal and moral standards that detection technologies in counter-terrorism must meet. DETECTER also successfully pioneered methods of discussing ethics and human rights issues with counter-terrorism professionals using detection technologies, and with technology developers in private meetings.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: EU FP7
Start date: 2008
End date: 2011
DLiD: Data Literacies in Displacement
A training tool developed with displaced persons to enhance equity, accountability and empowerment through data processes within the humanitarian sector
Key contacts: PI Vicki Squire & Co-I Briony Jones
Funding: ESRC IAA
Start date: 01.04.2024
End date: 31.12.2025
EMPOWER-SI
A research program aimed to provide evidence-based insights into how and why women were underrepresented in Indonesian STEM research.
Key contacts: Juanita Elias
Funding: British Council Going Global Gender Equality Partnership Grant
Start date: December 2023
End date: January 2025
Engaging the Ukranian Diaspora in Reconstruction and Development: Democracy and Human Rights Dimensions
This Research England Policy Support (PSF) project will create opportunities for impact on various governmental, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental stakeholders to engage the Ukrainian diaspora and global community in the country’s reconstruction after Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Key contacts: Maria Koinova
Funding: Faculty of Social Sciences, a Policy Support Fund grant, and currently by ESRC-IAA
Start date: 2022
End date: 2024
Ethics and Rights in a Security Context
The primary aim of this integration project was to use cross-cutting ethical themes to connect the seven successful projects in the PaCCS Ethics and Security Call, and to communicate their results to a policy, practitioner, and wider public, audience.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: ESRC
Start date: Sept. 2015
End date: Sept. 2016
EuroHub4Sino
EuroHub4Sino consortium will, together with its network, provide independent European policy research and analysis.
Key contacts: Shaun Breslin
Funding: Horizon Europe
Start date: October 2023
End date: September 2026
European Research Council Starting Grant Project & Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty
Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty: Transnational Diaspora Mobilization in Europe and Its Impact on Political Proceses in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East
Key contacts: Maria Koinova (PI)
Funding: ERC
Start date: 2012
End date: 2017
#Everyday there is Malak
Women activists in the Arab region have greatly increased their on-line activism in the last few years, leading to viral campaigns to promote women's rights. This project will be the first interdisciplinary study to assess cyberfeminist networks in three Arab countries: Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
Key contacts: Dr Balsam Mustafa
Funding: Leverhulme, Early Career Fellowship
Start date: 01.11.2021
End date: 30.09.2024
EXPOVIBE
EXPOVIBE explores how exposure to political violence in a civil conflict context impacts upon social, economic and political behaviours and attitudes of individuals.
Key contacts: Dr. Arzu Kibris
Funding: ERC
Start date: 01.04.17
End date: 31.03.22
FINDEM
FINDEM investigates three intersecting political trends in emerging market democracies: the rise of the middle class, financial development, and financialisation.
Key contacts: Lena Rethel (PI)
Funding: EPSRC (UKRI ERC CoG guarantee scheme)
Start date: 01.08.2024
End date: 31.7.2029
Project website: FINDEM
FRAMENET
The ambitious project will look at the emergence of frames in five areas of political debate: international trade, immigration, the environment, global health and transparency. This will enable the study to make comparisons between countries and themes.
Key contacts: Dr Ozlem Atikcan
Funding: ESRC
Partners: German Development Institute
Start date: 01.04.2021
End date: 31.03.2024
GEMS
GEMS (Games as a Multi-layered Security threat) is an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods and cross-sectoral project bringing together academic researchers, AI specialists, policy experts and a range of police authorities from across Europe.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: EU Horizon Europe
Start date: Oct. 2023
End date: Oct. 2026
Geopolitical economy of energy system transformation
The geopolitics of energy is understood to be the political consequences of patterns of supply and demand, and inter-state and market relations. The project is divided into five over-lapping work packages that together will provide a comprehensive assessment of the global context for the UK’s transition to net-zero.
Key contacts: Michael Bradshaw and Caroline Kuzemko
Funding: EPSRC
Partners: Durham University, University of Southampton, UCL and Oxford Institute for Energy Studies
Start date: 01.05.2019
End date: 31.10.2024
Good Citizenship in an Age of Crisis: A Duty to Organize?
How should the good citizen act within our age of economic, democratic, and climate crisis? This project aims to investigate the claim that part of what citizens ought to do under such circumstances is engage in political organizing. This involves getting clear about what political organizing is, when and why it is valuable, and whether it can ever be a morally required activity, rather than just a praiseworthy one.
PI: Cain Shelley
Funder: Leverhulme Trust, under its Early Career Research Fellowship scheme
Period of funding: May 2024 to May 2027
Mentor: Andy Mason
Governing AI and Biotech Risks
Advances in emerging technology including artificial intelligence and biotechnology will transform the security and economic landscape. Governing AI and Biotech Risk explores the ethical, political and psychological underpinnings of effective governance that can meet the challenges posed by technological risks.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: Leverhulme
Start date: 2018
End date: 2023
GRECO
GRECO will introduce the food packaging industry to groundbreaking bio-based, SSbD, and fully circular PLA-based materials, that meet diverse application needs.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: Horizon Europe
Start date: 2025
End date: 2029
Health Risks in Urban Slums
Tackling Climate-related Health Risks in Urban Slums: an Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Challenge of Integrating Local and Scientific Knowledges.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: BA
Start date: 2019
End date: 2020
HECTOS: Harmonized Evaluation, Certification and Testing of Security Products
HECTOS brought together 9 leading organizations from across Europe to study how existing evaluation and certification schemes used in other areas could be used, adapted or developed for products used for physical security of people, property and infrastructure.
Key contacts: Tom Sorrell
Funding: EU Horizon 2020
Start date: 2014
End date: 2018
Humorous States
Why do states and state leaders cultivate a sense of humour? What is the impact of Trump’s tweets (their circulation and responses to them) on global politics? This project observes that comedy and IR are increasingly coterminous, yet the intellectual resources required to address them seem scattered across several literatures and sub-disciplines.
Key contacts: Christopher Browning
Funding: BA/Leverhulme
Start date: 01.10.2018
End date: 30.11.2021
HYDROHEAL
HYDROHEAL aims to develop safe, sustainable scaling, and cost-effective formulations using renewable biomaterials for targeted drug delivery, aligning closely with the EU Circular Economy Action Plan and Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: Horizon Europe
Start date: 2025
End date: 2029
Inclusive Peace
In INCLUSIVEPEACE, we propose a comparative and multi-methods research program that investigates how power-sharing settlements emerge, perform, and evolve.
Key contacts: Neophytos Loizides
Funding: ESRC
Partners: SEED
Start date: February 2023
End date: January 2026
Inserting Ethics into Adaptation and Resilience Policy
The project works with Cape Town City’s climate adaptation department to look at how issues of ethics and justice can be incorporated into responses to climate-related risks.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund
Partners: University of Cape Town and Cape Town City Government, South Africa
Start date: 2020
End date: 2022
An interdisciplinary exploration of contemporary apocalyptic politics
The project takes an interdisciplinary approach, cutting across the social sciences and the humanities to examine various manifestations of the apocalyptic impulse.
Key contacts: Philippe Blanchard (PI), Romain Chenet (GSD), Joe Davidson (Sociology), Sadi Shannah (PAIS) and Andrew Wilson (University of Derby).
Funding: Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Spotlights Research Development Funding (IRDF)
Start date: Oct. 2024
End date: Jul. 2025
Islamic Economy in Indonesia: The Challenges of Sustainable Development
At a global level, Indonesia has played a leading role in the development of the Islamic economy – that is, economic activity in accordance with Islamic religious principles. This project explores, from a social science perspective, how the Islamic economy can contribute to addressing specific local challenges, including supporting the country’s ambitious SDG agenda.
Key contacts: Lena Rethel
Funding: Warwick International Partnership Fund
Start date: August 2024
End date: June 2026
Key Partners:- Dr Shofwan Al Banna Choiruzzad, Universitas Indonesia
Judges Off-Bench: Theory and evidence from Africa
Adopting deep qualitative methods that allow for judges’ understanding of their roles to emerge, Gabrielle Lynch’s ground-breaking research will contribute substantially to how we understand African politics and institutional theory.
Key contacts: Gabrielle Lynch
Funding: Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship
Start date: 01/09/2025
End date: 31/08/2028
KEEPCARING
KEEPCARING aims to (re-)build wellbeing and resilience of the healthcare workforce in EU hospitals in the surgical pathway, to promote onboarding as well as staying in the workplace by systematically researching factors and signals of job stress and novel mitigating solutions and by co-creating a multi-faceted non-digital, digital and AI-supported solution package to prevent burnout among (aspirant) healthcare professionals on the individual, team, and organisational level.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: Horizon Europe
Start date: 2024
End date: 2028
Knowledge for Peace
The research project “Knowledge for Peace. Understanding Research, Policy and Practice Synergies” aims to improve peacebuilding practice by looking at how research and knowledge about peace and its components are generated and how the politics of knowledge production affects policy making.
Key contacts: Briony Jones (PI), Laurent Goetschel (Chair sponsor)
Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
Start date: 2016
End date: 2019
Knowledge Technologies for Democracy (KT4D)
AI and big data are fundamentally interwoven into our societies, culture and conceptions of democratic governance and exchange. They pose risks to our democracies at the same time as they have the potential to enhance it. KT4D will explore how these technologies can foster more inclusive civic participation in democracy, and how AI and big data can facilitate new democratic innovations and enrich democratic deliberation within participatory form.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: Horizon Europe
Start date: 2023
End date: 2026
Latin America and the peripheral origins of nineteenth-century international order
This project seeks to better understand the role of Latin America in the formation of modern multilateralism between 1861-1919. Our research de-centres understandings of international order's creation and examines the constraints and possibilities for peripheral influence.
Key contacts: Dr Tom Long
Funding: AHRC
Partners: Dr Carsten-Andreas Schulz, University of Cambridge
Start date: 01.09.2021
End date: 31.08.2025
Leveraging Gender Knowledge to Enable Sustainable Income Generation for Affordable Housing Initiatives
The initiative focused on establishing Reall as a thought leader in gender-smart approaches to affordable housing.
Key contacts: Juanita Elias
Funding: Innovate UK
Start date: March 2024
End date: August 2024
L'homme n'est pas le maitre de la terre, mais le terre est le maitree de l'homme
"L'homme n'est pas le maitre de la terre, mais le terre est le maitree de l'homme": encounters, dialogues and solutions for natural resource management and sustainable development in Cote d'Ivoire.
Key contacts: Professor Briony Jones (PI)
Funding: Warwick International Partnerships Fund
Start date: 2022
End date: 2024
Living with the Neighbours
Project description coming soon
Key contacts: Professor Hussein Kassim
Funding: UK Economic and Social Research Council
Partners: Dr Kirsty Warner, Dr Cleo Davies, Dr Pippa Lacey
Start date: 2022
End date: 2025
Macroprudential Policy and the Politics of Translation
Project description coming soon
PI: Nick Kotucha
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council, under its Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme
Period of funding: October 2024 to September 2025
Project partner: Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute
Mapping Indo-European thought in twentieth-century France
A study of Indo-European thought in twentieth-century France, looking at both French and émigré scholars, with a particular focus on Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mircea Eliade and Julia Kristeva.
Key contacts: Stuart Elden
Funding: Leverhulme Trust major research fellowship
Start date: 2021
End date: 2025
Markets as spectacles
"Markets as spectacles? Principles, practices and governance of Islamic economies"; explores the emergence and expansion of transnational Islamic economic flows and their governance. Funded through a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship.
Key contacts: Lena Rethel
Funding: Leverhulme Trust
Start date: 01.09.2018
End date: 31.08.2021
Mass-marketing fraud
Mass-marketing fraud (MMF) is a type of fraud that exploits mass communication techniques (e.g., email, Instant Messenger, bulk mailing, social networking sites, telemarketing) to con people out of money. This project develops novel techniques to detect and prevent MMF.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: EPSRC
Start date: April 2016
End date: April 2018
Media4Sec
In today’s social media landscape, Facebook remains one of the most important platforms for businesses. However, it is no longer sufficient to simply create pages and post content. To be successful on Facebook, you need engaging content that appeals to your target audience and encourages participation. This article presents effective strategies to increase the reach of your content and promote interaction with your followers.
Key contacts: Jon Coaffee, Tom Sorell
Funding: EU Horizon 2020
Start date: April 2016
End date: April 2019
Michel Foucault: Retracing Intellectual History through Archival Sources
Across four books, published between 2016 and 2023, this project traces an intellectual history of entire career of the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault.
Key contacts: Stuart Elden
Funding: Part-funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme small grant
Start date: 2012
End date: 2022
Image taken by Marwa Alnajjar
Middle East Women
Middle East Women’s Activism digital archive is a collection of interviews with 96 women of different generations in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, which form the basis of a monograph, entitled, Embodying Geopolitics: Generations of Women’s Activism in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.
Key contacts: Nicola Pratt (PI)
Funding: British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship
Start date: 2013
End date: 2014
Key Partners: SOAS Digital Collections
Moral Economy of Elections in Africa
Do elections turn people into democratic citizens? Elections have long been seen as a way to foster democracy, development and security in Africa, with many hoping that the secret ballot would transform states. Adopting a new approach that focusses on the moral economy of elections, Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis show how elections are shaped by competing visions of what it means to be a good leader, bureaucrat or citizen.
Project team: Justin Willis (Durham) with Nic Cheeseman (Birmingham) and Gabrielle Lynch (Warwick)
Funding: Economic and Social Research Council
Start date: January 2014
End date: December 2016
Negotiating BrexitLink opens in a new window
This important project will examine the approaches taken by the governments of the remaining member states (EU27), the EU institutions, and the UK to the Article 50 negotiations and to the negotiations concerning the UK’s future relationship with the EU.
Key contacts:
- Professor Hussein KassimLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window, Principal Investigator, ESRC Senior Fellow, UK in a Changing Europe
- Dr Cleo Davies, Senior Research Associate
- Dr Pippa Lacey, Administrative Assistant
Funding: UK Economic and Social Research Council
Start date: 2017
End date: 2019
Negotiating the Future
The first phase of the research will be to follow the Article 50 negotiations, to examine the positions taken by the two sides, and to explore the implications of the various scenarios.
Key contacts:
- Professor Hussein Kassim Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new windowPrincipal Investigator, ESRC Senior Fellow, UK in a Changing Europe
- Dr Cleo Davies, Senior Research Associate
- Dr Pippa Lacey, Administrative Assistant
Funding: UK Economic and Social Research Council(under its 'UK in a Changing Europe' programme)
Start date: 2019
End date: 2022
Neoliberal Terror? The Radicalisation of Social Policy in Europe
In many countries, doctors, nurses and social workers are asked to report clients they feel might be radicalising. As this is not a traditional professional duty for care professionals, the Neoliberal Terror project will investigate how and why national security has become part of the professional duties of health and social care workers.
Key contacts: Dr Charlotte Heath-Kelly
Funding: European Research Council
Start date: 01.02.2020
End date: 31.01.2025
New Approaches to Equitable Resilience
A variety of behavioural and structural factors impact individuals’ ability to think and act in resilient ways. Based on field research in Kenya, the first aim of this project is to shed new light on key psychological factors that drive resilience, and determine whether this information can facilitate predictive modelling of resilient behaviour.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: Royal Academy of Engineering
Partners: Busara Centre for Behavioural Economics, Kenya
Start date: 2020
End date: 2022
NewWorkTech
NewWorkTech project enhances the work-related capacities of both individuals with disabilities and the general workforce, focusing on technology-mediated tasks and interactions.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: Horizon Europe
Start date: 2024
End date: 2027
Opening Minds: A New Analysis of Tolerance for the Classroom?
Schools in England and elsewhere are required to teach ‘tolerance’. This project analyses how we should understand ‘tolerance’ in that context, and defends the view that schools should be teaching children to not disapprove of certain lifestyles.
PI: Christina Easton
Funder: British Academy
Period of funding: May 2022 to February 2027 [part-time]
Mentor: Andy Mason
PathLAKE
PathLAKE (Pathology Image data lake for Analytics, Knowledge and Education) is developing a data lake made up of pathology whole slide images and AI techniques to speed up the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: Innovate UK
Start date: 2018
End date: 2021
PAVE
Improving communication tools for law enforcement to prevent violent radicalisation.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: EU Horizon 2020
Start date: April 2019
End date: April 2022
PERICLES
Improving communication tools for law enforcement to prevent violent radicalisation.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: EU Horizon 2020
Start date: April 2017
End date: April 2020
Politics and Popular Culture in Egypt: Contested Narratives of the 25 January 2011 Revolution and its Aftermath
The project critically engages with a wide range of Egyptian popular cultural texts and deploys a multidisciplinary approach, asking how has Egyptian popular culture narrated unfolding events after 25 January 2011 and how has the meaning of the 25 January uprising changed over time, how has popular culture interacted with elite political discourses?
Key contacts: Nicola Pratt (PI)
Funding: Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Start date: 2016
End date: 2020
Key Partners: Dalia Mostafa (University of Manchester) & Dina Rezk (University of Reading)
Politics of Papua Project
The Politics of Papua Project at the University of Warwick conducts research on Indigenous rights in Papua and provides informed political analysis to policymakers, in order to facilitate a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Papua.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: ESRC
Start date: 2015
End date: 2017
Polycentric Governance of Transit Migration
The project focused on the impact of informality on the polycentric governance of transit and irregular migration in EU's neighbourhood.
Key contacts: Maria Koinova (PI)
Funding: Centre for Global Cooperation Research, Germany
Start date: 2019
End date: 2022
Populist Fantasyland
As this project will show, a cornerstone of populist security narratives is their conjuring of distorted images of the past, present, and future to manipulate fears and grievances. To understand how such populist dystopian security images motivate political support, it will develop a new account of how populist security rhetoric works at the level of everyday emotional experiences.
Key contacts: Dr Alexandra Homolar
Funding: Leverhulme Trust
Start date: 01.02.22
End date: 30.04.24
PREEMPTER
PREEMPTR will pre-emptively recommend tests and assist healthcare professionals in interpreting results by analysing patient data against similar and standardized patient profiles.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: Warwick Pump-Priming
Start date: April 2025
End date: April 2026
PRISMA
PRISMA has delivered a toolkit for companies that aspire to develop innovative products and services with which genuine societal needs are addressed and a contribution is made to both environmental and economic sustainability.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: EU Horizon 2020
Start date: April 2016
End date: April 2019
RED SPINEL
RED-SPINEL analyses the changing nature of dissensus surrounding liberal democracy and its implications for EU supranational policy instruments. It will unpack the inter-connected drivers of contemporary dissensus surrounding liberal democracy.
Key contacts: George Christou and Ozlem Atikcan
Key Partners:
Université libre de Bruxelles, Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai, HEC Paris, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu and the University of Warwick. Plus four non-academic partners: Peace Action, Training and Research Institute in Romania, Milieu Consulting, Magyar Helsinki Bizottság / Hungarian Helsinki Committee and Stichting Nederlands Instituut voor Internationale Betrekkingen Clingendael across eight European countries.
Start date: September 2022
End date: August 2025
REMEDYING INJUSTICE
This project investigated ethics and equity aspects of the relationship between indigenous communities, climate change, and adaptation policies, bringing together both philosophical and social scientific research.
Key contacts: Dr. Keith Hyams
Funding: The British Academy
Start date: 2019
End date: 2021
Renting: Justice and Limited Sovereignty
This research takes up the topic through an exploration of the relationship between renting and justice. I consider the importance of renting for liberal egalitarian theories of justice, and, more specifically, argue for the importance of renting in a just society.
Key contacts: Katy Wells
Funding: Leverhulme Trust
Start date: 01.09.2020
End date: 31.08.2022
Rethinking the Market
Combining intellectual history with political economy, this project asks a series of analytical questions about how the popular image of ‘the market’ has become so deeply ingrained and what might be done to challenge its current political dominance.
Key contacts: Matthew Watson
Funding: Economic and Social Research Council, under its Professorial Fellowship scheme.
Start date: October 2013
End date: February 2019, however the research continues to date.
RIPPLES: Rights, Institutions, Procedures, Participation, Litigation, Embedding Security
The project compares the regulatory ‘bureaucratic response’ model to terrorism in two European democracies (Norway; UK) at a time of rapid technological change.
Key contacts: Professor Jon Coaffee / Dr Charlotte Heath-Kelly
Funding: Norwegian Research Council – Samrisk program
Partners:University of Oslo, Manchester University, Queen Mary University of London, PRIO
Start date: 01.01.2020
End date: 30.09.2023
SIIP: Speaker Identification Integrated Project
Creating technology that identifies anonymous speakers captured in lawfully intercepted calls.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: EU Horizon 2020
Start date: April 2015
End date: April 2018
Social Justice and the Future of Work
This project explores how labour market policymakers should respond to the threats and opportunities associated with technological change.
Key contacts: Tom Parr
Funding: Funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement 890434.
Start date: 01.09.2020
End date: 31.08.2022
SUNRISE
The EU-funded SUNRISE project aims to ensure greater availability, reliability, and continuity of critical infrastructures in Europe including transport, energy, water, and healthcare.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: EU Horizon Europe
Start date: September 2023
End date: September 2025
Supporting Just Response and Recovery to COVID-19 in Informal Urban Settlements
The project works with the organisation Slum Dwellers International and its Youth Federation members in six Sub-Saharan African cities to understand inequalities and injustices associated with COVID-19 impacts and policy responses in informal urban settlements.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund
Partners: Slum Dwellers International (Cape Town) and Youth Federations in Johannesburg (South Africa), Lusaka (Zambia), Kampala (Uganda), Nairobi (Kenya), Lagos (Nigeria), and Freetown (Sierra Leone)
Start date: 2020
End date: 2021
Surveille
Working with human rights lawyers, technology assessors, and police officers from across Europe, IERG examined the ethical implications of surveillance technologies used against serious crime and terrorism.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: EU FP7
Start date: April 2012
End date: April 2015
Technological Risks in Development
In this project, we investigate how technologies that have been introduced as solutions to food insecurity have contributed to the creation of new risks, and ask how such technologies should might be governed ethically to reduce these risks.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: British Academy
Partners: CABI and University of Nairobi, Kenya
Start date: 2020
End date: 2023
The COVID Observatories
Monitoring the Interaction of Pandemics, Climate Risks, and Food Systems among the World’s most Disadvantaged Communities
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: UKRI GCRF/Newton Fund
Start date: 2020
End date: 2022
The Effect of Climate Change Threat on Intergroup Relations and Support for Violent Extremism
This project takes a step further by investigating the effect of climate change threat on attitudes of social majority towards ethnic/religious minorities and climate change refugees, as well as on the support for extreme pro-climate and far-right environmentalist (ecofascist) actions.
Key contacts: Sadi Shanaah (PI)
Funding: Interacting Minds Centre, Seed Funding, University of Aarhus
Start date: 2020
End date: 2024
Key Partners: University of Aarhus, Leipzig University
The European Commission in Question
In this project, we – a team of multinational researchers based at five universities – collected primary material to answer key questions about the organisation and the people who work for it.
Key contacts: Hussein Kassim
Funding: ESRC
Partners: Michael Bauer, Liesbet Hooghe, Andrew Thompson
Start date: 2006
End date: 2012
The Indigenous Peoples Observatory Network
The Indigenous Peoples Observatory Network (IPON) transforms and rethinks how we understand the food-climate-health nexus from the bottom-up, building on multiple ways of knowing embodied in Indigenous knowledges and science, and in ways that strengthen community resilience to multiple stresses and support actions that benefit Indigenous Peoples.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: Belmont Forum/NERC
Start date: 2024
End date: 2028
The OBR and the Politics of UK Growth amidst Brexit, Uncertainty and Austerity
UK economic growth forecasts have a significant influence over policy decisions, such as the adoption of Austerity measures, through their assessment of what tax revenues are likely to be available to the Government and their assumptions about the impact of disruptive events like Brexit. This project will explore whether these highly significant economic forecasts are grounded in firm evidence and unquestioned scientific methodologies, or if they are in fact political constructions, based on contested methods, bedevilled by uncertainties, and subject to substantial retrospective revisions.
Key contacts: Professor Ben Clift
Funding: The Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship scheme
Start date: October 2018
End date: December 2021
The Origins of Housing Bubbles
The Origins of Housing Bubbles explores how mass property speculation is structured across different institutional contexts, using a comparative historical approach to examine the different ways in which capitalism shapes the built environment.
Key contacts: Dr. Javier Moreno Zacarés
Funding: Leverhulme Trust
Start date: 01.10.2019
End date: 31.10.2022
The Origins of Housing Bubbles: Historical Pathways of Property Speculation in the UK, Germany, and Spain
This revolves around the political economy of housing provision in capitalist economies, with a focus on mass property speculation.
Key contacts: Javier Moreno Zacarés
Funding: Leverhulme Trust, Early Career Fellowship scheme
Start date: 1/10/19
End date: 30/10/22
The Wellbeing State: Transforming Public Policy
The Wellbeing State explores how public management, policy, and governance need to be transformed to update the welfare state for 21st century challenges and ambitions.
Key contacts: Mark Fabian (PI)
Funding: N/A
Start date: January 2020
End date: Ongoing
Key Partners:- Greater London Authority, OECD, HM Treasury
Time and Temporalities in Diaspora Politics
The way time structures everyday activities and long-term strategies of migrants affects their political engagement, from reiterating old traumas to getting quickly involved with their homelands when violence occurs. The interest in studying time and temporalities in migration studies has grown with the advent of mobility studies. Existing studies mostly follow the implications of time on migrants’ everyday lives, not their political activism. Maria Koinova takes this discussion further and examines how diasporas interpret time and how it affects their identities and political practices in different global locations.
Key contacts: Maria Koinova (PI)
Funding: Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies
Start date: September 2023
End date: January 2024
UK Climate Policy - Political Action and Decision-Making
This project was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow (conducted at King’s College London and then the University of Warwick) examining UK government decision-making on climate change since 2008.
Key contacts: Mitya Pearson
Funding: The Leverhulme Trust
Start date: November 2021
End date: October 2024
UK Energy Research Centre (Phase 5)
This UKRI funded project explores the complex political economies of phasing out fossil fuels; creating low emissions energy alternatives; and of meeting UK net zero targets.
Key contacts: Caroline Kuzemko (PI)
Funding: UKERC
Start date: July 2024
End date: June 2029
Understanding and Responding to Complex Climate-Health Emergencies
The aim of this research programme is to understand the factors affecting the creation, evolution, and impact of complex climate-health emergencies among Indigenous communities in the Global South, with a particular focus on the role of injustice in exacerbating climate-health emergencies.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: Belmont Forum/UKRI
Start date: 2025
End date: 2028
Co-Investigator: Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, with partners in Peru, Canada, US, Uganda, Ghana, South Africa, Germany, Namibia, Australia, Argentina, Bolivia, Sri Lanka, Italy and Switzerland
Understanding The EU Civil Service
In the first project by external researchers to be granted access to the organisation, Professor Hussein Kassim led a multi-national, multi-disciplinary team that investigated the internal operation of the GSC, and the background, careers, and views of the people who work for it.
Key contacts: Professor Hussein Kassim
Funding: University of East Anglia, Sciences Po Paris, European University Institute
Partners: Sara Connolly, Michael W. Bauer, Renaud Dehousse, Brigid Laffan, Andrew Thompson
Start date: January 2016
End date: Ongoing
UNDERWARE: UNDERstanding West African culture to pRevent cybercrimEs
Working with colleagues in WMG, the overall objective of UNDERWARE was to gain a greater understanding of West African culture in order to scientifically evaluate current methods employed to prevent and deter cybercrime that emanates from West Africa and develop and test new methods to prevent and deter cybercrime (that emanates from this region).
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: EPSRC
Start date: 2016
End date: 2017
Using Psychological Insights about Stigmatized Groups to Inform Policymaking and Institutional Design
This project draws on Political Theory, Social Psychology and Critical Race Theory to highlight the ways in which current policymaking in the UK and the US should incorporate the lived experience of stigmatized racial groups.
Key contacts: Dr. Catalina Carpan
Funding: ESRC
Start date: 01.10.2020
End date: 30.09.2021
Vaccine Hesitancy
The project considers philosophical issues related to the rationality of vaccine opposition and hesitancy, and the question of how science communication should address vaccine hesitancy, especially in the face of campaigns of misinformation.
Key contacts: Tom Sorell
Funding: AHRC-DFG
Start date: March 2022
End date: March 2024
Video Series
Watch our video series on...
- UK Regulation after Brexit Revisited
- Good Neighbours? The UK and Europe Conference
- Negotiating the Future EU-UK relationship
- After Brexit: Utopia or Dystopia?
- Negotiating Brexit
- Brexit means Brexit, but what does that mean?
- Assessing UK membership
- Past Events
Welfare States, Neoconservative Trajectories, and Transnational Advocacy Coalitions: The Example of Education Policies on Gender Equality in Latin America
This project explores how ideas, resources, and policies that challenge gender equality in education are shared across transnational arenas using a mixed-method approach.
Key contacts: Carla Guerra Tomazini
Funding: Marie Skłodowska–Curie Postdoctoral Fellow (EUTOPIA-SIF COFUND)
Start date: September 2023
End date: August 2025
What do British MPs think?
This project uses polling to investigate the views of British MPs and how congruent these views are with British voters
Key contacts: Mitya Pearson
Funding: British Academy/The Leverhulme Trust
Start date: September 2024
End date: December 2025
Why We Disagree About Resilience
WhyDAR identified different ways in which urban resilience is understood while investigating the role of science, technology, ethics and expertise in the making of resilience strategies in the Global South.
Key contacts: Keith Hyams
Funding: ESRC-AHRC-NERC
Start date: 2016
End date: 2017
Working Beyond the Border
This project investigates a commitment of the EU to improve labour standards beyond its borders. It focuses on the EU pledge "to put more of its commercial weight behind efforts to promote social standards and decent work in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations", which has been trumpeted in the labour standards provisions contained in "new generation" free trade agreements (FTAs) as a key policy mechanism for promoting labour standards in third countries. This project investigates the impact of these new FTAs on workers in third countries.
Key contacts: Ben Richardson and Professor Adrian Smith (PI)
Funding: ESRC
Start date: 2015
End date: 2017