UEA’s grant and funding success – April 2026

By: Communications

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DMSP-In-Us: Novel and unexpected sulfur cycling in humans

UEA project lead: Prof Jonathan Todd (BIO and QIB)

Partners: Prof Arjan Narbad (QIB) and Dr Stephen Robinson (BIO/QIB)

The Leverhulme Trust has awarded Prof Jonathan Todd, and Co-Applicants Prof Arjan Narbad and Dr Stephen Robinson, a research grant of £499,925 to investigate “novel and unexpected sulfur cycling in humans”.

Prof Todd’s research team finds that our diet is rich in sulfur compounds, which are not degraded by gastric acid or enzymes, yet are barely detected in our faeces and urine. Instead of being excreted, our gut microbes rapidly degrade these dietary sulfur compounds via new metabolism to generate metabolites with known health benefits.

This five-year study will fill critical knowledge gaps on sulfur cycling in humans by determining the significance of these sulfur compounds in our diet, the microbes cycling them, how and why they do so, and the potential importance to our health.

Wealth inequality and inheritance in a wild social mammal

UEA project lead: Dr Dom Cram

Partners: Prof Adam Booth (University of Leeds), Prof Marta Manser (University of Zurich)

Dr Dom Cram (School of Biological Sciences) has been awarded £486,272 from the Leverhulme Trust to investigate “Wealth inequality and inheritance in a wild social mammal”.

Dr Cram, together with partners at the Universities of Leeds and Zurich, will develop a new framework for quantifying material wealth held by animals (such as territories, dens, and food stores), and apply it to wild meerkat societies to clarify the origins of wealth inequality in nature, and the consequences for survival and social organization.

British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship – ‘Everyday Lawfare: What can we learn about legal authoritarianism from below?’

UEA project lead: Dr Anna Macdonald

Dr Anna Macdonald (Associate Professor, Global Development) has been awarded a prestigious British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (£139,936) for her project, ‘Everyday Lawfare: What can we learn about legal authoritarianism from below?’.

A defining feature of the global authoritarian turn is the strategic use of law and legal institutions by political elites. Anna's project seeks to break new ground by uncovering how legal frameworks and institutions are instrumentalised and repurposed by ordinary citizens in ways that reproduce and reinforce authoritarian legalism from below.

The project builds on 10 years of ethnographic research in magistrates’ courts in northern Uganda, and includes a participatory communications strategy, using theatre and radio to interpret and disseminate findings.

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