UEA’s grant and funding success – July 2025

By: Communications

A person working on a laptop with a pen in their hand

EDU-DEV PGR Research Forum (Positioning ourselves: navigating insider-outsider roles in research)

Project lead: Dr Lauren Boutell

PGRs from DEV and EDU Schools have led a research forum examining positionality in research (May 2025). The panellists – Madhuri Kamtam (DEV), John Zimba (EDU), Mohammed Naeim Maleki (EDU), Hodges Zacharia (DEV) – and Chair, Dr Lauren Bouttell (EDU), discussed experiences of research in India, Zambia, Afghanistan and Malawi.

Reflections centred around shifting identities/power dynamics, practicalities of navigating these, and the ethics of being researchers from the global south doing research with a northern institution.

It was supported by the SSF PGR-led Research Activity & Culture Fund and the UEA UNESCO Chair in adult literacy and learning. Organisers: Rohullah Hakimi (DEV), Amie Jammeh (DEV), Kuami Albert Degbevi (DEV), Abigail Martinez Renteria (EDU), Lauren Bouttell (EDU), Hodges Zacharia (DEV).

Can Refugees Save the World? Lessons in Community-Based Development from Palestinian Refugee Camps

Project lead: Dr Yafa El Masri

Dr Yafa El Masri, Lecturer in Geography and Global Development at the School of Global Development, has been awarded the ISRF First Book Fellowship (£41,000).

Her project, supported by DEV, will explore how protracted refugee communities create vital, often invisible networks of care, solidarity, and local cooperation under chronic displacement in a post-aid world.

The fellowship will enable Dr El Masri to develop her book – Can Refugees Save the World? Lessons in Community-Based Development from Palestinian Refugee Camps – highlighting alternative pathways to community-led, sustainable development.

The urban governance of homelessness in Toronto

Project lead: Dr Will Haynes

Dr Will Haynes from the School of Global Development (DEV) has received a small grant (£3000) from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) to conduct scoping research on urban governance and homelessness in Toronto, Canada.

The scoping research will involve preliminary urban fieldwork and connecting with local organisations that work with homeless people in the city. Building towards a future postdoctoral project, the project will make insights into how governance is increasingly concerned with desirable behaviour and how these developments are experienced first-hand by people in the city.

The project connects to broader questions that are addressed in DEV, particularly how cities worldwide can be safer and more just, as well as asking who our urban environments are designed for.

Isibashi Foundation Network Leader Fellowships in Japanese Arts

Project lead: Prof Simon Kaner

Simon Kaner and SISJAC have been awarded Foundation Leader Fellowships (£120,000) to advance the distinctive and fruitful collaboration with the Isbashi Foundation, a premier research hub for Japanese art outside Japan, aiming to secure a resilient future for Japanese art studies amidst the swiftly evolving global backdrop.

The collaboration will reinforce Japanese art history studies in the UK, and cultivate a robust network of emerging global leaders in Japanese art studies, who are equipped and ready to shape the future landscape of Japanese art history.

The collaboration will run from 2025-2028.

BFI Screen Heritage Project (EAFA)

Project lead: Dr Nick Warr

This project will plan and pilot a community-led approach to archiving that will facilitate a collaborative dialogue and participation with underrepresented communities, with a view to forming new sustainable curatorial partnerships.

EAFA, in collaboration with volunteer-led archiving initiative Queer Norfolk (QN) and its partners Norwich Pride (registered charity) and Norfolk Library Service, will scope and pilot a new community-driven curatorial approach for the archive.

This initiative aims to raise awareness of the overlooked history of Norfolk’s Queer communities, and highlight the crucial role film and video archiving plays in preserving knowledge of Queer heritage across the region.

Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship, School of History and Art History (c. £93,000)

Project lead: Benedetta Mariani

‘Translating Nature in the Medieval Tacuinum Sanitatis: Languages, Images, Ideas’ will undertake the first interdisciplinary exploration of a unique medieval medical text: the Tacuinum Sanitatis.

Originally composed in Arabic, the Tacuinum was translated into Latin between 1200 and 1400, becoming popular across European libraries. It managed to merge Arabic medical knowledge with European artistic prowess, to form a novel multicultural interdisciplinary approach to medicine.

By investigating this textual tradition through a new multicultural lens, this project demonstrates that only by considering the Tacuinum’s multiplicity of translating acts – linguistic, visual, disciplinary – can we fully appreciate the work’s originality and power, past and present.

British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (£136,617)

Project lead: Mariagiulia Grassi

‘African Film Archives: collaborative practices of restoration and preservation of film heritage’ will investigate the ethical issues that surround public (and private) audiovisual archiving in an age of wider decolonisation processes. Those issues include aspects of inclusivity, socio-economic conditions, geographical divides and transoceanic connectivity.

This research focuses on African Film Archives and questions of restitution and agency that arise in the attempt to archive, restore, preserve and relaunch African films.

Developing the first comprehensive and comparative analysis of large-scale archive restoration projects relating to African film – both African postcolonial cinema and the visuals of colonial film production – the project will critically assess the complex dynamics of international archiving and restoration.

Study with us Explore our research

UEA researchers named among world’s most influential for 2025

Six researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have been named in the annual Highly Cited Researchers list for 2025.

House of Lords event highlight realities of mental health crisis in UK agriculture

Policymakers, health and agricultural leaders came face-to-face with the realities of the mental health crisis in UK farming during an event at the House of Lords this week.

Aviva and UEA collaborate to create civic and community impact

Aviva signs UEA's Civic Charter, marking a new chapter in collaboration for beneficial community impact.