Funding success for international collaborations

Researchers from the School of Social Sciences have recently been awarded a number of grants from the Newton Fund, an initiative designed to strengthen research and innovation partnerships between the UK and emerging knowledge economies.

These funding successes will allow colleagues to work on a range of projects, from improving the social welfare system in China; building research capacity in Brazil in relation to environmental governance; delivering advanced teaching on science and technology studies in Brazil, and explore restructuring and employment relations in Turkey’s shipyards.

Improving Social Welfare System in China: Urbanisation, Community Development and Social Participation

Dr Sin Yi Cheung, along with Professor Susan Baker, Professor Paul Chaney, Dr Rod Hick and Dr Marco Pomati, has been awarded funding under the British Academy’s Newton Advanced Fellowship scheme to host an advanced fellow Professor XIAO Lin and her team from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The project will involve bilateral research symposiums and workshops in Cardiff and Beijing over the next two years.

Environmental governance for sustainable urban transformation: Exploring opportunities for knowledge exchange and comparative research on socio-environmental conflicts and their regulation in Brazil and the UK

Professor Trevor Jones has won funding from the British Council for a Newton Fund 'Researcher Links' Workshop in Brazil, looking at environmental governance. The week-long workshop will be run in collaboration with a team at the University of Brasilia, led by Professor José Luiz Franco of the Centre for Sustainable Development. The workshop will take place in Brasilia in early July 2016, and include up to 30 participants. The majority of these will be early career researchers with equal numbers from Brazil and the UK, working alongside policy-makers and practitioners from both countries to exchange ideas and develop plans for future collaboration.Further information on the workshop and an application form are now available: http://britishcouncilbrasil.nfrl-jones.sgizmo.com/s3/

Post-colonial and Latin American Science and Technology Studies

As part of a Newton Mobility Grant provided by the British Academy, Dr Luis Reyes-Galindo is jointly co-ordinating and delivering an advanced postgraduate course on Science and Technology Studies at the University of Brasília (UnB). Luis will be a visiting scholar at UnB until July 2016 and, with Dr. Tiago Duarte, will organise a Workshop on Postcolonial STS in Latin America.

Restructuring and employment relations in Turkey’s shipyards

Dr Surhan Cam has received funding in support of an international research collaboration between Cardiff and Bandirma Universities. The research will focus on restructuring and employment relations in Turkey’s shipyards, along with some comparisons to the British case. The project will utilise qualitative interviews, ethnographic enquiries and quantitative analyses, (questionnaires and secondary data analyses). The partner universities will investigate the links between restructuring and employment relations from both companies’ and employees’ point of views. For comparative purposes, researchers will retrieve secondary data on the British shipyards from national surveys such as the Annual Population Survey.

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The Seafarers International Research Centre is also hosting Dr Jonathan Preminger, holder of a two-year post-doctoral Newton International Fellowship. He will be based at SIRC until 2017, where he is working with Professor Helen Sampson.