The College of Humanities and Social Science 'transform' social science with the support of ESRC

The call aims to provide a stimulus for genuinely transformative and groundbreaking research ideas at the frontiers of social sciences.

Transformative research can be seen as high risk but with the possibility of high reward or research that is carried out with the expectation that it will produce a broad base of knowledge and new insights. The call trialed a mechanism (using face to face peer review) that enables research which challenges current thinking to be supported and developed.

Physiology, Identity and Behaviour

Professor Laura Cram, Professor of Politics and International Relations, will use her Transformative Research Grant to develop a project titled Physiology, Identity and Behaviour: a Neuropolitical Perspective.

This project develops a neuropolitical approach to the study of identity and its effects, triangulating physiological, attitudinal and neural vectors in a comparative study of 'belonging' in Spain and the UK.

Using an innovative experimental approach it aims to enrich current understandings of identity and the role it plays in the multi-level European Union.

This grant gives me the opportunity to expand my research group's work into as yet uncharted territories, to collaborate with talented post-docs and with colleagues from psychology, medical imaging and cognitive neuroscience.

Professor Laura Cram

Relational infrastructures for fragile futures

Dr Alice Street, Chancellor's Fellow in Social Anthropology, will focus her attention on a project titled 'Off the Grid': Relational Infrastructures for Fragile Futures (Alice Street (PI), Jamie Cross (Co-I), Chris Speed (Co-I)).

This project sets out to visualise the relationships that make up infrastructures for health services and energy in places where infrastructure is celebrated or experienced as being off the grid.

Through a novel collaboration between two anthropologists and a visual theorist from the Edinburgh College of Art, this project explores what can be learned theoretically and methodologically from thinking about infrastructure as relational across diverse spaces of wealth, growth and poverty - and how we can make these ideas speak to the challenge of building strong, resilient infrastructures for our fragile futures.

This collaboration has enabled us to pursue new directions in visual and public anthropology and presents a major opportunity for the social sciences to contribute to public debates about future infrastructures in relevant, powerful and accessible ways.

Dr Alice Street

Anonymous applications were assessed by a Commissioning Panel of relevant experts from the academic community. Shortlisted applicants were then invited to pitch their proposal at a 'Pitch to Peers' workshop in March 2013.

This call is central to that ambition and will support the development of exciting research projects that have the potential to make significant contributions towards social science.

Professor Paul Boyle

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