Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

The starting point of Museums and Industry: Long Histories of Collaboration (MaILHoC) is that museums of science, technology, and medicine (STM heritage) are in a state of upheaval. STM heritage is a child of the industrial revolution; it would not have existed without the patronage of industry. But processes of deindustrialisation, concerns about human impacts on the environment, and the influence of ideas like the degrowth movement, have turned this relationship into a source of controversy. Why does it seem that this long history has only recently been considered unethical? By examining this phenomenon, MaILHoC responds directly to the challenge to 'explore the relationship between cultural heritage, democratic values, and politics in a historic perspective.' It examines how and by whom narratives about cultural heritage are produced, used, and communicated in different contexts. To date, while there have been studies of the industrial patronage of the sciences, there is almost nothing on the industrial patronage of STM heritage. MaILHoC addresses this substantial lacuna by examining case studies from France, Spain, and the UK. Drawing on this analysis we will: (i) describe historical attitudes towards industrial patronage; (ii) explore the actual or likely consequences of new approaches; (iii) explore the implicit normativity of existing practices, and (iv) analyse the institutionalisation of ethics in STM heritage. MaILHoC's consortium of universities, museums and publishers will disseminate a range of interdisciplinary research outputs through a wide variety of scholarly, public and media channels. While ethical dilemmas cannot ever be finally resolved, MaILHoC will both generate new understandings and build our social capabilities for a better informed, and more participative deliberation of the relationships between STM heritage and its industrial patrons.

Conspiracy theories are increasingly rife on the Internet. With their potential for spreading virally, they can reach large audiences across the globe. In their relentless drive to connect the dots into one over-arching explanation, conspiracy theories seem to be made for the hyperlinked world of the Internet. Once marginal ideas now readily find an online community of believers. Although conspiracy theories encountered online are at times merely harmless entertainment or a sign of healthy scepticism, they can also lead to a loss of faith in scientific authorities and expert knowledge, to political disengagement, and even to violence. This research project addresses the question of how and why the Internet has changed conspiracy theories. Combining the 'close reading' techniques of cultural studies and ethnography with the 'distant reading' possibilities offered by big data methods, the project will analyse the difference that the Internet has made to the production, aesthetics and consumption of conspiracy theories. The team brings together cultural studies researchers and a cutting-edge lab that is developing new methods for the analysis and data visualisation of online conspiracy culture. Using digital methods, we will first map out the scale and scope of contemporary conspiracy theory culture in both the mainstream and the 'deep' web. This will shed light on the forms of conspiracy theory that generate the most engagement; how they spread on particular platforms; the role of recommendation algorithms; and the identity, connectedness and political stance of the main creators of conspiracy content. The second strand of research will place the production and transmission of conspiracy theories on the Internet in historical perspective, comparing earlier moments of 'new media' transformation (such as radio), and tracing how conspiracy theories have changed as the Internet itself has evolved over the last half century. By examining the content moderation policies, this strand will also consider how various digital platforms encourage or hinder the exchange of conspiracy theories online. The third research strand will focus on the form and function of online conspiracism by focusing on its dominant images, metaphors and narratives. In particular we will consider whether the ease of creating links on websites tends to push conspiracy theories to more elaborate, hyper-connected forms. The fourth research strand will study how conspiracy theories are consumed and appropriated on the Internet. Where psychology has tried to identify the personality traits that attract people to conspiracy theories, our research will use an ethnographic approach to analyse online discussion fora and conduct interviews with conspiracy theorists to determine how their encounter with conspiracy theories helps forge individual and group identities, for better or worse. In the final strand we will also assess when online conspiracism turns harmful, and what, if anything, can be done about it. The main outcome of the project will be a definitive book that sets out the findings of the research. In collaboration with the Institute of Education and the charity Sense About Science, we will develop workshops and materials (a) to train school teachers how to deal with the problem of conspiracy theories in the classroom, including creating educational materials for use with young people and (b) to help scientists and science communicators address conspiracy theories about e.g. climate change and vaccinations. Working with the think tank Demos, we will hold a high-profile end-of-project event and produce a report for stakeholders.

Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study is the largest household panel study in the world which addresses the key scientific and policy questions of the 21st century. It collects high quality annual longitudinal data on individuals of all ages in households representative of the UK population. Such data enables researchers to explore the experience, causes and consequences of changes in people's lives - their family structure, health, income, expenditure, employment and housing - key issues for policy makers today. The Study also has additional samples that allow the detailed exploration of the circumstances of key immigrant and ethnic minority groups; and collects data on cognition, objective measures of health and genetics to understand how people's health and wider circumstances interact. Additionally, the Study invests in innovative ways of collecting data to continually improve the content and quality of data available. Overall, therefore, the Study enables the production of research to inform policy and practice. The Study was inaugurated in 2008 with an Innovation Panel to test methods and the first main wave of fieldwork in 2009. To date four waves of the main study and six waves of the Innovation Panel, as well as data collected from a nurse visit and derived from blood samples, are deposited in the UK Data Service. Data collection and planning are ongoing for Waves 5-8; this bid covers the costs of data collection for Waves 9-11 and associated activities. Based on careful experimental research and evaluation, in Waves 9-11 the Study will move to mixed mode data collection - meaning people will be able to complete the questionnaire face-to-face or online. This maximises flexibility for respondents, but given people may answer questions differently, depending on whether an interviewer is asking them or not, it creates complexities for data users. Crucial to our work will be to support data users to ensure they are able to use such complex data effectively. Policy and research agendas are constantly evolving, and it is important in a longitudinal study to balance creating long series of the same questions with including questions that address emerging topics and make effective use of new approaches to data collection. In this funding period, we will undertake a programme of innovation to bring in new technologies, enabling us to collect better data to address critical social science and policy issues. We will also work with Topic Champions to improve the content of the survey and the way we present the data to users. Supporting researchers in universities, government, third sector and businesses to use the data effectively is fundamental to the success of the Study. We will therefore invest in improving our user support for the Study and sharing the data in different ways to make them easier for different kind of users to analyse. We also have a Policy Unit that directly works with government departments and third sector organisations to ensure that they are fully aware of how Understanding Society data can be used to address their policy concerns and to help them do so where appropriate, and an Impact Fellow who supports both policy users and researchers to work effectively together to generate impact. During this funding period, as more waves of the Study are released to data users, the value of the study will increase significantly as it can be used to answer more questions about the effect of different kinds of changes on people's lives. We will create a wide range of opportunities for users to share their findings - for example at conferences and workshops, through Insights, by promoting publications and case studies on the website and through social media - and by creating an online community of users so that they can engage with each other.

This project seeks to understand the value located in a range of arts/cultural activities to refugees, a group new to British cultural life who are often marginalised from 'mainstream' cultural activities, but who are simultaneously expected to adopt a hegemonic national identity of Britishness and henceforward espouse British cultural values. Refugees are a group who typically have experienced forced migration, oftentimes related specifically to their own - often fiercely defended - cultural activities and values in their country of origin. This migratory biography makes for a complex, rich contribution to how we think about the value of arts and culture, and cultural expression, in the UK today. We will investigate the standpoint of refugees on British cultural values, benefitting from their 'outsider within' perspective. British cultural values are not unitary, nor are they precisely definable, they are shaped and refined by participation and engagement. We will seek to identify the components of cultural value embedded in a set of typically British arts and cultural pursuits, based in and around the city of Brighton. We will break down the components to be identified using a range of methods that focus on the discrete senses, and on the particular forms of embodiment that such activities claim. We want to examine carefully what constitutes the experience of involvement in the arts and cultural sphere, so we will also be collecting information on the cognitions and emotions that are attached to such experiences. Refugees constitute a unique case: migrants pay acute attention to the acculturation of British values. This attention can be a protective mechanism, a philosophical choice, an attempt to move away from a traumatized past or culture of origin, an imposed set of norms, or a way of making their enforced dislocation intelligible. Refugees are legally required to learn British cultural values in order to be 'awarded' citizenship, via the Home Office instrument, the 'Life in the UK' Test (which will be interrogated in group discussion). Whatever the reason, refugees have an acute sensitivity and prescient awareness of 'what makes us British'. Yet, often their access to the cultural industries can be severely restricted, due to explicit factors such as economic barriers, and due to implicit factors such as the perceived 'Whiteness' of some art/cultural pursuits (eg. premier league football, and the opera - two performances that will form part of our programme). This project will take the form of a 16 week course, called 'What is British Culture', offered to 12 women refugees. Through a range of arts and cultural activities, we will assess refugee's embodied experience of participation and reflection, gathering sensory information through creative expression. In order to gather robust data, the course is quite long and demanding; however we have found in previous projects that refugee participants appreciate such commitments as they enable a strong group identity to form, which can continue informally after the planned meetings finish, providing a sustainable resource. As researchers we have our own cultural values: our model is taken from feminist praxis. Feminist epistemologies focus on the way "in which gender does and ought to influence our conceptions of knowledge, the knowing subject, and practices of inquiry and justification" (Anderson 2004). At the core of feminist epistemology is the concept of the situated knower, who produces situated knowledge. Donna Haraway (1998) famously argued that most knowledge, in particular academic knowledge is always "produced by positioned actors working in/between all kinds of locations". Collaborative learning, respect for social difference, creating an environment of mutual support, listening and consideration for others, these characteristics are all markers of the feminist classroom, cultural values which we hope to emulate in the process of the research.