Understanding the transformative power of multilingualism is vital. Over half of mankind daily speaks more than one language, and multilingualism brings advantages for community relations, business, and global understanding. Yet the linguistic landscape is changing fast, with English increasingly the lingua franca. In the UK, many schools are highly multilingual, despite falling numbers learning languages, and almost 1 in 5 primary school pupils have a first language other than English. Equally integral to a multilingual UK are the regional (minoritized) languages (e.g. Irish, Scottish Gaelic). The decline in pupils taking language GCSEs/A-levels and the number of children with English as an additional language are often portrayed negatively, and the value of community and minoritized languages is underestimated. The aim of this interdisciplinary project is to reflect critically on multilingualism and to transform attitudes through greater understanding. Our approach is holistic, exploring individuals, communities and nations. We analyse the situations giving rise to multilingualism, its social implications and creative possibilities, and relationships between languages, cultures, identities and standards. We explore why individuals/societies choose (consciously or not) to be multilingual, the potential of multilingualism as 'mental gymnastics', ways to optimize language learning, and the benefits of multilingualism for community and international relations. Our research questions: 1. What is the relationship between the multilingual individual and the multilingual society? What does it mean to be multilingual in a monolingual/multilingual society? Or monolingual in a multilingual society? 2. What are the opportunities and challenges presented by multilingualism? How might multilingualism benefit individuals, enhance communities, enrich cultures and foster social cohesion? To what extent might multilingualism disadvantage individuals, divide communities, dilute culture or fragment societies? 3. What is the relationship between multilingualism, diversity and identity? How does this play out at the individual, local, regional, national and international level? 4. What is the relationship between multilingualism and language learning? Who can/should learn additional languages, and in what contexts? How do age and other factors affect motivation, achievement and well-being? 5. How can we influence attitudes towards multilingualism? How can we change the attitudes of individuals and societies, and inform language policy? 6. How can we re-energise Modern Languages research? Can we reinvigorate the discipline by broadening its scope and developing new interdisciplinary methodologies? Intersecting research strands (S1-6) offer powerful case studies for understanding multilingualism: literature, film and culture in a globalized context; the role of standard languages; linguistic identity, diversity and social cohesion; the influence of multilingual identity on foreign language learning; language learning across the lifespan; the cognitive benefits of multilingualism. The project spans major languages traditionally or newly studied in the UK (French, German, Mandarin, Spanish), minoritized languages in Europe (Catalan, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Ukrainian), and community languages (e.g. Cantonese, Polish, Punjabi). We seek to break down barriers between high/low status and home/learnt languages. The project will have transformative outcomes for individuals, for education, health and social policy and practice, and for international relations. Our partners (community groups, educational, cultural and policy bodies, drama and creative writing groups, business) will help shape the research and disseminate outcomes. Placing language-led research at its heart, literary-cultural studies are integrated into an exciting new interdisciplinary programme to show how Modern Languages can respond to key issues of our time.

The aftermath of explosive volcanism is ecologically important in Indonesia but difficult to study because of its unpredictability. In this proposal, we propose to monitor ecosystem recovery after volcanic eruptions with a specific focus on soil micro-organisms and how they can mediate initial soil development in fresh ash deposits. Whilst previous studies have examined microbial communities in 'young' volcanic environments, the age of these deposits was generally in the order of years, thereby missing the key earliest stages of succession during which microbes start to modify the initial edaphic environment. Major volcanic activity at Anak Krakatau, an iconic island volcano in Indonesia, in December 2018 led to a complete reconfiguration of the island and the rare opportunity to study microbial recolonisation and the importance of microbes in ecosystem recovery. In this urgency project, we will sample ash/soils from Anak Krakatau within a few months of the eruption producing a novel dataset. Microbial diversity will be compared with that in the spore-rain to assess if there are constraints to microbial colonisation. We will also set up a series of experiments whereby we inoculate ash/soil to determine how the colonisation of microbes can influence carbon and nutrient accumulation in the ash substrate and the growth of pioneer plant species, and conversely how constraints to colonisation might impede it. Understanding the development of soils over volcanic ash is important because they are very fertile and support high population densities as well as sequestering large amounts of carbon over decadal timescales.

Large cities in China, including the capital city of Beijing, and their surrounding areas have some of the highest air pollution levels in the world. With over one half of China's population now living in cities, air pollution and air quality are important local and national policy issues. At the same time, China is undergoing changes in health: Deaths in children have come down impressively, and people live to older ages when diseases of the heart and the lung are more common and important. Air pollution in cities is one of the main causes of health problems and disease in China, with especially large effects on the heart and the lung. We know from research in Europe and North America that air pollution adversely affects human health, but we know little about how and why this happens, and whether air pollution from different sources has more or less effects. Even less is known about what these mechanisms are in China, where air pollution may be from different sources and therefore have different chemistry. This knowledge is important for deciding what the most effective strategies to reduce the health effects of air pollution are. In this research project, leading scientists from China and the United Kingdom will work closely to use modern methods in epidemiology and biological sciences to better understand which components of air pollution affects human health in China, and how these effects occur. This knowledge will be used together with information from our related research projects to identify the most effective ways of protecting human health from air pollution in Chinese cities.

In the last few decades China's rising energy requirements have led to increased air pollution emissions from coal-fired power plants. Its motorized transport growth is the fastest in the world with the number of motor vehicles projected to quadruple in the next two decades, reaching over 380 million by 2030. Meanwhile, nearly half of all Chinese still cook and heat their homes with highly polluting biomass and coal fuels. The resulting particulate matter (PM) concentrations in the majority of Chinese cities routinely exceed the World Health Organization's (WHO) annual Air Quality Guideline of 10 microgrammes/m3 by a factor of 10 or more. Epidemiologic studies undertaken in China increasingly confirm links between poor air quality and a range of health risks previously observed in the West. Moreover, they confirm that the number of Chinese that are vulnerable to air pollution is increasing, as evidenced by a large and growing burden of disease from chronic non-communicable diseases - such as ischemic heart disease (IHD), cerebrovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and cancer. Research to enhance the understanding of the impact of environmental exposures on human health is needed to influence both government policy on pollution and also individual behaviours. The outcomes of the research described in this proposal will extend our understanding of the impact of air pollution on human health to a megacity in the world's largest country and promote evidence-based policies that in turn may greatly improve the health and quality of life of China's ageing population - both of which are important sustainable development aims. Working closely with Chinese scientists we will recruit a panel of 240 subjects from urban and peri-urban Beijing. Subjects will be recruited from two existing populations cohorts (PRC-USA and INTERMAP) ensuring a rich source of baseline data and stored samples for access. Across the project period we will obtain detailed information on the current health status of the subjects, details of the personal exposure to air pollution and biosamples for biomarker analysis. The UK has been at the heart of the scientific study of air pollution issues over many decades, whereas such scientific studies are much newer in China. Although the Chinese teams have developed a high level of expertise in some areas, the UK team will provide strong complementary expertise, in particular in personal exposure air pollution measurements and biomarker analysis. Inherent throughout however is the synergistic combination of Chinese expertise and capability, complementary UK air quality instrumentation and health expertise. Therefore, this project will serve as a new platform to further enhance the research capacity of the Chinese teams in air pollution and its impact on health, which will leave a legacy beyond the project lifetime, thus contributing to the continuous improvement of life and welfare of more than a billion people.

Air pollution is well established as having major negative impacts on human well-being, vegetation and general quality of life. Whilst the exact biological pathways and mechanisms for health impacts remain to be established, there is ample evidence to demonstrate that months to many years of life expectancy can be lost through exposure to air pollution outside. Those negative impacts are currently disproportionately experienced by those in living the world's largest cities and in rapidly developing economies. The basic causes of air pollution are understood; the combustion of fossil fuels for electricity, transport, cooking and heating, emissions from agriculture, from resource extraction, dust and so on, all play a part. Over the past two centuries economic expansion has always been closely tied to transition periods of increased air pollution and negative social and health outcomes. A key global challenge for the 21st century is to create a framework - scientific, regulatory, and technological - which enables economic development, with increases in individual prosperity and quality of life, without damaging air pollution as a side effect. Many of the processes associated with air pollution are non-linear in nature however, and the extremely complex composition of air, as both gases and particles, can make it very difficult to establish direct cause-and-effect. Pollutants often interact with one another in unexpected ways that can create negative unintended consequences from superficially reasonable policy interventions. This is a key area where scientific understanding remains incomplete. The inability to fully describe the chemistry and physics of the urban atmosphere limits society's ability to create effective solutions that work, and that do not conflict with wider developmental and economic goals. This project tackles some of the key uncertainties that remain in urban air processes, including how polluting chemicals are transformed or oxidised in the atmosphere, how gases and particles interact, how pollution is dispersed by weather, how remote emissions from outside the city impacts on urban populations and how the presence of pollution itself may affect feedback and alter on meteorology in cities. The project focuses its study on three key types of harmful air pollution: particulate matter (referred to as PM), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and ozone O3. The project is a collaboration between ten UK Universities, three leading Chinese research institutes, all part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University and three UK partner research organisations (CERC, NPL, Met Office). The project centre-piece are two periods of intensive observations in the centre of Beijing, in the contrasting atmospheric conditions of winter and summer. The experiments will make measurements at the surface, and in the vertical using a unique 1000ft meteorological tower. These experiments will generate a complex and multiparameter dataset that can challenge state of the art computer models of urban pollution. By challenging models with detailed data, their capabilities can be assessed and their weaknesses and failings identified, and then targeted for improvement. This is vital since the pathway to achieving better air quality is through policy that is underpinned by scientific understanding, and in air pollution science, that understanding is encapsulated in these computer models. The project will use state of the art models from the UK and from China, and develop methods to generate very high spatial resolution estimates of pollution at the surface, a type of data that is essential when studying the health effects of pollution, or evaluating how successful a future policy might be.