'Connecting Digital Histories of Fugitive Slaves' will launch a collaboration in digital scholarship between the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, the Virtual Museum of Slavery and Empire being developed by the Coalition for Racial Equality and Recognition in Glasgow, the University of Glasgow, Aston University in Birmingham, the Gilder Lehrman Centre for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, and the Yale Centre for British Art. Drawing on new and emerging technologies, the network will develop innovative methods to link and enhance existing datasets and digitised sources. This work will focus attention on the experiences of people seeking refuge from slavery in the UK, North America and the Caribbean while also highlighting the complex legacies of slavery and resistance in the present. The network will host three interconnected workshops featuring hackathon sessions in which historians, digital humanities specialists, museum professionals and educators will work together to create new connections and shared resources that challenge archival silences around Black histories.

The designation of a museum as 'national' implies a number of things: status and significance; a settled view of how collections fall within disciplinary boundaries (art, history, science); certain types of relations with visitors as citizens; specific forms of governance and funding structures; and a conceptual affiliation to the civic and the state. Yet the political and epistemic settlement that has underpinned the 'national museum' is under pressure on all of these fronts, with significant funding cuts, trans-disciplinary innovations and global flows of people, goods, capital and ideas that transcend national borders. Based in a city that has come to exemplify so many of these processes, 'Bradford's National Museum' project will deploy ideas of 'translocality' - a concept which foregrounds the connections between people in specific local areas rather than between national states and capital cities - as a way of re-framing the political geographies of museums. The 'Bradford's National Museum' project - conceived with the National Media Museum (NMeM), part of the Science Museum Group (SMG) - will deploy 'translocality' in three ways, as a research method (with strands of work which are multi-sited and link Bradford with other local places), as an approach (of community network building in Bradford and through the connections Bradford has to other local places in other countries specifically Pakistan, Indian, Bangladesh, Commonwealth of Dominica and Poland) and as a concept (to support the development of new readings of inter/national in the context of museums). The NMeM was founded as the National Museum for Photography, Film and Television in 1983, at a moment of optimism for Bradford. However, in the 1990s and 2000s different characterizations of the city hardened, the effect of three decades of national media and policy rhetoric which had sought to represent and account for 'what's wrong with Bradford'. The NMeM has been both affected by, and a player in, these national narratives of Bradford. Since its establishment, the museum has often been cited as a reason to come to Bradford in tourism and business relocation campaigns. Yet the NMeM has found a tension in its mission between being locally-engaged and maintaining a high-status role in international photography, film and television peer networks. Recent public debates concerning the sustainability of the NMeM have made visible a tension between the desire for the status that comes from Bradford having a national museum and an equally strong desire for local accountability. The Bradford's National Museum project will explore the political geographies of the NMeM and wider SMG and of the different communities who live in Bradford as a means of addressing the tensions facing inter/national museums in engaging their local audiences. The project will work with the idea of Bradford not as a 'global city', but as provincial and connected translocally and place this in dialogue with the NMeM's focus on the 'science and culture of sound and vision technologies'. The research questions will be addressed through systemic action research allowing us to build a 'working picture' of the role the NMeM currently plays and use this to identify blocks as well as pathways for productive change. In Phase 1 it will use co-producing translocal stories with people who live locally to 'Write Bradford into the NMeM'. In Phase 2, the project will identify targeted interventions that will 'Write the NMeM into Bradford', refounding the 'national' in the NMeM translocally. In Phase 3, the project will ensure wider applicability through working with the NMeM SMG sister museums NRM and MOSI, by building exchanges with other museums internationally - the Smithsonian Institution (US) and via Beaconhouse National University (Pakistan) - and through identifying the implications of the research in a UK context through practitioner and policy-maker workshops.

Languages are currently valued mainly as practical tools for basic transactions in monoglot contexts. Yet language use is a creative act. Languages evolve in interaction with the needs of individuals who acquire and shape their linguistic resources in interaction with multiple intersecting communities. They change and mingle as cultural constellations shift, and they rapidly turn new technical possibilities into communicative innovations. The crisis of Modern Foreign Languages in UK schools, with its serious consequences for higher education, business, and diplomacy, has its roots in globalisation, the expansion of English as global lingua franca, and diversifying electronic media dominated by English. Arguably it also marks the failure of UK policy-makers and the educational sectors to address these challenges with the necessary understanding, imagination, and unity of purpose. This programme exploits the crisis as an opportunity to engage stakeholders in a collaborative process of rethinking the identity of Modern Languages from the ground up. It will seek to dismantle assumed oppositions between 'vocational' and 'academic' purposes, and develop a concept of languages that responds to the multi-faceted needs of individuals and communities in the contemporary world. Researchers from Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Reading, SOAS (London), and Pittsburgh will pool their expertise in some 40 languages to unlock the subject's creative and connective potential by investigating how languages and creativity interact in processes involving more than one language. Research in seven interlocking strands will analyse how we turn thoughts into language-specific metaphors (strand 1), deploy the resources offered by our language to name the elements of our environment (strand 2), and negotiate language 'barriers' to intelligibility across related languages (strand 3). They will seek to capture the creative stimulus generated by multilingual theatre and music (strand 4), identify the creative processes initiated by multilingual literature (strand 5), and explore the creation of multiple meanings in the act of translation (strand 6). Empirical research will compare functional and creative methodologies in language learning and establish benefits of creative activities for the literacy, motivation, and confidence that are key factors in take-up and progression (strand 7). In order to understand multilingual creativity, we need to engage with a variety of contexts and exchange knowledge with practitioners. Partners from beyond academia will contribute to focus groups, workshops, conferences and specialised projects. To take just a few examples, the British Council will enhance opportunities for engagement with policy-makers and involve learners across the world. Work on community languages within the UK will be augmented by a window onto linguistic communities across over 120 countries opened up by BirdLife International. Collaboration with Sputnik Theatre Company, Punch Records, the Ashmolean Museum and cultural festivals will facilitate cross-language projects with actors and musicians, an exhibition, a 'Linguamania' celebration and a Multilingual Music Fest for primary school children. English PEN will provide opportunities to find out about multilingual experiments by creative writers. Meanwhile language experts from GCHQ and ING Media will give insights into the creative language skills used in intelligence and PR. Teachers and learners in schools will interact with the research throughout, culminating in an interactive schools Roadshow. The programme will transform research in Modern Languages by invigorating the subject from the grass-roots up to blue-sky research. By putting creativity at the heart of languages, it will reconnect languages with the arts and humanities while allowing their innovative force to become productive across disciplines and communities.

Our proposal brings together world class expertise and cutting-edge methods to answer a key question in the history of life: how did vertebrates conquer the land? We address this question by testing four key hypotheses derived from long-standing assertions that selection acted upon the skull to drive adaptations for improved terrestrial feeding during the water to land transition. Our methods offer a means to shift away from analogy-driven assertions of evolutionary history towards rigorous testable hypotheses founded upon mechanical principles, and will set a benchmark for future studies in evolutionary biomechanics. For the first 200 million years of their history, vertebrates lived an aquatic existence. Between 385 and 350 million years ago they evolved a host of anatomical features that ultimately enabled vertebrates to conquer land. This reorganization of the vertebrate skeleton created the basic tetrapod body plan of a consolidated head with mobile neck, arms and legs with digits and air breathing lungs. This plan has persisted, subject to modification, ever since and is shared by all terrestrial vertebrates. It was proposed over 50 years ago that tetrapods modified their skull bones and jaw muscles to create a stronger and 'more efficient' structure, capable of forceful biting for feeding on land. This reorganization is seen as key to their subsequent radiations, enabling tetrapods to expand into new ecological niches by feeding on terrestrial plants, large prey and hard or tough food. It has been proposed that these modifications came at the cost of reduced hydrodynamic efficiency and a slower bite, and could only be achieved by the loss of suction feeding and the evolution of rib-based breathing, thus freeing the skull from its roles in aquatic locomotion, drawing prey into the mouth and pumping air into the lungs. These ideas have been perpetuated in textbooks for decades, yet are based on out-dated simple line drawings of skulls and jaw closing muscles, and remain to be tested. We now have a rich and informative fossil record that documents changes in skull shape across the water to land transition. However, until now, we have lacked the means to test these hypotheses in a quantitative, rigorous way. In this proposal we will determine how changes in skull form and function enabled vertebrates to feed in a terrestrial environment and document the sequence of evolutionary changes and trade-offs that lead to their conquering of land. We will integrate principles from palaeontology and biology to reconstruct skull anatomy in 14 fossil tetrapods. Mathematical and mechanical principles will then be used to test the hypothesis that changes to skull anatomy resulted in tetrapod skulls evolving from hydrodynamically streamlined broad, flat skulls that could deliver a rapid (but weak) bite to strongly built skulls that could produce a more effective, forceful bite. New evolutionary modelling methods will assess how selection for skull strength or hydrodynamic efficiency shaped the evolution of the tetrapod skull. Our project will produce methodological advances that can be applied more broadly to evolutionary transitions and radiations, and to address long standing questions linking form and function. Palaeontologists, anatomists, biomechanists, evolutionary and developmental biologists and engineers will benefit from this work, which will establish new international collaborations. Its visual aspect and focus on early tetrapods will appeal to the general public, offering engagement opportunities and generating media interest. Members of our team are leaders in developing and validating methods for reconstructing and simulating the musculoskeletal anatomy and function of fossil organisms and have been involved in developing new methods for modelling how function has shaped form in deep time. The time is therefore ripe to apply our knowledge and skills to one of the key events in the history of life and our ow

The CBES group at the UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies received its Platform Award in 2006 and the funding has facilitated a period of sustained success. Platform funding has been of critical value in helping us to retain key staff, to innovate and in providing the flexibility to be adventurous. We have also been able to enhance our knowledge exchange/transfer work and international collaboration. This has been reflected in the quality, growth and range of our activities. The Platform funding thus enabled us to establish a multi-disciplinary, world-leading research group which has dramatically increased in size, resulted in world leading academic publications, seeded a new Institute (Energy), developed new methods of interdisciplinary and systems working and won international prizes. CBES was submitted to and awarded the highest percentage (35%) of world leading rated researchers of any UK university in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) - Architecture and the Built Environment Panel. Building on the work directly supported or indirectly facilitated by the current Platform Grant, and also responding to new opportunities, the strategic direction of this continuation proposal represents a step change for CBES. During the period of the current Platform Grant, CBES was primarily interested in developing multi-disciplinary solutions to the practical problems of designing, constructing and managing environments within and around buildings. In the next quinquennium we will strengthen our world-leading position. We propose a strategic programme of activity in a timely new research direction - the unintended consequences of decarbonising the built environment . We aim to transform understanding of this urgent issue that will have enormous impact internationally.In order to predict the possible future states of such a complex socio-technical system, conventional scientific approaches that may have been appropriate for systems capable of being analysed into simple components are no longer applicable. Instead, we need to bring radically new approaches and ways of thinking to bear. We need to develop and extend our multi- and inter- disciplinary ways of working and be informed by modern complexity science. The initial Platform grant has helped set up a group that includes building scientists, heritage scientists, economists, systems modellers and social scientists. The renewal will enable the group to focus on this urgent problem, to develop appropriate research methods and help develop real-world solutions within the required timescale. The number of Investigators has increased from 11 at the start of the existing Platform Grant to 13 in the renewal - a vital expansion to enable the inclusion of a wider range of disciplines. Nevertheless, facilitated by Platform funding, we will now need to form a whole new set of additional alliances to support the development of our proposed work.One of the key achievements of the current Platform Grant has been the spinning off of the newly formed UCL Energy Institute (EI). CBES is thus ideally placed to benefit from the extensive and diverse range of energy demand reduction work at the EI. However, the EI is not funded to study unintended consequences and this Platform renewal will thus perfectly complement EI activity. Via Platform funding and in partnership with the EI, CBES aims to develop a new concentration of world-leading research excellence in this field. We will establish a regional hub for research collaboration with local universities which will ensure that benefits from Platform funding are felt more widely than UCL alone.