Stalking is included in the governments national strategy on violence against women and girls, whilst people of all genders can be victims, the majority of victims are women and the majority of perpetrators are men. Research nationally has identified a whole range of negative effects on stalking victims' psychological and physical health and has established a link to domestic murder, making prevention and early intervention particularly important. Stalking offences were introduced into law in England and Wales ten years ago in 2012, there has been a large increase in reports of stalking across West Yorkshire in the last two years, including in the Kirklees district, but convictions for stalking offences are low. There is no recent research on stalking in West Yorkshire nor any specialist support provision for victims, despite research showing such support brings about much better outcomes in terms of victims health and well being and in the criminal justice system (Suzy Lamplugh Trust 2022). Secure Societies Institute (SSI) at the University of Huddersfield are carrying out an action research project which will bring the issue of stalking from the margins to the centre in policy, practice addressing violence against women and girls in the West Yorkshire region. We are carrying out an action research project focused on the Kirklees district of West Yorkshire, which involves the voices of women who have been victims of stalking. Our main partners in the project are West Yorkshire Police, West Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit (West Yorkshire combined Authority), Safer Kirklees and Pennine Domestic Abuse Partnership. Action research is committed to supporting change, improving The main strands to the project are; a. Setting up a new stalking knowledge and research hub linked to the Secure Societies Institute at the University of Huddersfield. b. Reviewing police data on stalking and investigative decision making in stalking cases to inform improvements to policing responses. c. Scoping current support for victims of stalking and review best practice for stalking victims/survivors internationally. d. Consulting/involving women who have been victims of stalking about their experience of support and views on improving support. e. Producing a model for a stalking support provision, produced with victims of stalking their advocates, domestic and sexual abuse services, women's and girls services and other organisations. We will share practice and academic learning from the project across West Yorkshire via the hub. We will also share learning via the established multi-agency and community networks that the university and our partners, West Yorkshire Police, West Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit, Safer Kirklees and Pennine Domestic Abuse Partnership are active within. Also we will share learning nationally.

Private mobility has a high carbon footprint due to the manufacturing, use, storage and disposal of vehicles. Private cars spend 96% of their time idle and were responsible for 60.7% of total CO2 emissions from road transport. To reduce CO2 emissions while mitigating societal loss, linking poorly served geographies and alleviating the challenges of elderly and disabled to afford mobility, this research proposes the development of the mathematical tools needed to deliver sustainable, shared mobility, specifically a Demand Responsive Transport Service (DRTS). We will design novel algorithms that optimise the routing and scheduling integrated with dynamic pricing of DRTS. Solving these large-scale hard combinatorial optimisation problems, in real time, will enable a transformation of DRTS, part of the emerging sector of scaled shared transport solutions, encouraging increased take up of shared mobility. DRTS allows passengers to book a door-to-door service requesting pick up or drop off times, much like a taxi, but sharing a vehicle with other passengers that may be collected or dropped off along the route. Similar services, such as Dial-a-Ride, exist to meet specific needs but they are reduced in scope and heavily subsidized by local councils and the Department for Transport. They lack route planning flexibility and cannot manage high demand. At scale, with optimized dynamic pricing and routing, realistic demand forecasts, informed accurate behavioural models, and incentivised by policies that enhance their acceptance and induce voluntary behaviour changes, DRTS would be financially viable and more sustainable than private car use. The original transformative science in the form of efficient, complex optimization algorithms, and the rich understanding of preferences and attitudes towards shared mobility developed in this project will help enable DRTS to be both efficient and cost-effective; thus, promoting shared mobility and significantly reducing CO2 emission of local travel. This project will integrate three important scientific components to deliver an attractive, flexible, low-carbon DRTS. 1) An effective efficient scheduling and routing optimisation algorithm for a fleet of vehicles of different types that can provide instant accept/reject decisions on journey requests. In order to do this effectively, the algorithm needs to anticipate potential future demand and be continuously globally optimising schedules across the fleet in the background. 2) New revenue management formulations that allow the prices of journeys to be changed dynamically, with prices dependent on journey length and service quality; thus, supporting the financial sustainability of the service. 3) A rich understanding of customer behaviour and preferences, which will be obtained by running surveys and focus groups and using the data collected to build choice models, describing how potential passengers make decisions. These models will support service design and motivate behaviour changes. Combining these three components of work comprehensively addresses the practical challenge and advances an exciting new interdisciplinary research area for shared green transportation. The algorithmic approach also has the potential to be adapted to electric and autonomous vehicles in the future.

The government's advisor on infrastructure decision making, the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), has identified that there is a need for decision support tools which incorporate decisions taken by multiple decision makers, at multiple scales and in different infrastructure systems. This fellowship will specifically respond to that need. A number of tools and approaches exist, which aim to help decision makers to understand and manage the uncertainties associated with long-term decisions. These uncertainties include the effects of interaction between infrastructure systems and of social and environmental change. However, most tools and approaches assume that there is one decision maker with clearly defined objectives and that their preferences stay the same over time. The interaction between different decision makers (or actors as they are often called) is an additional uncertainty that is rarely recognised. However, it is becoming increasingly important as we try to transition infrastructures more rapidly and as new technologies and ways of working are forcing closer interaction between infrastructures and decision makers. This fellowship will develop a multi-actor, adaptive approach to decision making based on long-term planning approaches developed to support decisions in the face of social and environmental change. The new approach will allow decision makers to also consider uncertainty associated with constraints from decision making at other scales and in other systems. It will develop accessible methods to analyse interactions between decision makers and to identify activities required to transform infrastructure that reflect and capitalise on these interactions. It will develop rapid and transparent modelling methods to help analyse how decision maker interactions affect the successful implementation of activities and how this contributes to infrastructure transformation. It will apply these methods and models to case studies to develop long-term but adaptable plans for infrastructure transformation. The outputs of decision maker analysis methods and modelling will be used to create adaptable pathways of activities that can transform infrastructure but also respond to social and environmental change or constraints from other decision makers. The combination of methods and models to create adaptable pathways is the multi-actor, adaptive decision making approach, which is the main output of this fellowship. I will develop the methods, models and overarching approach using urban energy as a test-case. Both the Committee on Climate Change and the NIC have identified that transforming urban energy systems is essential to the UK's sustainable development and is urgently in need of long-term decision support, which makes it a timely and nationally important test-case. However, the potential for cities to deliver this transformation is stifled by decisions taken at national, regional and household scales and in other infrastructure systems. This makes it very difficult for cities to engage with the energy system in the way that could deliver on their social, environmental and economic objectives. I will use three case studies of urban energy; two in the UK and one in a less developed country, working closely with real decision makers and using participatory techniques to ensure that the approach and models are both robust and relevant. I will set up a Local Infrastructure Commission, to identify how city activity could be better co-ordinated locally and with national actors. The approaches and tools developed will have relevance to other infrastructure systems, beyond energy, and in other contexts, beyond the UK. The fellowship comes at a crucial time in my career, and I am ready to dedicate significant time and resources to building an evidence base and research group, which are essential to developing my thought leadership and research influence in academia, policy and industry at the international level.

Fostering safe and inclusive public spaces where women and girls' feel safe is of national and international concern. In the UK, the murders of Sabina Nessa in 2021 and sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman in 2020 show that there is a need to improve the safety of public spaces, notably urban parks, and enhance women's feelings of safety whilst using them. Public parks have been shown to have numerous benefits for health and wellbeing, yet research consistently finds that personal safety is a significant factor constraining women's access to and use of green spaces, thereby reducing those benefits. Indeed, the Office for National Statistics (2021) found that feeling unsafe walking alone in public places such as streets, busy transport hubs and local parks, disproportionately affects women and girls, particularly after dark. Gender disparities are greatest for park settings where 81% of women reported feeling unsafe walking alone after dark, compared with 39% of men (ONS, 2021). Moreover, across Europe, women are between 2.5 and 5.7 times more likely to feel unsafe walking alone than men after dark, according to the European Social Survey. Some countries, such as Norway, have managed to significantly narrow this gender gap. Effective prevention of VAWG in urban parks involves designing and managing these public spaces in ways which both deter potential offending and ensure women and girls feel safe. Building upon and harnessing the findings of recently completed research into women and girls' safety in public parks led by Barker and Holmes, this partnership collaboration between West Yorkshire Police, the Mayor of West Yorkshire, West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Keep Britain Tidy, Make Space for Girls, Leeds Women's Aid, the ESRC Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre and the University of Leeds aims to foster a paradigm shift in the way professionals think about women's safety, develop regional and national guidance for safer, women friendly parks and co-design new research activities that seek to understand how holistic multi-agency approaches involving sympathetic crime prevention and landscape design, neighbourhood policing and park management can contribute to preventing and reducing VAWG in parks, enhance feelings of safety and build trust and confidence in policing. Crime prevention design can be intrusive, unsightly and exclusionary, which could actually increase women and girls' fear, and reduce footfall, which itself acts as natural guardianship as people pass through a park. It can also have other potentially negative environmental and social impacts, such as the impact of safety lighting and vegetation management on biodiversity and the impact of physical security measures on accessibility and social inclusion. The project will co-design new directions in research that create new ways to think about park design and park policing that contribute to the effective prevention and reduction of VAWG and build confidence in policing, while ensuring that crime prevention is sympathetic to the park environment, mitigates environmental impacts and does not convey a message of alertness or fear, which is the opposite of the sense of nature, freedom and calmness that green spaces offer. Outcomes from this project include: research-informed, co-produced regional and national guidance for safer, women friendly parks; an international symposium on women's safety in public spaces; making parks safer places for women and girls through changing the ways professionals think about women's safety and strengthening multi-agency partnership working; and co-designed plans for new research activities linked to this agenda.

The aim of this place based impact acceleration account (PBIAA) is to support the translation of University research in medical technologies into new clinical products and services. There is a vibrant Medical Technology (MedTech) business cluster in the Yorkshire region, with over 200 companies employing more than 16,000 people, mostly in high value technical roles. The Universities of Leeds and Sheffield have strong track records in engineering and physical sciences research related to MedTech, particularly in areas that mirror the local business strengths (e.g. orthopaedics, dental, implantable devices and surgical technologies). While there is clear synergy between University research strengths and the business prominence in the region, there is currently a gap in the innovation funding pathway that is preventing technology innovations developed at the region's universities from being adopted by local companies. The aim of this PBIAA is to provide support to bridge this gap and build the connections between the academic, industrial and clinical assets in the region that will help grow the regional economy. It is particularly timely because the MedTech sector is transforming and there is increasing integration of new technologies into products and services. There are growing numbers of high-growth, high-innovation MedTech companies in the region with an absorptive capacity to benefit from this PBIAA, but we will also proactively engage with established companies that need to adopt new innovations to address the changing markets. We have worked with civic partners including the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, NHS Trusts through the Leeds and Sheffield Biomedical Research Centres, local industry, investors and innovation support organisations to develop this proposal and shape the activities to most effectively enable impact to be realised from the region's engineering and physical sciences research base. Commercialisation of innovations in the MedTech sector is challenging due to the regulatory barriers for products intended for use in humans, with evidence from extensive pre-clinical testing required to demonstrate the safety and efficacy. The PBIAA will fund Impact Projects that aim to generate evidence to derisk a technology, both to prove the technical concept is effective and to demonstrate that it is a commercially attractive proposition. A stage-gated approach will be used to encourage higher risk in the early stages and fast failure. These projects will act as exemplars to encourage further business engagement and outcomes will form a portfolio of evidence to inform future activities. The PBIAA will also support activities to build the regional innovation environment. These include a suite of training activities and events that raise understanding of technical advances and translational processes in the MedTech sector, and act to bring together academic, clinical and industrial partners to help build a lasting innovation community. The PBIAA will support events to identify clinical needs, two-way secondments, as well as public and patient engagement activities that aim to improve understanding of needs across the diverse regional population. A dedicated collaboration fund will be used to support impact activities at universities across the region, nurturing the wider regional strengths in this sector, and draw on wider collaborations that utilise the full strengths of the UK research base. The PBIAA will provide regional industry with a vital connection to state-of-the-art research, enabling a sustainable regional research-derived product development pipeline. It will help drive regional economic growth, with new innovations being adopted by regional industry, creating high value jobs and unlocking private sector investment in R&D, supporting a £3bn/year industry beyond 2035.