This research aims to assess the medium-run implications of COVID-19 on income and health inequality, and possible policies that aim to mitigate these effects. The medium run is important because the impacts of COVID-19 on inequality are expected to persist for many years. Understanding how inequality changes over the medium run, and assessing mitigation policies beyond the short term, requires information on the evolution of income and health inequalities several years after an outbreak. To achieve this, we will combine models typically applied to modern datasets with quantitative data from historical periods that, unlike contemporary data, cover extended post-outbreak periods. We will use records from Glasgow since the end of the 19th century, covering a period of intense and volatile economic activity, as well as multiple disease outbreaks. We choose Glasgow because it is a large city demonstrating similar inequalities to those seen today, and because administrative records for Glasgow provide detailed relevant information. Our approach is the following. We will use a modelling framework that has been shown to be effective in capturing income inequality and the effects of recessions on this inequality. We will extend the modelling approach to also include health inequalities and ensure that both income and health inequalities are represented accurately using recent datasets. To set up the model so that it captures the effects of outbreaks on inequalities, we will use historical data from earlier times that include large disease outbreaks. The model will then allow us to examine the effects of different policy interventions for households with different socioeconomic characteristics.

The central aim of the project is to produce a comprehensive account of the early development of cinema in Scotland. Where were the early films shown; who by and to whom? Where were cinemas built; by whom and with what success? What films did they show and who went to them? How did films circulate, and who distributed them. What kinds of film were (and were not) produced in Scotland? Who produced them? What succeeded and what did not? How did cinema grow as a business? In what ways did cinema, within thirty years, become a major cultural form? What were the differences between rural cinema and cinema as an urban phenomenon? How were the expectations of cinema defined; what social, cultural and aesthetic values were ascribed to it; and how was the experience of cinema described in the press and other sources?\n\nThe popularity of cinema in Scotland - and in Glasgow particularly - is legendary. Purpose-built cinemas began to appear in 1910, and by 1920 there were 557 cinemas in Scotland. By 1929, according to the historian, Christopher Harvie, Glasgow alone had 127 cinemas. Green's Playhouse, opening in 1927 had a seating capacity of 4,368, and was, by repute, the largest cinema in the world outside the USA. In 1939, according to Bruce Peter, there were 'a staggering 114 picture houses in Glasgow with a seating capacity in excess of 175,000, more cinema seats per head than any other city in the world.' \n\nAgainst this background, the absence of indigenously produced feature film is striking. In a period from 1915 to 1930, when the Irish Filmography lists around 30 Irish-produced fiction films, the Scottish record contains 6. In the same period, internationally, over 150 films have clearly identified Scottish themes; e.g. Bonnie Prince Charlie, Rob Roy, and Mary, Queen of Scots. \n\nThis disparity - between the popularity of cinema and the production of feature films; between the international market for Scottish stories and the apparent absence of a domestic industry which might sustain their production - points to a key element in the historical context for the research. \n\nMore broadly, the project addresses a fundamental gap in the historical record of Scottish culture, which is itself a disparity in current research: the disparity between the importance of cinema in 20th-century Scottish culture, the wealth of documentary evidence available in archives, and the lack of sustained academic research in uncovering, collating and making sense of this evidence. While early Irish cinema has been well surveyed in monographs and edited collections, while there are two monographs which address early cinema in Wales, and while the inventiveness of regional producers in Brighton, Sheffield or Blackburn is part of the international history of early cinema, research into history of the early cinema in Scotland is covered by a handful of articles and catalogue introductions.\n\nThis, then, will be the first major attempt to bring together systematically a range of resources and archive records in order to produce a comprehensive account of the beginnings of cinema in Scotland. It will cover production, distribution, exhibition and reception in order to understand the cultural, social and economic place of cinema in the early years of the twentieth century: the phenomenon which Francesco Casetti describes as 'the popularization of modernity and the modernization of popularity.' In this sense, the research will contribute to a more complex understanding of the cultural significance of the so-called 'silent period'. An understanding of the particular popularity of the 'cinema of attractions' in Scotland -- of 'shows', 'local topicals' and 'actualities' -- will add significantly to international research into film history and to the historical understanding of a period when it was not yet certain that cinema would become either a dominant form of culture, or, indeed, a narrative form of entertainment.

Information informs, guides, and empowers; but persistent barriers to access and use are societally divisive and as yet not fully understood, particularly amongst marginalised groups. Addressing enduring issues of information poverty, this project seeks to better understand the information needs of young first time mothers (YFTM) aged 21 or under from deprived areas, and associated barriers, by identifying and better understanding the: everyday information needs, seeking preferences, and challenges of YFTM; and the +/- factors influencing YFTM engagement with supportive services, and the appropriate assistive intervention points and methods. The UK has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe, with associated conception rates correlated to multiple deprivation indexes. At risk groups are disadvantaged and disengaged, with significant health and wellbeing issues reported for both mother and child. Intervention programmes focus on early parenting needs with on-going holistic educational support considered key to long-term social inclusion/reintegration; however, there is evidence that mainstream services are failing to provide such support with significant unmet YFTM information needs reported, and overarching concerns raised regarding equity of access to information in both the physical and digital space. A significant challenge in addressing holistic YFTM information needs relates to our limited understanding of young peoples' everyday information needs, preferences and seeking behavior generally, and more specifically, in impoverished and/or marginalized circumstances (limiting effective tailored service design and delivery considered key to access and use). There are complex and as yet not fully understood access barriers and internalised behavioural barriers to consider, the former influenced by digital divide and information literacy issues, the latter by social structures and norms; barriers that we believe put YFTM, and in turn their children, at greater risk of becoming impoverished information outsiders, living a stratified and disengaged existence. This project, recognising the importance of information access to economic and social mobility, and health and wellbeing; will comprehensively identify and investigate YFTM information needs, seeking preferences and challenges, and advance our understanding of the +/- factors influencing engagement of marginalised groups in both the physical and digital space, including appropriate assistive intervention points and strategies to not only meet immediate needs, but to foster independent lifelong learning and on-going social inclusion. Output will guide both policy (what to provide and from whom) and process (how to provide) of public information service providers (including collaborative aspects). This project, which will bring together theories of social capital and social networks with theories and models of information behaviour to address issues of information poverty in both the physical and digital space; aligns with ESRC strategic priority influencing behaviour and informing interventions, and associated questions: how to understand behaviour and risks at multiple levels and a variety of contexts; how and why do behaviours change; and how does the interplay of child, family, community and wider society influence inequalities in wellbeing?

The ACCORD project seeks to examine the opportunities and implications of digital visualisation technologies for community engagement and research through the co-creation of three-dimensional (3D) models of historic monuments and places. Despite their increasing accessibility, techniques such as laser scanning, 3D modelling and 3D printing have remained firmly in the domain of heritage specialists. Expert forms of knowledge and/or professional priorities frame the use of digital visualisation technologies, and forms of community-based social value are rarely addressed. Consequently, the resulting digital objects fail to engage communities as a means of researching and representing their heritage, despite the now widespread recognition of the importance of community engagement and social value in the heritage sector. The ACCORD project aims to address this gap through the co-design and co-production of an integrated research asset that addresses social value and engages communities with transformative digital technologies. ACCORD will create a permanently archived open-access dataset of community co-produced 3D digital models of archaeological sites and monuments, integrated with expressions of social value and contextual documentation. The project will actively engage community groups that have ongoing relationships to heritage places in the process of creating 3D records and models of those places. With the support of visualisation technologists, community engagement practitioners, and experts in social value, each community group will design, direct and produce their own 3D objects. The use of digital technologies to enhance and generate forms of social significance will be an important outcome, adding distinctive value to existing heritage assets and our understandings of them. Community groups will be able to draw on the resulting digital datasets for various purposes, such as public presentation, education, and tourism initiatives. The records and models resulting from the project will also provide important research resources for community groups, heritage managers and academic researchers. Evaluation will be an integral aspect of ACCORD project, examining the relationships between community groups, digital heritage professionals and the outputs they have created. This will include a review of the transformative aspects of the process, investigating changes in attitudes to 3D recording technologies during the life of the project, as well as the forms of significance, authenticity and value acquired by the resulting 3D objects. Ultimately, through the co-production of an open-access dataset, and the creation of a 'community of communities' engaged in sharing skills and experiences, ACCORD seeks to broaden capacity for the creation and reuse of digital visualisation technologies in community heritage activities and research.

The ability of material culture to open horizons of knowledge and imagination beyond that transmitted through text is fundamental to contemporary museum practice. Interactive digital technologies, especially, provide new opportunities for reanimating ethnographic collections in exhibition and outreach contexts, in the field of museum and source community relations, and as a means of generating and connecting diverse knowledge networks around objects. Such technological developments necessitate a radical rethinking of what ethnographic museums and their collections are and do in the digital age.\n\nThis multidisciplinary project is concerned with innovating 'digital curatorship' in relation to Sierra Leonean collections dispersed in the global museumscape. Extending research in anthropology, museum studies, informatics and beyond, the project considers how objects that have become isolated from the oral and performative contexts that originally animated them can be reanimated in digital space alongside associated images, video clips, sounds, texts and other media, and thereby given new life.\n\nIn partnership with the British Museum, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, Glasgow Museums and collaborating institutions in Sierra Leone, a digital heritage resource is created that utilizes social networking technologies to reconnect objects with disparate communities and foster reciprocal knowledge exchange across boundaries. Whereas the practice of 'digital repatriation' has become increasingly popular with museums, the reception of such initiatives by source communities has not been critically assessed. Thus, a crucial part of the project is to employ innovative participatory methods to pilot and evaluate the digital resource in Sierra Leone.\n\nAs well as its impact in Sierra Leone, the research will inform museum policy-making more widely, exemplify how museums can play a role in strengthening international relations, and provide a platform for future research and capacity building initiatives. The process and findings of the research will be publicized widely through a series of innovative dissemination methods, including a project blog and multi-sited exhibition.\n\nResearch Context\n\nWhereas Sierra Leone was once renowned for the vibrancy of its cultural traditions, including the varied music, dance, masquerade and storytelling practices of its several ethno-linguistic groups, the dominant image of Sierra Leone today is of a war-torn society held hostage by child soldiers and corrupt politicians. Despite six years of peace, infrastructure is only now beginning to return, and Sierra Leone remains one of the least developed countries in the world, with a literacy rate of just 35%. The disruptions of a decade of conflict have had a huge impact on cultural as well as economic activities. Alongside infrastructure- and governance-related development programmes, there is therefore an urgent need to reanimate Sierra Leone's cultural life and heritage. The problem is that those institutions, such as Sierra Leone's National Museum, which might lead such cultural renaissance, have themselves suffered from chronic neglect and have few resources and little expertise. At the same time there is a wealth of Sierra Leonean material culture and associated scholarship dispersed in the world's museums. This project is concerned with exploring how these 'diasporas' of objects and knowledges can again become meaningful resources for Sierra Leoneans who currently have no access to them.\n\nThe project not only investigates how the digitization of museum collections provides an opportunity for the 'virtual repatriation' of objects, but also how 'remediating' collections in digital space can reanimate them and generate more diverse knowledge networks around them - bringing together academic scholarship, for example, with indigenous knowledges in a way thatpotentially enriches both, while disrupting conventional knowledge-power asymmetries.