Mathematical models of human behaviour are used in many societally important contexts, such as transport, economics, robotics, and epidemiology, to make predictions about the impact of new technologies or policies, or directly as part of technological solutions. These human behaviour models are typically either machine-learned from large datasets, or mechanistic models, based on assumptions about human cognition. However, there are hard constraints on the scope and accuracy of these approaches: machine-learned models can in principle account for behaviour in diverse real-world situations, but only as long as there are large amounts of real-world human behaviour data. In modelling of behaviour where data are scarce (e.g., safety-critical situations) cognitive models may account well for selected scenarios, but do not scale to arbitrary real-world situations. Furthermore, neither approach is able to generalise to entirely novel situations, e.g., human interaction with not yet deployed technologies or interventions. However, thanks to recent advances in both cognitive and machine-learned modelling, a novel approach can now be envisioned with the potential of high-fidelity behaviour emulation across both common and more inaccessible aspects of behaviour, and with high capability of generalisation to new situations. This modelling approach builds on the theory of human behaviour as boundedly optimal: maximising rewards, but under human perceptual, motor, and cognitive constraints. It is argued here that models of this nature can now be achieved for complex real-world human behaviour, by leveraging (1) large-scale integration of existing mechanistic models from fundamental computational cognitive science, to model human constraints, and (2) powerful deep reinforcement learning methods, to learn boundedly optimal behaviour under these constraints. This requires a new type of research programme, spanning state of the art methods both from cognitive science and ICT, in addition to domain knowledge from the applied contexts in question. The PI of this discipline-hop project has a world-leading track record in integrative cognitive modelling in the domains of road traffic safety and vehicle automation. A primary objective of this project is for the PI to be immersed in the relevant subdisciplines in ICT, to establish the cross-disciplinary bridge needed to pursue the envisioned research programme, primarily within his home discipline, but also with a wider range of application areas in sight. At King's College London, the PI will be hosted within a research team with cutting-edge research expertise in the required ICT domains, and with relevant cross-disciplinary experience. During this immersion, research toward a second main objective will be pursued: A proof of concept demonstration in the form of a model of safety-relevant pedestrian-vehicle interaction, with capabilities beyond what is possible with purely machine-learned or mechanistic approaches. This proof of concept will make use of an existing naturalistic dataset from two Leeds locations, in collaboration with Leeds City Council, to investigate the potential of the developed models for simulation-based design of traffic safety interventions. The developed models will have high value within their specific applied domain, but a third objective of this project is to also engage with fundamental and applied behaviour modelling researchers and ICT researchers more widely, to promote the proposed cross-disciplinary line of modelling research for use also in other domains. This will be done within international networks, but with a specific emphasis on strengthening UK capabilities for human behaviour modelling in key application areas, with potential for truly major academic and societal impact.

This project brings together insights from history, criminology and urban studies to explore the future prospects of city parks as public meeting places, in both the Victorian period and the present day. The aim of the project is to generate a novel understanding of the future social significance and role of public parks and how social groups (might) live together and commingle safely in cosmopolitan cities. It makes connections between the past, the present and the future importance of these public spaces by exploring how they have evolved over time from their origins as spaces of social mixing between diverse groups in Victorian cities. It investigates official and public expectations of what parks might become in terms of their social possibilities and their desired effects aligned with visions of the future, both in the Victorian and contemporary eras. In these ways, the project connects with and advances the AHRC 'Care for the Future' research theme and its central ambition of 'thinking forward through the past'. The project combines historical analysis with a new contemporary study to explore the experiences and views of people that used and use Victorian parks in terms of their governance, regulation and policing. It therefore engages with the challenges of managing social mixing in public space, including the possibilities for conflict around behaviour, social disorder, and anxieties of otherness in the multi-cultural city. It also explores the outcomes commingling may facilitate in terms of promoting social cohesion and its potential civilising effects. The project will consider how the public park's original design and rationale remains relevant to the needs of the contemporary city and how it has adapted to changing social conditions. This research will allow us to 'care for the future' of the urban public park, not just by understanding its past and its present, but by translating that understanding into concrete policy proposals for its future governance. The project will provide a reinterpretation and reinvigoration of the vision, governance and sustainability of urban parks in cities of the future. In the context of austerity and local authority spending cuts to non-compulsory public services, including city parks, this is an opportune time to rethink the vision and governance of these public spaces. The research is based on three Victorian public parks in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Together, these case studies combine a diversity of park types in terms of their social ideals and purposes, the size and social profile of users and stakeholders, and the diversity of experiences of park life from places of grand show and ceremony to informal community parks. The project contributes new and unique inter-disciplinary insights connecting the arts and humanities with the social sciences. The project findings will feed into public policy debates about the future of cities and engage academic audiences working across disciplines, particularly in social and urban history, law, criminology, sociology, urban policy and cultural studies. The project will engage public audiences through a public exhibition, a free-to-access digital collection of photographs of Victorian parks in Leeds, and via blogs, twitter feeds, and media briefings.

This project brings together insights from history, criminology and urban studies to explore the future prospects of city parks as public meeting places, in both the Victorian period and the present day. The aim of the project is to generate a novel understanding of the future social significance and role of public parks and how social groups (might) live together and commingle safely in cosmopolitan cities. It makes connections between the past, the present and the future importance of these public spaces by exploring how they have evolved over time from their origins as spaces of social mixing between diverse groups in Victorian cities. It investigates official and public expectations of what parks might become in terms of their social possibilities and their desired effects aligned with visions of the future, both in the Victorian and contemporary eras. In these ways, the project connects with and advances the AHRC 'Care for the Future' research theme and its central ambition of 'thinking forward through the past'. The project combines historical analysis with a new contemporary study to explore the experiences and views of people that used and use Victorian parks in terms of their governance, regulation and policing. It therefore engages with the challenges of managing social mixing in public space, including the possibilities for conflict around behaviour, social disorder, and anxieties of otherness in the multi-cultural city. It also explores the outcomes commingling may facilitate in terms of promoting social cohesion and its potential civilising effects. The project will consider how the public park's original design and rationale remains relevant to the needs of the contemporary city and how it has adapted to changing social conditions. This research will allow us to 'care for the future' of the urban public park, not just by understanding its past and its present, but by translating that understanding into concrete policy proposals for its future governance. The project will provide a reinterpretation and reinvigoration of the vision, governance and sustainability of urban parks in cities of the future. In the context of austerity and local authority spending cuts to non-compulsory public services, including city parks, this is an opportune time to rethink the vision and governance of these public spaces. The research is based on three Victorian public parks in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Together, these case studies combine a diversity of park types in terms of their social ideals and purposes, the size and social profile of users and stakeholders, and the diversity of experiences of park life from places of grand show and ceremony to informal community parks. The project contributes new and unique inter-disciplinary insights connecting the arts and humanities with the social sciences. The project findings will feed into public policy debates about the future of cities and engage academic audiences working across disciplines, particularly in social and urban history, law, criminology, sociology, urban policy and cultural studies. The project will engage public audiences through a public exhibition, a free-to-access digital collection of photographs of Victorian parks in Leeds, and via blogs, twitter feeds, and media briefings.

From the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States to the local and national activism over the scandal of the Windrush generation's citizenship in the United Kingdom, the black presence in the transatlantic dialogue is slowly beginning to gain increased visibility. Several black intellectuals have gained increasing prominence in the public arena and have consequently developed a platform for talking, writing, and thinking about black activism and what it means to be a black intellectual in the 21st century. Yet, the concept of the black intellectual - when it has been recognised at all - has historically been gendered as male. Black male intellectuals have often talked for and about black women, subsequently marginalising the significance of the black female intellectual both historically and in the contemporary arena. This network therefore brings together scholars, both early career (including PhD students) and more established academics, working on black female intellectuals in the black Atlantic including Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The key point of the network is to share interdisciplinary understandings of black female intellectuals from both historical and contemporary perspectives thinking through different questions which will be used to frame the workshops. The first workshop will ask, as the central research question and the introductory session, how do we define "black intellectuals" as a concept? Does gender impact on this definition? What is it that the black female intellectual brings to the public debate and what forms are considered credible? The second workshop will consider how geographic and temporal parameters alter the form that understandings of the black female intellectuals take and the ways these differences are articulated. Biracial journalist and author Afua Hirsch has been invited to contribute to this workshop. A third workshop will question how issues of gender and class impact on understandings of black female intellectuals both as a form of activism (doing) and thinking (intellectualism). In particular, it will interrogate the differences between black male and black female intellectuals and explore the ways in which intersectionality functions more broadly within black intellectualism. Black activist and educator, Chardine taylor-Stone will contribute to this workshop. Leading on from this, a fourth workshop will consider the role of social media in shaping the experience of black female intellectuals in the contemporary world owing to the varied and multiple media resources available. Female activists from the Black Lives Matter movement based in the UK and Europe will be invited to share their experiences in addition to contributions from Gal-Dem, an online and print magazine written by women of colour. The workshops will also have a series of public lectures running alongside them located in public venues and pertaining to the individual theme of each workshop with invited speakers from across the interdisciplinary spectrum of the network. The network will apply for follow-on funding to host an international conference on black female intellectuals hosted by the University of East Anglia, bringing together practitioners, academics, and public policy groups namely the Runnymede Trust & the partnership project, History and Policy. The application for follow-on funding will also include a separate seminar event hosted by History and Policy using the project's Runnymede report as its focus and inviting interested policy makers including the Institute of Race Relations and the Black Training and Enterprise group, practitioners such as Chardine Taylor-Stone, journalists from both national and local media including Liv Little (Gal-Dem), Afua Hirsch (Guardian), and members of the network.

The First World War is too often exclusively remembered through the lens of trench experiences on the Western Front. A key aim of the project 'Legacies of War 1914-1918/2014-18' at the University of Leeds, from which this project arises, is to draw attention to diversity of experience and of the ever-present cultural, social and technological legacies of the conflict in order to broaden its meaning for a wide range of different audiences. One of the key ways in which communities engage with the heritage of the First World War is through the uncovering of local stories as a way of understanding the war as an international conflict. This project aims to uncover ways in which the war touched the everyday life, communal politics, social relations, culture and values of citizens who inhabited their street, town or region in 1914-18, the traces, memories, monuments, documents and culture it left behind, and the ways in which the mass displacement of populations during the war brought about contact with those of different social groups, nationalities and ethnicities. Leeds as a city was vital to the British war effort. It lost more men than the national average; equally, as a key industrial centre, Leeds factories and industries played an indispensable role in supplying the British troops and civilians during the war. Leeds residents also contributed in other ways: its households took in Belgian refugees; its hospitals cared for thousands of wounded soldiers from Britain (and its then Empire); its growing numbers of theatres, cinemas and music-halls catered for a war-weary population in need of entertainment. Today, in the Liddle Collection, University of Leeds, the West Yorkshire Archives (now in Morley), and Leeds Central Library, Leeds houses the most important collections of archival materials on the First World War outside of London. One of the key aims of the 'Legacies of War 1914-18/2014-18 project' is to facilitate an innovative, cross-cultural and intergenerational approach to the commemoration of the First World War. 'Leeds Stories of the Great War' aims to do this in a concrete way via a series of small co-produced research projects carried out by intergenerational Leeds community groups (consisting, for example, of sixth-formers, older people and former factory employees), collaborating with community facilitators, artists, local history experts and university academics. Taken together, the research findings of these projects will discover key aspects of Leeds life during the war, which will be made widely accessible in innovative ways to the public during the Centenary period, and will be stored in the form of a digital archive for future generations.