This project develops an innovative new approach-participatory arts-based object biography-to address (mis)understandings of the forced migration of people and ancient objects to the UK. Combining archival research on objects from their regions of origin, and the production of PAB object biographies that draw on their own experiences of forced migration, youth CSs from refugee backgrounds will utilise affective, embodied and sensuous modes of knowledge production to generate and share new perspectives on UK museum collections. As a direct consequence of colonial occupation, ancient historical objects from Africa and Asia fill UK museums, but the specifics of how they entered collections is often poorly recorded. These objects are typically presented as static representations of past civilisations, interpreted almost exclusively by white, western scholars. This situation obscures the complex nature of their biographies, which tell important stories about transnational histories of migration and empire. Conversely, refugee-background young people in the UK are defined by their movement, their refugee backgrounds impeding their political, social, economic and cultural inclusion. The circumstances leading to their forced migration are positioned beyond the UK, denying the legacies of empire and contemporary neo-colonialism. Both these young people and ancient historical objects are in need of new narratives. This project will place them in dialogue, within transnational histories of (neo)colonial entanglement, to produce unique insights into the forced migration of each. Object biography recognises that objects change in meaning and value throughout their history, based on their production, use, the nature of their exchange and movement, and the peoples and events with which they interact. The production of PAB object biographies will enable CSs to: examine the objects' original uses; the journeys that led to removal from their original settings; and their transportation and display in the UK. PAB object biographies privilege embodied, sensuous, and affective forms of understanding and expression, facilitating the integration of CSs' ideas and experiences with their archival research to amplify voices largely precluded from influencing the accepted narratives of these objects. The result will be to challenge conventional text-based accounts and encourage new ways of seeing and feeling. The project comprises five work packages: preparation; the PAB process; imaging and 3D printing of objects; exhibition; promotion and dissemination. A steering committee including project partners and CSs will guide the process. Manchester Museum's collection includes artefacts from regions that overlap with the countries of many of the UK's contemporary forced migrants (Africa, the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia). CSs will select objects of interest and work with the museum archives, curators, specialists, and us to research their history. Imaging and 3D printing of the objects will create replicas that can be manipulated and explored in ways that the originals cannot. In a process co-designed and facilitated with BAME/refugee-background artists from Sheba Arts with experience in creatively engaging with forced migration, the CSs will use their chosen art form to explore how their own ideas and experiences intersect with the archival research on the artefacts. The resulting PAB object biographies will communicate the complexities of forced migration and transnational history. These artworks will form the basis of an exhibition at the Museum and online, with the original objects. Along with other academic and public outputs, the exhibition will engage diverse audiences in critical reflection and affective understanding of the forced migration of people and objects in transnational context, contributing to the decolonisation of ancient history and heritage and encouraging future PAB citizen science history and heritage initiatives.

As anthropogenic atmospheric warming is forecasted to exceed 2C above preindustrial temperatures by 2100, a key uncertainty in predicting the impact of this change is the quantitative understanding of how this warming will be distributed in the oceans and atmosphere. One means of assessing this is to look to the geological past, especially the late Cretaceous to Eocene (100-34 Ma ago), when atmospheric pCO2 levels were last as high as the 700 ppmv forecasted for 2100, and global mean annual temperatures (MAT) were up to 8C warmer than today (the so-called "Greenhouse World"). Fossil data suggest that temperature-sensitive organisms, such as reptilians, were living in the Arctic-circle during this period, and led to the emergence of the "Equable Earth" hypothesis - a scenario that invokes near total collapse of the meridional, equator-to-pole temperature gradient at this time. This indicates a climate system that operated in a fundamentally different way to the modern "Icehouse World", with a different/enhanced means of transporting heat from the tropics to the poles. A fundamental problem for scientists aiming to predict future climate change, is that state-of-the-art models are not able to reproduce the degree of collapse of the global meridional temperature gradient suggested by fossil data, reflecting a problem with either the "Equable Earth" hypothesis, or with climate modelling. Either way, this uncertainty impedes our ability to confidently predict the impact of future climate change with far-reaching implications. This research will be the first robust test of the "Equable Earth" hypothesis. We will reconstruct meridional variation in land surface MAT in a transect along the North American Continent, spanning mid- to high-palaeolatitude for several discrete time-equivalent instantaneous time-slices spanning the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K-Pg) boundary - an interval in the middle of the "Greenhouse World". The MATs will be reconstructed using the brGDGT palaeotemperature proxy from collected coal samples. brGDGTs are lipids produced by bacteria thriving in terrestrial environments, whose distribution is a function of land surface MAT and can be used to reconstruct land surface MATs. We have identified ten separate sites, spanning 47-75N of palaeolatitude, where coals (fossil peats) were demonstrably accumulating coevally, by the occurrence within each of the coals of the globally synchronous Iridium (Ir)-enriched layer that settled from the atmosphere after the impact of a meteorite at the K-Pg boundary. In addition to the Ir-enriched layer, the coals contain datable tephra horizons, which will constrain vertical rates of change of MAT from time-slice to time-slice. They also contain distinctive carbon isotopic events before, during and after the Ir- enriched layer, which provide additional correlatable time lines between all locations. Combined, this provides an unique opportunity to generate serial time-slice reconstructions of meridional land surface MAT gradients, spaced at sub-orbital durations, at this critical period in Earth history. This will provide us with the opportunity to critically test the "Equable Earth" hypothesis, by placing numerical bounds on meridional MAT gradients for a series of time slices in continental interiors at this time. By generating meridional MAT gradients for multiple intervals, and by generating a tephrochronologically-based time-series through the succession, it will be possible to place bounds on the rates of change of MAT in time, from mid- to high- latitude. This will also reveal, for the first time, the dynamics in space and time of the "Greenhouse Earth" climate system, and will also allow us to assess MAT in the aftermath of meteorite impact at the K-Pg boundary, giving insight into the response of the climate system to catastrophic change, and allowing us to test competing hypotheses of climate change as the driver for the mass extinction at the K-Pg boundary.

The transport and cycling of volatile elements between the solid Earth, oceans and atmosphere has shaped the evolution of our planet. Chemical fluxes of volatiles to and from long-term mantle reservoirs are maintained by convective and tectonic processes. However, the mechanisms that control the volatile budgets of distinct mantle reservoirs remain uncertain. Major questions include: How did the Earth acquire its initial volatile inventory? What was the closure age of the mantle to atmosphere loss? How has crustal recycling modified mantle volatile reservoirs? What is the spatial distribution of primordial and recycled volatiles in the mantle? The key objective of this project is to provide a new understanding of spatial and temporal relationships between primordial and recycled sources in the Earth's mantle, underpinned by high-precision geochemical data and detailed statistical modelling. We will achieve this by interrogating combined noble gas isotope compositions and halogen contents in an exceptional suite of subglacially erupted basalts from Iceland that map a high-resolution transect across a mantle plume. The samples preserve geochemical signatures of melts from both ancient sources and the shallow convecting mantle, which has been extensively modified by melt extraction and recycling over geologic time. The unparalleled high-resolution, spatially continuous sample of the mantle afforded by erupted basalts from Iceland's neovolcanic zones makes Iceland an ideal natural laboratory for investigating the history of accretion, differentiation, outgassing and recycling in the mantle. The inert noble gases (He, Ne, Ar, Kr, Xe) provide key geochemical tracers of primordial mantle domains that have remained largely unmodified since the Earth's formation. In contrast, fluid-mobile halogens (F, Cl, Br, I) are reintroduced to the mantle by the subduction of seawater, sediment and altered oceanic crust at destructive plate boundaries, and are therefore key tracers of recycled material in the mantle. There is at present an unresolved dichotomy between existing interpretations of noble gases, halogens and other geochemical tracers such as lithophile isotopes (Sr, Nd, Pb). Lithophile isotopes and halogens provide abundant evidence that mixing, stretching and recycling in the mantle has created highly heterogeneous lithological and spatial structure beneath Iceland. However, noble gas isotopes indicate that some parts of the Icelandic mantle retain primordial, unprocessed geochemical signatures. A crucial limitation of previous work is that lithophile elements and isotopes, major volatiles and noble gases have been analysed in different sample sets, such that we cannot combine the sensitivities of different elements to obtain robust constraints on mantle sources. By bringing these data into a single coherent framework, this project provides the first opportunity to interrogate simultaneously multiple geochemical proxies to probe the spatial and temporal relationships between primordial and recycled mantle sources. We will use state-of-the-art mass spectrometry techniques to provide new independent constraints on halogen and noble gas decoupling in the mantle, and the extent of halogen loss from different mantle reservoirs in the early Earth. We will provide the first high-precision analysis of the Kr-isotopic composition of the Earth's primordial mantle, and a new, precise determination of iodine abundance in the mantle. We will perform the first combined spatial statistics analysis of noble gas, halogen and lithophile isotope data to determine the location and distribution of primordial and recycled reservoirs in a mantle plume, providing key insights into the structure and dynamics of the mantle. Our results will provide a guide to interpreting mantle geochemical and spatial structure at other ocean islands on Earth, and will feed into ongoing efforts to model volatile budgets and volatile cycling on other planetary bodies.

This project's plans for positive social impact follows on from earlier research, the interdisciplinary project 'Troubled Waters, Stormy Futures: Heritage in Times of Accelerated Climate Change'. The original research project focused on ways in which coastal communities in the UK and in the low-lying island nation Kiribati were affected by coastal flooding and inundation. We sought to more fully recognise the ways in which heritage, whether built or natural, tangible or intangible, was directly affected by current or projected climate change. National and international discussion of climate adaptation was failing to fully acknowledge the ways in which climate change was affecting heritage, sense of self and place, and contributing to people's vulnerabilities. This project respond directly to the short, medium and long-term needs identified by diverse communities and partners, and plans to address these in collaborative and empowering ways. There will be continued community-level engagement at two sites with our community partners. In the Durgan area in Cornwall, we will continue to facilitate dialogue within and between the local community, the National Trust, and the visitors who often form deep attachments to such coastlines. To support this endeavour in an enjoyable and meaningful way, an artist will be commissioned to helps those involved express their attachments to their coastal and cultural heritage, and to reflect upon their feelings about the future. The resulting work will be made available to the general public. This approach is based on the research finding that building relationships at a community level may contribute to social cohesion, resilience, feelings of belonging and effective co-stewardship of a better understood, dynamic coastline. A different approach will be used in Kiribati. Here, we found that despite the long term threat of displacement, communities were focused on the everyday challenges of regular coastal inundation and various environmental problem directly affecting health and wellbeing. We encountered researcher-fatigue in Kiribati, and a feeling that constant external fascination nonetheless fails to produce direct benefits at a community level. Consequently, we will work with the local environmental organisation, Kirican, to deliver and resource a program of community-led initiatives, education and outreach. By working with Pelenise Alofa, affiliated with both Kirican and the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development at the University of the South Pacific, we will also be supporting her ongoing effort to establish a locally managed climate change adaptation network. This is in keeping with one of the general principles of long-term community resilience: that this is something which needs to happen concretely and proactively at a local level, and with the support of local or regional organisations. Within and between communities and heritage organisations, there is frustration at the challenges of communicating climate change. A number of our partners, including the International National Trusts Organisation and the Museum of World Culture, Sweden, also want a more pivotal role for heritage organisations in the arena of climate change and adaptation, public education and advocacy. Manchester Museum will host a workshop to combine expertise, and we will create a freely available toolkit to help heritage organisations with climate change communication in future. This project respond to a clear demand for heritage concerns to be mainstreamed in international climate change negotiation, by utilising partner networks and disseminating the multi-media resources created in the original project, which amplify urgent voices from Kiribati. There will be a cultural exchange opportunity, hosting a heritage specialist from Kiribati at UK museums to enhance capacity and networks for medium and long-term heritage management including, potentially, for a post-displacement future.