The Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Mission Awards programme has funded three projects to explore the possibilities of research piloting a new approach that emphasises the team over leadership by an individual researcher.
Team convening aims to provide an alternative to the traditional principal investigator-led model and identify the steps that need to be taken to increase the diversity of leadership voices in research. In turn, this leads to better research underpinned by a more positive research culture.
Pilot projects
The three projects receiving funding will see how different groups from across academia, the private sector and communities can drive research to deliver societal benefit. For example, turning an old Woolworths store in Swansea into sustainable social housing, offices and community facilities.
Other projects will explore how museums can better reflect the history of slavery and train local residents to become custodians of the natural landscape around them through oral histories.
This funding opportunity has been developed in partnership with Thrive, a two-year project funded through the Research England Development Fund. Thrive is led by the University of Liverpool and is being run in partnership with AHRC and Advance HE. The opportunity aims to transform arts and humanities research agendas, research leadership and research teams, at scale, through the pilot approach to team convening.
Principles of team convening
Team convening is supported by five key principles for research teams to follow:
- emphasising and enabling collective capability
- shared leadership
- inclusive governance
- team development
- reflexive practice
Exploring team convening through these large grant awards furthers AHRC’s commitment to inclusion and to taking a people-centred approach that broadens the diversity of whom and what AHRC funds. This has underpinned the approach to all new responsive mode funding opportunities as part of AHRC’s ongoing transformation of its applicant-led mode.
Mission Awards will fund team-led projects between £2 million and £3 million for up to four years.
Highly topical and pragmatic issues
AHRC Executive Chair Professor Christopher Smith said:
The Mission Awards take an innovative approach to supporting research. The goal of the award is to encourage and trial radically team-based research behaviours. The projects, on highly topical and pragmatic issues, will need to succeed not just through the quality of their research, but by the example they set of how to work as teams.
The interest in this award shows that arts and humanities researchers are embracing new ways of working and setting their own rules for teamwork. AHRC is proud to support the transformations in the sector and I am sure that lessons will be learnt that apply far more widely than the disciplines supported here.
Professor Georgina Endfield, Project Lead at Thrive said:
I am thrilled to see such a wonderful set of ambitious and transformative projects being supported through AHRC’s Mission call. Each of the project teams are embracing our Thrive Team-Convening Principles in exciting ways to support their research missions, emphasising and enabling collective capability and leadership, inclusive governance, team development and reflexive practice.
Piloting our principles through these projects will provide us with a strong evidence base which will inform and guide research teams and organisations in new, inclusive ways of working. I wish all the Mission teams the greatest success!
Further information
Retrofitting for the future: nature-based solutions for climate adaptation
The project partners are:
- Swansea University
- University of Wales Trinity Saint David
- University College London
- Hacer Developments
- Pobl Group
- Natural Resources Wales
- UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES
- Arts Council of Wales
- Future Generations Commissioner for Wales
- the Green Infrastructure Consultancy
- Hywel Dda University Health Board
- Public Health Wales, Urban Foundry
- Inner Development Goals
- West Glamorgan Regional Partnership Board
- European Federation of Green Roof and Living Wall Associations – EFB
- Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
- Blake Morgan
- The Biophilic Institute
- St. Helen’s Primary School
- Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Bryn y Môr
- Emergence
- Purposeful Places
- Welsh Government
- Swansea Bay City Deal
- Bridgman & Bridgman
- Gower College Swansea
- City and County of Swansea Council
The rising frequency of extreme weather events, leading to floods, storms, heat stress, and drought, has made people increasingly vulnerable. As urbanisation intensifies, cities and citizens must adapt to the escalating challenges posed by climate change and nature loss.
This project will accelerate nature recovery and climate adaptation by delivering evidence-based, replicable pathways to biophilic urban adaptation and retrofitting. The biophilic approach will mimic natural environments to enhance and improve wellbeing of the users of these spaces.
Retrofitting is essential as rebuilding on its own is not a sustainable response to the climate crises. This project will examine how biophilic design addresses climate adaptation and its potential benefits, including:
- cultural
- social
- health
- ecological
- economic
Biophilic principles mimic the ways of nature to approach relations between people and the architecture they use.
Experts in creative writing, design, architecture, history, law, anthropology, psychology, and ecology are collaborating with partners in social housing, construction, urban-nature restoration, and green infrastructure to co-define the research agenda.
This project will focus on a unique 13-storey biophilic retrofit in Swansea which incorporates social housing, office space, and community facilities. The research will place the building in its local and national contexts, exploring the journey from an abandoned Woolworths store to a thriving social housing and community hub. This project aligns with Wales’s Wellbeing of Future Generations Act and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Slavery and its legacies: collaboration, memory, and change
The project partners are:
- University of Bristol
- Fluminense Federal University and International Slavery Museum
- Tamo Junto Productions Limited
- Sunup to Sundown Films
- One Off Productions
- Ghana Museums and Monuments Board
- Cultne Institute
- the Institute for Research and Memory of Pretos Novos (IPN)
- Sunup to Sundown Films
- One Off Productions
- Ghana Museums and Monuments Board
This international research project explores how the history and ongoing legacies of transatlantic slavery are remembered and represented in museums and public spaces today.
The research team comprises of curators, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and filmmakers will work closely with communities across Brazil, UK, Dominica and Ghana to reimagine how this shared history is understood and told.
Together, the participants will develop new, more inclusive ways to create exhibitions, films, and other materials that reflect a broader range of voices and experiences, especially those often left out of the conversation.
Through this participatory approach, this project creates space for people to shape how their own stories are told and supports ongoing conversations about justice, identity, and memory.
It also provides new perspectives and important counterbalance to current top-down approaches to curating exhibitions, films, and heritage experiences on the transatlantic slave, its memories and legacies. The research will support museums, educational and tourism institutions in the UK, Ghana, Brazil, Dominica and beyond as they rethink how they present slavery’s past and its ongoing impacts.
It will do so by directly informing the redevelopment of key heritage sites and exhibitions led or managed by project partners, including:
- the International Slavery Museum, UK
- Cape Coast Castle Museum, Ghana
- the Instituto Pretos Novos, Brazil
The project will also centre and amplify the voices of communities marginalised by transatlantic slavery using innovative approaches such as call-and-response sessions, participatory filmmaking, and other collaborative methods.
Museum visitors will benefit from engagements with the history of slavery through interactive materials and the voices of different communities across the:
- UK
- Ghana
- Dominica
- Brazil
The project will also help to prompt visitors to recognise their own role in interpreting history. By helping to promote museums are spaces that facilitate critical dialogue and inclusive historical interpretation, this project will help museum visitors to better appreciate the role of museums as spaces for public learning and collective memory-making.
The research will also facilitate co-produced documentary films, multilingual educational resources, and a practical curatorial toolkit will offer clear, practical guidance to curators, educators, and other stakeholders.
Green Corridors North East
The project partners are:
- Newcastle University
- Durham University
- Teesside University
- Northumbria University and the National Trust
- Gateshead Council
- Durham Wildlife Trust
- Durham County Council
- Durham Castle and Cathedral
- Middlesbrough Council
- Tees Valley Wildlife Trust
- Wear Rivers Trust
- Natural England and Northeast Combined Authority
The Green Corridors North East (GCNE) are among the first of this pioneering scheme, seeking to transform 35-miles of urban, suburban, and rural spaces in Gateshead, Durham, and South Tees into connected, widely valued, and accessible places where nature and communities thrive sustainably.
This project will develop new co-created arts and humanities-led research practices that will contribute significantly to the transformative regeneration of green corridors in the UK and beyond.
The research will focus primarily on four themes:
Heritage and history which, among other things, will explore the wellbeing impact of training different age groups to conduct oral histories of one another’s memories of the corridors.
Culture and creativity, which will develop inclusive creative methods to co-produce artworks that promote environmental empathy and enhance wellbeing.
Nature and natural heritage which will examine the wellbeing benefits of co-producing research that increases access to, knowledge of, and care for nature across the green corridors.
Active evaluation for learning which will involve research conducted by team members, serving as learning partners to this project and evaluating the project iteratively.
In practice, these themes will mean that the relationship between the spaces and the communities around them will be that of stewardship and wellbeing. For instance, teams drawn from three of the North East’s universities, the National Trust, local authorities, and community organisations will lead over 25 research projects in 35-miles of green corridors in:
- Gateshead
- Durham
- South Teesside
One of these projects, for example, will explore the impact on people’s wellbeing when they collaborate with archaeologists to unravel the mysteries of a Roman villa on the River Wear. They will work with neuroscientists and sports humanities researchers to explore the health benefits of wild swimming. Historians will run reminiscence groups sharing memories of the region’s changing landscape over the generations, or with earth scientists and artists in conducting biodiversity and conservation surveys.