The international challenges facing British society today underline the crucial importance of understanding the nature and dynamics of world politics. International historians must play a role in furthering this understanding. The Practice of International History in the Twenty-First Century will create an international research network comprised of historians, international relations specialists and officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The core objective is to establish an inter-disciplinary forum for collective reflection on the nature and practice of international history and its role in contributing to wider British society. The research network will include leading scholars from the UK, the European continent, North America and Australia. It will be made up of established researchers, PhD students, post-docs and early career scholars. This will provide a framework to allow UK-based international historians to make an important contribution to wider debates on the current and future state of our field. The past two decades have seen the emergence of fundamental challenges to the philosophical and methodological underpinnings of international history. Advocates of a 'cultural turn' have argued for greater attention to race, gender, religion and collective memory as a means of deepening our understanding of international politics. The emergence of 'transnational' history has presented a different kind of challenge that rejects the nation-state as the focus of analysis to concentrate on the flow of people, ideas and technologies across what are in many ways arbitrary national frontiers. This 'transnational turn' complements a turn away from 'Eurocentric' historical approaches that is a central feature of the new 'global history'. Debates among international relations [IR] theorists over the relative importance of ideas, institutions and material power have the potential to further enrich the work of international historians. A final challenge to practices in our field is the need to engage more fruitfully and systematically with the UK policy community in general, and with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office [FCO] in particular. International historians in North America and Europe have recently been active in addressing the implications of the issues raised above for the practice of international history. Scholars in the UK have been far less active. This project will provide a framework for redressing this silence while at the same time creating structures for ongoing engagement with the policy community as well as teachers of international history at all levels from schools to postgraduate university courses. A number of core questions have been identified to provide a conceptual framework for four one-day workshops. Historians and IR specialists from the UK, Europe, North America and Australia and FCO officials will participate in these workshops. The chief 'outputs' produced by the project will be a 'state of the field' collection of essays, an inter-active web-based resource for teaching and research in the history of international relations and durable structures for engagement with policy stakeholders. Achieving these aims will leave the present and future generations of international historians better-equipped to teach, research and to contribute more effectively to meeting the ever-changing international challenges of our time.

Historical themes have long been prominent in the rhetoric and reality of Franco-British relations. Britain and France have been at peace for more than two centuries. Yet official and public discourse in both countries is saturated with backward-looking references to past national glory and 'natural' rivalry. The recent EU referendum in the UK is a case in point. Surprisingly, there is no systematic study of the role of representations of the past in Franco-British relations. To what extent have such representations shaped the conceptual horizons of policy-makers? What role have preoccupations with the present and the future played in the way the past has been used in policy debates? Has a preoccupation with history undermined co-operation between these two key European states? The proposed research addresses these questions in the first detailed archival investigation of the 'weight of the past' in Franco-British relations. We will engage systematically with current and former policy practitioners and civil society (third sector) stakeholders to draw on their expertise and disseminate our research findings widely in government and public spheres. The investigators will deploy an innovative research strategy based on new approaches in international history, historical culture and memory studies. The research will draw on richly varied archival and published sources in France and the UK. To maximise the breadth and depth of the research, we will work with leading international scholars who will attend project events and contribute their research to our final Project Conference. Proceedings will be published as a special issue of Diplomacy & Statecraft. The Investigators will co-author a research monograph ('The Weight of the Past in Franco-British Relations since 1815'), publish seven articles in leading peer-reviewed journals and give multiple conference papers. The result will be a substantial body of published work providing new perspectives on Franco-British relations and offering a new methodological template for studying the history of international relations. The Project's Research and Impact Strategies are mutually reinforcing. They will maximise impact by linking it closely to research, while ensuring that research is informed at every stage by practitioner expertise. This will be achieved in cooperation with Project Partners including the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the UK Embassy, Paris, the UK Ministry of Defence and the Franco-British Council. Other Collaborators include the French Defence Ministry, the French Embassy, London, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and The National Archives (TNA). A suite of Project Events will bring together the researchers, current and former policy-makers and members of key civil society associations to discuss our research and refine strategies for impact. These are a Witness Seminar (RUSI), a Policy Engagement Colloquium (UK Embassy, Paris), a Research Workshop (Glasgow), a plenary panel at the Franco-British Council's Annual Conference on Defence and Security Cooperation, a Public Exhibition (TNA) and the Project Conference (Maison Française, Oxford). The Investigators are uniquely placed to deliver the project aims. PI Jackson has published widely in the field of European international relations, including two widely-cited essays on theory and method in international history, and has worked extensively with policy practitioners and the media in France and the UK. Co-I Pastor-Castro specialises in Franco-British relations and has worked with the FCO to deliver a range of academic and impact goals. Co-I Utley has written extensively on French defence policy and has worked with the UK MoD, the French Embassy in London, NC3A (NATO) and the EU. Expert guidance on the project's management will be provided by an Advisory Group comprising vastly-experienced current and former policy-makers, members of civil society and academic researchers.

Effective mitigation of the coronavirus health crisis partly depends on trust that the measures which are being imposed are worthwhile, and that the people who have decided them are trustworthy. Such basic trust has come under pressure over time, partly as society has become more questioning, and more recently through the spread of conspiracism online. There is some evidence of online actors exploiting the current emergency to generate distrust and undermine vaccine confidence. Widespread sense of insecurity - whether health-related, or due to economic hardship - may also sharpen distrust of authority. Undermining of public trust may inhibit return to stronger lockdown measures, the management of exit from lockdown, rollout of testing and contact tracing, and introduction of vaccination programmes. Governments and public health bodies accordingly need high-quality evidence on the sources of distrust and noncompliance, and on the health and public security threats posed by the dissemination of conspiracism. We will analyse whether endorsement of conspiratorial accounts of the pandemic undermines trust and compliance, or whether the relationship works the other way around. This will be delivered through robust analysis of new, high-quality survey data tracking both those who endorse conspiratorial views and those who do not over the coming months. Subject to their agreement, we will also sample respondents' posts from a popular microblogging service, to track their online information sharing against their reported attitudes, identities and behaviours.

Development, and in particular, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are indelibly linked to questions of gender with gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls underpinning Goal 5. Despite the UN Charter clearly laying the basis for gender equality it is absent from the Organisation. This is a major issue for the UN as it depends upon its own legitimacy to lead across many global issues including on gender and development. Without gender equality too many of the UN's activities and too much of its work remains predominantly - if not entirely- informed and spearheaded by the male perspective. Centring on the Secretariat and SDG implementation, the Network is an innovative intervention in understanding how gender impacts on the UN's activities particularly its leadership of the SDGs and development. Through the SDGs the UN encourages states to uphold women's rights, eliminate gender discrimination, and to achieve gender equality. Yet, the UN fails to give effect to those principles within the Organisation. This has to change. In 2016 the UN admitted that 83% of its entities have failed to hit gender targets with no progress since 2012 and only 33% possessed a gender unit or equivalent to aid in achieving gender mainstreaming and equality. The UN Gender Network brings academics, civil society, member states and the UN Secretariat itself together in a spirit of conversation and collaboration. It will achieve a deep understanding of the causes and impact of gender inequality within the UN and the impact this has on its leadership of the SDGs and broader development policy. The collaboration of academics led by the PI and Co-I, its Network Partners AIDsFreeWorld, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and civil society as well as Network participants will lead to the development of an agenda for UN policy reform that will directly impact upon the implementation of the SDGs in the Global South. An emerging discourse within academia suggests that collaborative work around specific themes has much to offer in advancing understanding of gender inequality within the UN. State delegation support is a necessity if change is to occur and thus the role of the FCO is key to bringing a wider array of states, particularly those in the Global South, on board to push for UN reform. Collaboration enables all parties to offer cross-sectoral feedback to decision-makers; a process of joint advocacy that increases the likelihood of policy and organisational change. The impact of such collaborative activities can be seen with the steps already taken in the creation of UN Women and the Focal Point for Women by project partners. The UN Gender network aims to: 1. establish a transnational UN Gender network that includes academics, civil society, the UN and state delegations through a series of workshops and an online community; 2. Explore how long-term collaborative activities can be fostered that can bring about effective policy change within the Organisation; 3. Harness expertise from the academic and civil society, state delegations and the UN itself in the co-production of a research project agenda to understand the cause and impact of gender inequality within the UN and its impact upon the UN's leadership and legitimacy in the operationalisation of the SDGs; 4. Use the network's activities as a platform from which to develop targeted policy proposals alongside specific research collaborations that make effective policy recommendations to the UN to ensure long term change and to underpin the implementation of the SDGs, particularly Goal 5 and; 5. Ensure the network's sustainability through the active participation of postgraduate and early career researchers alongside establishing effective collaboration amongst the transnational participants. Stakeholders will be able to utilise the Network's reform proposals and research to ensure the SDGs are better placed to achieve gender equality and other development goals.

Along with many other countries worldwide, the UK is committed to achieving a low carbon economy. There is a plan to achieve net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, with a key component of this plan being a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035, and a switch to electric vehicles. These vehicles will require storage batteries that contain many components made of metals that have limited supplies. For example, a recent open letter authored by Professor Richard Herrington (principal investigator for the NHM on this proposal) explained that if the UK is to meet its electric car targets, it will require three quarters of the world's current total annual production of lithium - an essential component of modern electric vehicle batteries. Whilst current rates of lithium production are sufficient to meet global demand, we need to investigate additional lithium resources if we are to meet greenhouse gas emission targets. This proposal seeks to better understand the Earth system processes that concentrate lithium into mineral deposits, from which lithium can be mined in both an economically feasible and an environmentally responsible manner. Our central hypothesis is that major lithium deposits are largely formed in parts of the world where continental collision occurs as a consequence of plate tectonics. We will further test the hypothesis that within these collisional environments there is a "life-cycle" of tectonic processes that is reflected in the formation of different types of lithium deposits. Broadly speaking, in the first stage lithium is moderately concentrated in igneous rocks that are formed in this setting. Lithium is a relatively soluble element, which is readily leached and weathered from these rocks (particularly by hot geothermal water) and the lithium-rich waters may accumulate in basins that are also formed during continental collision. If the climate is arid, the waters evaporate to form a lithium-rich brine that can be an economically viable lithium deposit in its own right. In these brine basins, complex chemical processes and extreme microbial life may play a role in cycling elements and concentrating the lithium into sediments. Over time, the geothermal and volcanic activity ceases and the lithium-rich sediments may be buried and thus preserved for millions of years. Subsequently, these buried rocks may also serve as a source of lithium that can be extracted. With further burial and then heating, these lithium-rich sediments can reach temperatures at which they undergo melting and the formation of lithium-enriched pegmatites and granites. Again, these rocks may contain sufficient concentrations and amounts of lithium to represent a source of lithium that can be extracted for ultimate incorporation in electric vehicle batteries. At each stage of the life-cycle there are uncertainties regarding the source of lithium, and how it is transported and trapped. The different types of lithium deposits also vary in how easy it is to extract the lithium, and we need to consider how to do this in an environmentally responsible way. We will tackle these problems by bringing together a group of scientists who have considerable expertise in all aspects of this lithium journey. We will use a wide range of techniques, from simple geological observations through to highly sophisticated isotopic analyses and microbiological techniques, to track the behaviour of lithium. We will work alongside industry partners to identify the types of deposits that can be profitably extracted while simultaneously minimising any damage to the environment, and we will investigate the potential for more sustainable methods of lithium extraction using microbial processes. We anticipate that our research will provide industry with new targets for exploration for lithium resources. This will not only help secure a low carbon economy for the UK, but also provide important economic benefits to the UK and other nations.