The function of much modern technology is based on exploiting special physical properties of materials. This might be control of electrical current in the case of semiconductors, magnetism for data storage, the Peltier effect for solid-state refrigerators, or superconductivity for ultra high power magnets used in MRI scanners. Underpinning future refinements of such "functional materials" and development of new materials and devices lies the idea of "materials design". Computer simulation methods with the power to predict the active properties based only on the quantum-mechanical behaviour of the electrons in a particular crystal structure are a vital part of any attempt to engineer "designer materials" for future devices. The proposers of this grant are among those responsible for writing the CASTEP density-functional theory (DFT) modelling code, which is among the top few modelling codes used on the previous generation HECToR national high-performance computing service. CASTEP is licensed to nearly 100 UK research groups, was used to generate 118 research publications in 2013 and a worldwide total exceeding 4000. Density-functional theory is the simulation method of choice for a large part of modern materials science, condensed matter physics and solid-state chemistry. It can treat a huge range of materials, including bulk metals, oxides, semiconductors, layered materials such as graphene, surfaces and much more. It is widely used to predict structural and energetic properties such as phase transitions, electronic transport properties, spectroscopic properties including NMR chemical shifts, inelastic neutron and X-Ray, Raman and infrared, XANES and other near-edge electronic spectra. However, its success is not universal. The essential approximations to exchange and correlation (ie the LDA, GGAs and hybrids) have poor predictive power for many materials containing open d- and f-shells, frequently described as "strongly-correlated". For example many transition-metal oxides are erroneously predicted by LDA and GGA to be metallic, Jahn-Teller structural distortions are absent and phase transitions involving electron delocalisation are not reproduced. Methods for treating strongly-correlated systems which remedy the deficiencies of semi-local DFT include dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) and the so-called GW approximation. However these are currently not readily accessible to the materials modelling community, partly because of computational expense and partly because of the lack of robust, easily deployable modelling codes. Herein we propose to implement both LDA+DMFT and GW within CASTEP, the UK's premier electronic structure-based materials modelling code. Our strategic target is to substantially broaden the strong-correlation modelling community in the UK, which is currently small compared to either France or Germany. The planned deliverables will offer both an extension to CASTEP with end-user capability, but also a software platform for further development of the methodology. A key feature of our DMFT implementation will be the availability of forces, and capability of structure optimization. This will enable a realistic treatment of complex materials with low site symmetry. We hope this will stimulate an growth in the adoption of these methods in the UK from the developer groups to a wider modelling community much as happened with DFT. The power of simulation works best when used hand in hand with experimental studies. The UK has invested heavily in instruments targeted at "strongly-correlated" materials in the RIXS and ARPES beamlines at Diamond Light Source and the MERLIN instruments at ISIS target station 2 neutron facility. A key feature of this proposal is to work with scientists at both facilities to deliver the capability of modelling some of the actual materials selected for experimental study by the scientific user community. We believe this will maximise the impact of the work.

The studentship seeks to investigate the interaction between atmospheric pollutants and the aqueous lipid covered layer protecting mammalian eyes. Eyes are one of the most exposed mucosal interfaces on mammals and oxidation of the film may result in dry eye disease. We wish to demonstrate that partially deuterated proxy tear film mixtures and real human tear eye films have the correct structure at the air-water interface to be used in experiments exploring how the morphology of the film changes with exposure to the common indoor and outdoor atmospheric oxidant ozone. You will be based at Royal Holloway but frequently travel to use the enviable neutron facilities at ISIS(Oxfordshire) and the ILL(France). You will extract organic material from tears with ophthalmic expert from Manchester school of ophthalmy and Pharmacy and make proxy deuterated tear films and study them at the air-water interface interacting with gas-phase atmospheric oxidants such as ozone. Neutron reflection studies will determine the morphology and thickness of the organic material, allowing an assessment of its biological lifetime and resistance whilst it is oxidised. The fitting of neutron reflectometry data for biological films is complex and fun and will require some advanced modelling in python. You will train in advanced techniques to study a new interface between tear and atmospheric pollutants. The Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory will allow you to interact with many world-leading scientists. You will be trained in soft matter chemistry, physics of neutron reflection, chemical extraction of biological materials, atmospheric sampling and atmospheric modelling achieving a PhD with modelling, health and laboratory components.

The fundamental problem that this work seeks to address is the willingness of the Roman soldiery to march on Rome, to fight and kill large numbers of their compatriots and their fellow-soldiers, and to act politically and militarily to bring down the Roman Republic. I will argue that the soldiers acted as political agents, negotiating their position in the context of a 'failed state', that is a state which has failed to secure political legitimatcy in the eyes of significant elements of the population and thereby generate a culture of citizenship. The soldiers created new and distinct communities, depending for their formation on the exigencies of the political and economic situation in Italy, and the requirements to secure the economic and political benefits that stemmed from successful military service. These communities were preserved beyond military service in the colonies established through Italy and elsewhere in the Caesarian and Triumviral periods. I argue that military service was the key means for elements of Roman society to secure necesary political and economic benefits and that military service and loyalty to comrades came to form the basis of a political community in default of the Roman state. Instead of understanding the soldiers as acting as agents of their political leaders or as class representatives, neither of which fit easily with the available evidence, the soldiers should be seen as an equivalent to insurgents, establishing an alternative power-structure outside conventional Roman politics, which relied heavily on violence to acquire political goals. Further, I will argue that the new Roman imperial state, established during the triumviral period, was an 'insurgent state'. Like other insurgencies, the insurgency did not seek revolutionary change, but to deploy political power, often expressed in conventional terms and with conventional leadership, to achieve unconventional political goals. Augustan political authority relied heavily on his ability to maintain control of the insurgency and to provide the insurgents with their political and economic requirements. This project thus attempts to explain the politics of the End of the Republic and the Foundation of Empire as resulting from a political and economic crisis in Roman Italy that allowed a successful insurgency to capture the Roman state.

This innovative and timely project uses theatre practice and cultural geography to examine the socio-spatial implications of performance work delivered in domestic settings. In the 2016 AHRC report on 'Understanding the Arts and Cultural Value', Crossick and Kaszynska write that 'the home is where most engagement with cultural activities takes place and yet it is virtually ignored in discussions about their impact'. This interdisciplinary project between Geography and Performance Studies responds to such contentions, seeking to re-frame the home as a place of significant creative and cultural activity. Utilising archival research the first phase of this study offers a geohistorical analysis of the practice of home performance in the UK, exploring the ways in which the physical architecture and geographies of home are challenged by performances within it. Uniquely, the second phase of this research tests a set of theoretical observations against practical theatre making in a domestic space by employing two established family models for home performance developed by The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home and Footprints Theatre Trust in my own home. The third phase addresses how the complex territory of home might be navigated by artists and venues stepping beyond public art spaces to develop work in domestic settings. Working with the Nottingham Playhouse and Coventry University alongside Edgewick Primary School and charities Home Start and Carriers of Hope, this research explores how two international models for home theatre including the Chicago Home Theater Festival and Internacional de Cenas em Casa might be utilised to reach and engage people that, for socio-economic reasons, are unable to attend performances in theatre settings. The study aims to draw upon the networks and support made possible by the recent designation of Coventry as UK City of Culture and Nottingham as a UNESCO City of Literature.

My PhD investigates the response of Patagonian palaeo-glaciers, and their proglacial/ice-dammed lakes, to the onset of deglaciation following the end of the Southern Hemisphere Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). During the LGM, the Patagonian Ice Sheet covered most of Chile, calving into the Pacific to the West and terminating in the Argentinean foothills to the East. Most chronological data are focused around the Northern (NPI, 46-47oS), Southern (SPI, 48-51oS) and Cordillera Darwin (CDI, 54oS) Icefields, and there are few data North of the NPI. This latitudinal focusing of data impedes our ability to assess climatic or dynamical controls on ice sheet recession. Likewise, a paucity of regional high-resolution geomorphological mapping impedes our ability to examine latitudinal variations in the style and manner of glacier recession. My PhD aims to provide a detailed assessment of sediment-landform assemblages across multiple valleys located in central Patagonia, in order to better constrain the dynamics of palaeo ice-lobe behaviour, and to develop new chronological datasets that quantify the timing of moraine formation, ice-cap unzipping and opening of continental drainage routes for this region of the former Patagonian Ice Sheet.