Preterm birth, birth before 37 weeks of pregnancy, is a major cause of infant death and illness in sub-Saharan Africa. Over 80% of preterm births globally have been estimated to occur in sub-Saharan African (sSA) and Asian countries, the majority being due to women going into preterm labour spontaneously or their membranes (waters) rupture early (classified together as spontaneous preterm birth, SPTB). Despite knowledge of the global impact of SPTB, most of the research into this often devastating pregnancy outcome has focussed on pregnant women in high income countries such as the UK and USA. Much less in known about SPTB in women from low income countries. However, the underlying biological causes of SPTB are complex and heavily influenced by environment, nutrition, infection and other risk factors that pregnant women are exposed to. Region specific research is essential if we are to improve maternal and newborn healthcare in countries where the burden of preterm birth is highest. Addressing this need, we plan to study to clinical and social risk factors (from 5000 women recruited to the PRECISE Network pregnancy cohort, https://precisenetwork.org/) combined with biological markers of SPTB in the female reproductive tract, blood and placental tissue in women from Kenya, The Gambia and Mozambique. We will integrate these data to enhance our biological understanding of SPTB as well as identifying novel biomarkers relevant to sub-Saharan African populations to predict risk of SPTB. We will also create sustainable teams of SPTB researchers by training five new African scientists and supporting their supervisor as research leaders. We will, with colleagues in The Gambia, establish a bioinformatics training programme and a laboratory science network for our researchers in Sub Saharan Africa and the UK. We anticipate that this work will impact future strategies for clinical risk management, prevention and treatment that specifically addresses the needs of women in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as having potential relevance to SPTB globally.

In many parts of Africa, changing patterns of cross-border migration are transforming the importance of borders for marginalised populations. Recent literature cautions that simplified narratives about illegality in border zones are complicating efforts at addressing social inequities. This research examines social and political dimensions of rural livelihoods along the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border in conjunction with current debates about transboundary resource management in the region, focusing on perspectives in artisanal gold mining communities in Manica, Mozambique, where Zimbabwean artisanal miners live and work side-by-side with Mozambicans. The study explores what displacement means to different rural actors and how challenges are negotiated in pursuing resource-dependent livelihoods, with the ultimate goal of enhancing policies for addressing livelihood insecurity on both sides of the border. The Zimbabwe-Mozambique border is a high priority for research, as large numbers of Zimbabweans have crossed into Mozambique as Zimbabwe's economic and political crisis deepened and are engaging in artisanal mining. Empirically, the study addresses three interlinked research questions: 1) How does mobility across the border represent new opportunities or, conversely, new challenges, for reconfigured livelihoods in artisanal mining communities near/along the border?; 2) To what extent are global and national institutions taking these challenges and opportunities into consideration in their approach to transboundary resource management policies?; 3) How are formal artisanal miners associations and informal groups of artisanal miners (on both sides of the border) socially engaged in processes of contesting land near/at the border? Through in-depth life history interviews, focus groups, field diaries, visual methods and participant observation with artisanal mining associations, the study will explore how women and men in mining communities negotiate livelihood struggles, analysing social and economic ties that transcend the border. Analysing perspectives on mining, displacement and migration in relation to transboundary resource governance, policy documents will be reviewed and interviews conducted with national and district government authorities, companies and civil society organizations. This study will generate original data and contribute new insights to engage conceptual and policy debates as well as associated methodological and ethical debates in borderlands research. The analysis aims to inform researchers in geography, development studies, African studies and the growing field of borderlands research, as well as policymakers. In 2011, the African Union signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the African Borderlands Research Network, based at the University of Edinburgh, highlighting the need for research to support policymaking that enhances livelihoods in border regions. This project is especially timely in light of a global environmental treaty signed by more than 120 countries recently, including Zimbabwe and Mozambique, requiring governments to take new steps to manage artisanal gold mining. Government officials have expressed the need for research to inform National Action Plans for implementing the treaty in the 2015-2020 period. The project's regional workshops will co-produce knowledge while building local capacity of artisanal mining associations, government agencies, civil society and universities in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and the UK. Theoretical, ethical and methodological insights will be disseminated through books, articles, briefs, lectures and courses, to inform crosscutting debates at the intersection of borderlands research and extractive sector research. Building on past experiences working with United Nations agencies, this project will be transformative in cultivating new skills to lead North-South-South collaborative research that informs policymakers at regional, national and global levels.

The project aims at enhancing the resilience of low-income communities living in disaster prone areas. The focus is on low-lying coastal zones that have a high risks of droughts and floods in selected parts of East Africa, Brazil and North America. It develops the geographic and socio-economic knowledge of persons living in slum and riverbed areas by gathering georeferenced data on infrastructures and information on the natural heritage of project sites. The project team will also investigate technology adoption barriers and diffusion drivers through designing and prototyping an affordable, disaster-resilient, low-income housing system that use sustainable locally-resourced materials. The development of urban spaces is a function of geographic location, economic history, urban development pattern, and therefore governance will have a bearing on resilience. Still, given that development (or lack thereof) of an urban center is an outcome of existing social, economic, and political inequities political inequities; policy packages for disaster preparedness that do not consider the unique circumstances of vulnerable populations can inadvertently cause harm to low- income households. Furthermore, policy packages will include environmental sustainability and public health considerations. The research will also contribute to accurate modelling of climate and extreme weather events at spatiotemporal level to increase the understanding of climate scientists while empowering policy makers in disaster related decision-making. Machine Learning and Big Data Analytics will be used for climate modelling and to identify optimal disaster resilient-housing urban design and planning policy packages considering projected climate change- related extreme weather scenarios between the current time and 2050. Whilst Big Climate Data is amenable to long-term climate prediction, data for localized and seasonal predictions is still uncertain and sparse. Machine Learning has potential to handle this uncertainty and data sparsity as other applications have demonstrated that it can work with either big data or sparse data.

* Context The Earth's vegetation is changing in response to climate change, increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, and harvesting for fuel, food and building materials. These changes can accelerate or reduce climate change by altering the carbon cycle, and also affect the livelihoods of those who use natural resources in their day-to-day lives. One of the most important ways to understand vegetation change and its impacts, is to make careful measurements of the same patches of vegetation ("plots") repeatedly. Networks of these plots have produced surprising findings, challenging theory and models of vegetation responses to climate change. E.g. in Latin America, a network of these plots has shown that tropical forests are not soaking up as much carbon as predicted. Networks of these on-the-ground plot measurements are the only way to get a detailed view of how vegetation is currently changing. However at the moment, different researchers do not combine their data to understand regional patterns of change. This project will address this by bringing together researchers collecting plot data in southern African woodlands to share data and answer the big questions about what is happening to the vegetation in the region. The southern African woodlands are the largest savanna in the world (3 million km2), and support the livelihoods of 160M people. Many of these people are poor and depend upon the woodlands for 25% of their income and to support their agriculture. Theory and models suggest that these woodlands will be sensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 and other environmental changes underway: this is because, unlike forests, woodlands maintain a balance in the competition between trees and grasses, allowing both types of plant to co-exist. Small changes that benefit trees (such as more CO2 in the atmosphere) might rapidly change woodlands into a tree-dominated system. This would mean that they store more carbon, but might reduce the diversity of plants on the ground. It is also possible that human use of these woodlands, particularly wood harvesting for fuel, is altering their diversity and reducing the "services" that they provide. Currently we have no way to know if these changes are happening - satellite data and models can help, but need to be validated with plot measurements. * Aims and objectives Understanding the response of southern African woodlands to global change is the long-term goal of SEOSAW. It will do this by creating a regularly re-measured, systematic plot network. The stepping stones to this network are to: 1) develop an online data-sharing platform to exchange existing plot data so that we can look for signs of widespread change 2) combine NERC-funded data from 486 plots with data from 1,783 plots measured by others, to create a network that covers the whole region 3) use this new data set to better understand the processes that allow trees and grasses to co-exist, to allow modellers to make better predictions of future change 4) encourage researchers to make measurements in similar ways in the future, so that we can more easily detect changes 5) create a plan for future plot measurements that covers the whole region, and makes best use of the available time and money. * Who will benefit? SEOSAW will fill a large gap in the network of plots in tropical regions and benefit: - modellers of the Earth's vegetation will be able to test their models against reality in one of the most difficult to model biomes - scientists using satellite data to map vegetation will now be able to calibrate and validate their maps in all types of tropical vegetation - Those modelling the carbon cycle, who need to know how much carbon is being taken up by the woodlands Conservationists will also benefit, as SEOSAW will identify parts of the region that have unique or particularly diverse woodlands, helping to prioritise conservation efforts.