As happens, eventually, to the books on the shelves they contain, libraries that have not been subject to restoration inevitably have a limited 'shelf-life.' Complaints of cold, leaking, dark or mouldy spaces do not precipitate creative responses and replacement buildings are called for as people perceive themselves to have become victims of their environments. Arguably, the very act of provision of a service such as a library takes away responsibility and sets up an awkward form of ownership. As the economic balance shifted from coal rich to carbon conscious in the twentieth century, light went from expensive to cheap and heat from cheap to expensive. This shift has precipitated the condemnation of many hundreds of public buildings which were engineered specifically to meet the lean targets of their day with bright single glazed rooflights to maximise daylight compensated by huge fossil fuel fired boilers. Very often the functioning aspects of decorative schemes, the way in which they covered structural joints or incorporated heating or ventilation equipment are deemed redundant because of ignorance of how these mechanisms were designed to work. Given that such features were standard elements of so many buildings, there is potential to make significant gains from identifying such patterns and enabling future projects to contribute to the enrichment of knowledge bases of building components. Since the 1840s, specifications determined a sequence leading from Structure to Finishes. It is proposed that this archaic workflow may be used to advantage in augmenting the information relayed by surface scanning techniques. The increasingly mechanised era of building from 1880 onwards is however, significantly better documented in technical terms than previous periods through records of product literature, standardised procedures and material classifications. The practice of building specification that grew from a consolidation of professional expertise on similar lines in the UK and the US could provide the basis for increasingly accurate interpretation of surface measurements of buildings provided by 3D laser scan techniques. Technical indices, professional literature and Carnegie UK and US archives provide significant and rich resources which are unparalleled for other buildings in their breadth and scope and so offer a particular opportunity to develop these tools. Shelf-Life asks if the uniquely controlled procurement of over 2600 public buildings across Britain and America around 100 years ago by the Carnegie Library Programme could benefit from some systematic thinking for their re-vitalisation at a time of crisis. Using and developing new techniques of Historic Building Information Modelling (HBIM), the proposal aims to develop a parametric library of building components for Carnegie Libraries of the UK. A digital resource of common elements would enable better-informed, more sensitive and economic proposals for the rehabilitation and re-use of these buildings and set an example for others. HBIM is limited by the availability of adequate object libraries because historic buildings do not generally have standard construction methods or components and 3D scans, although geometrically accurate, can capture surface information only. 3D scans cannot determine the actual materials or structural elements of existing buildings that lie behind the surface. The number of Carnegie Libraries designed under a very controlled regime provides a unique resource. The deeper cataloguing of available information and technical guidance that is proposed here aims to make a step forward in enabling HBIM to facilitate informed conservation and design within these existing buildings. Carnegie funding was critical to the public library movement in the UK and many of their features are common to other libraries of the time also. The research will focus upon British libraries but will make reference to the 2000+ US Carnegie libraries.

As a society it is thought that we have smaller homes but own more possessions than ever; have more mobile lifestyles and uncertain lives yet desire stability. The aim of the proposed fellowship is to contribute to understandings of these contemporary phenomenon by developing approaches which attest to our changing relationships with material things and our homes over the lifecourse. Building on novel insights from my PhD research this fellowship will further explore and communicate issues of (1) a lack of theorisations of stored objects and storage spaces; (2) the role of storage in dealing with bereavement and grief; (3) and our ability to manage our possessions as we get older. The first major aim of this fellowship is to make specific contributions to the academic fields of cultural and social geography from the insights gained through my PhD research. A large proportion of this work will be in the form of writing three articles from my PhD for publication in well-regarded international journals. The other significant strand of this aim will involve further developing a strong foothold in academic networks through spending a month at the Morgan Centre for Everyday Life at the University of Manchester, hosting a one-day conference for other academics studying stigmatised aspects of domestic life, and presenting at two international conferences. Secondly, I will spend the equivalent of one-day per week of this fellowship undertaking new research interviewing older people who require the assistance of third sector decluttering services to clear space for necessary home improvements, downsize or move into residential care. Links have been made with Care and Repair Cymru who run the Attic Project across South Wales. Like self-storage, the growth in decluttering services can be linked to different contemporary practices of 'living with things', thereby building upon themes in my PhD research regarding the changing relationship between domestic materiality and home spaces over the lifecourse. It is hoped that this additional research will demonstrate the feasibility for a larger study in a subsequent postdoctoral grant application, which as well as additional interviews of third sector decluttering volunteers and beneficiaries would also examine those supplying and using 'paid for' services from, so called, professional declutterers. Finally, the time and resources available through this fellowship will be utilised to improve the impact of my research. Improving my skills in the dissemination of findings to non-academic audiences will constitute an important part of this, and I will attend training workshops to learn how to confidently engage with the media (ESRC media training), and how to write for a non-academic audience (The Conversation). Culminatively this training will mean I am better equipped to apply to the New Generation Thinkers scheme in October 2020, but in the meantime these skills would be utilised in the production of guest articles and blogs posts for The Conversation, Discard Studies and Self Storage Focus Magazine. The findings of the small-scale study will be fed back to Care and Repair Cymru, as well as being the basis for policy briefings to Age UK and POST. I will also present my findings at third sector and trade conferences - the Care and Repair Annual Conference in Cardiff and the European Self Storage Association Annual Conference, and attend the Association of Declutterers and Professional Organisers to make connections for my future research agenda.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Optical lithography is a process that utilises light to define a specific pattern within a material. Standard optical lithography is capable of patterning materials in two dimensions and the possible feature size scales with the wavelength of the light. It is research into this process and associated techniques that has been one of the main drivers of the technological revolution, is partly responsible for the reduction of areal density within computer hard drives and the doubling of processor power every 18 months (Moore's Law). As we progress through the 21st century it is likely that 3D architectures on the nanoscale will become important in developing advanced materials for future data processing and storage technologies. Two-photon lithography is a 3D fabrication methodology that has recently been commercialised and is having a huge impact upon science, allowing the fabrication of bespoke 3D geometries on a length-scale of 200nm horizontally and 500nm vertically. Commercial two-photon lithography has made the fabrication of 3D systems on the several-100nm scale accessible to scientists in a variety of fields allowing the realisation of swimming micro-robots for targeted drug delivery, bioscaffolds and a range of photonic and mechanical metamaterials. A significant setback with two-photon lithography is the asymmetry in the lateral and vertical resolution, which limits both the absolute size and the type of geometry that can be realised. In this proposal, we are going to utilise our world-leading expertise in non-linear microscopy to modify a commercial two-photon lithography system and obtain enhanced resolution. We will utilise techniques that have already significantly improved the resolution in fluorescence microscopy in order to achieve a 100nm isotropic resolution. The newly built system will be used by our team to fabricate two types of 3D nanoscale magnetic materials, in geometries and on length-scales that are difficult to achieve using other fabrication methodologies. Our work in this area will pave the way for next generation 3D memory technolgies such as magnetic racetrack memory and help us to understand magnetic charge transport in novel magnetic materials. In addition, we will be working with project partners in the regenerative medicine and photonics communities in order to realise a number of novel 3D nanostructured materials. Firstly, we will work with stem cell researchers in order to fabricate artificial tissues that will be used in stem cell differentiation experiments. Our work here will provide a fascinating insight into the role of nanoscale topography upon stem cell differentiation and may eventually have applications in tissue/organ growth. Secondly, we will work with academics studying photonic crystals - artificial materials that are capable of blocking electromagnetic radiation within a certain range of the spectrum. The majority of 3D photonic crystals that have been made to date are capable of attenuating electromagnetic waves that are outside the visible range of the spectrum, limiting applications in optoelectronics. Our work here will allow the fabrication and measurement of photonic crystals that can be used with visible and infra-red light. This work may pave the way to next generation three-dimensional optical circuits that can be utilised by telecommunication industries. Overall, this project will build an internationally unique instrument and utilise it to fabricate a range of advanced materials. This will put the U.K. at the forefront of 3D lithography technologies and the associated biomedical, magnetic and photonic materials that will be realised using our newly built instrument.

Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.