Modern slavery is a pervasive and persistent problem with estimates that globally 24.9m people are in forced labour. Eradicating modern slavery is a grand challenge made arduous by ongoing COVID-19 effects that are increasing commercial priorities in business decision making, relative to social factors. Internationally, transparency in supply chain (TISC) principles lie at the heart of recent legislation such as the UK Modern Slavery Act (2015) and Australia's Modern Slavery Act (2018). The premise is that transparency in large companies' supply chains will commit them to more rigorous investigations and management of modern slavery in global supply chains. However, links between transparency and socially responsible practices are poorly understood; research in multi-tier supply chains is limited and disclosure is often symbolic rather than substantive, with modern slavery statements providing vague commitments that lack details of action undertaken. Hence, the aim of this research programme is to build capacity for developing an understanding of how business decision-makers' behaviours and attitudes impact socially responsible supply chain practices. Ultimately, this will support policy implementation in a manner that prevents the creation of modern slavery victims and the high human costs of survivor recovery and support. The programme will extend relationships that have already been established with key stakeholders in: policy making (UK Home Office), policy implementation (Crown Commercial Service, CCS), large corporations, NGOs (e.g. the Ethical Trading Initiative, ETI), professional associations (Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, CIPS) and academia. The research methodology recognises the visually connoted themes in modern slavery, such as transparency. Therefore, photo-elicitation methods will be utilised in conjunction within a participatory action research (PAR) approach. Photo-elicitation will be utilised to bring to the surface the way people see modern slavery both in private and at work. It will establish practitioners' attitudes and actions relating to modern slavery and will reveal participants' perceptions about their ability to influence prevailing issues (agency). The combination with PAR will enable theoretical insights to be assessed in practical contexts. This will be through Government procurement policy and practice and government contractors' supply chain decision makers. The participatory approach will raise the consciousness of all involved in the research programme, helping to identify opportunities and consequences of change to accommodate more socially-oriented supply chain practices. The fellowship will be pivotal in building capacity to extend these relationships and, through research, influencing the development of coordinated changes to policy and practice. The CCS will provide access to participants in selected tier-one suppliers, through which supply chain practices will be investigated. Importantly, the programme will engage and co-create research methods with ETI who work directly with individuals and organisations to combat modern slavery through training and education. My fellowship will engage with RMIT University, Australia (Business and Human Rights Centre), CIPS and the International Slavery Museum as project partners for research co-design, recommendations and dissemination of results. The core outcome of the programme is to contribute to the development of high-quality research on transparency in supply chains that can be used to underpin socially responsible legislation and organisational practice.

The Antislavery Knowledge Network offers the first extended effort to address slavery as a core development challenge in sub-Saharan Africa via innovative approaches from the arts and humanities that deliver community-engaged antislavery work. Focusing on the idea of "activated community memory," we champion the innovative use of heritage as a resource for social change. The network aims to demonstrate that participatory arts-based strategies, rooted in heritage, can empower Global South communities to play a central role in tackling contemporary slavery. The Global Slavery Index estimates that there are 46 million slaves worldwide today. The UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include the target of ending slavery by 2030 and African states have recognised slavery as a key challenge to their economic and social development. An estimated 6.2 million people are enslaved in sub-Saharan Africa and slavery's ongoing presence impacts negatively on many SDG targets for Africa, include those relating to health, education, equality, decent work, and sustainable communities. This is a region experiencing rapid change, where demands for enhanced infrastructure stretch political and economic resources; rapid population growth and urbanisation threaten heritage; and unplanned development fails to address persistent patterns of poverty and deprivation that are strongly gendered. But development and antislavery policies aimed at African states have too often ignored the complex historical backdrop of slavery in the region and failed to foster community antislavery strategies that draw on heritage and memory. Slavery and antislavery interventions sit at an intersection of politically sensitive issues around history, sovereignty, citizenship, religion, mobility, and economic governance. As the Chief of UNESCO's History and Memory for Dialogue Section put it in 2015, the historical slave trade's "tenacious poison... paved the way for new forms of slavery that continue to affect millions." Humanities-based research can provide innovative ways to navigate and address these intersecting issues through a focus on historical power dynamics and marginalised voices, and by partnering with artists, arts organisations and museums to invigorate development. Our community-based, regional focus harnesses this power of the arts and humanities to provide an alternative to the top-down focus of international legal agreements, trade and diplomacy, and intergovernmental initiatives. We build on "asset-based" and participatory approaches to development that recognize the transformative potential of existing cultural resources and heritage, and the value of co-designed and co-delivered work. We therefore move beyond the dominant paradigm of externally-designed interventions based on international rankings or standardised methods. Our approach tries to advance SDG target 8.7 (ending slavery) by strengthening antislavery strategies that re-set the relationship between development initiatives and local communities. We will launch the network with an initial programme of three pilots in African countries shaped by historical slavery that are also sites of contemporary enslavement: Ghana, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. All three pilots will develop models for what works in different national and local contexts, via different methods of in-country partner collaboration. They will therefore lay the groundwork for a structured commissioning phase inviting new projects, of varying sizes and around three themes, that develop our core interest in establishing the value of the arts and humanities to challenging slavery. The commissioned projects will continue pioneering new participatory approaches to knowledge partnership that use arts and humanities methods. Together, the pilot and commissioned projects connect the long history of slavery, antislavery's unfinished work, and the symbols of heritage to current antislavery challenges.