[Proposal EE112/ K1396905] Predicting the impacts of global change on rural communities is increasingly challenging due to the accelerating pace of climate change and social and economic development. The combined demands of ensuring food, energy and water security have been described as a "Perfect Storm" by Prof Sir John Beddington, HM Government's Chief Scientific adviser. It is clear that food security will continue to remain a critical issue in developing countries due to the unpredictable nature of food chains and the effects of climate change. Food security in poor rural communities often relies significantly on flows of ecosystem services from 'natural' environments. For millennia mankind has engaged in thinking and learning experiences which have shaped the processes underpinning the production of food and the management of land, addressing multiple factors and tradeoffs. However, many food production systems require intensive management and are prone to failure outside of the range of their optimal environmental conditions. Concerns are growing about the ability of current agricultural systems to support rising human populations without further degrading critical ecosystem services (such as water provisioning, pollination). During extreme events, such as drought, or other shocks or crises (environmental, social or economic), the dependence of rural communities on ecosystem services to meet their nutritional and livelihood needs often increases. This highlights the importance of minimising the impacts of agricultural systems on ecosystems and the services they provide. Strategies for coping with food insecurity may, in turn, have an impact on the capacity of ecosystems to deliver ecosystem services as the spatial and temporal nature of feedbacks between socio-economic and ecological systems can be complex. Addressing the sustainability of natural resource management and rural livelihoods requires integrated thinking across disciplines. The complex transformations which can, or have already occurred from natural forest to managed landscapes must be fully understood so that systems can be adopted which promote sustainable transformations and/or can mitigate any negative impacts. This proposal therefore brings together expertise in social sciences, economics, ecology, risk management, spatial planning, climate change and complexity sciences to design and integrate a suite of models and methods to analyse how dynamic stocks and flows of ecosystem services translate to local-level food security and nutritional health. The study will examine the multiple (and multi-directional) links between ecosystem services, food security and maternal and child health outcomes in poor rural communities, addressing three main themes: 1. Drivers, pressures and linkages between food security, nutritional health and ecosystem services; 2. Crises and tipping points: Past, present and future interactions between food insecurity and ecosystem services at the forest-agricultural interface; 3. The science-policy interface: How can we manage ecosystem services to reduce food insecurity and increase nutritional health? Analysis of household and intra-household nutritional status and assessment and mapping of ecosystem services at the relevant spatial scales will be conducted in sites in Colombia and Malawi, which are characterised by mosaics of forests and agricultural lands, to explore the trade-offs and tipping points associated with managing these dynamic landscapes under climate and socio-economic change. Powerful new models will predict how ecosystem services will be changed by drivers and pressures for human wellbeing and food security. This will allow risk management/mitigation models and strategies to be developed which can inform national and regional policy in order to maintain ecosystems and support human wellbeing.

Understanding the human journey of global colonisation is the history of modern humanity and the development of the diverse characteristics of peoples and cultures around the world. This five-year interdisciplinary project will investigate the peopling of South America, the last continental terra incognita (other than Antarctica) to be colonised by humans, constituting a virtually unprecedented migration of modern humans across richly diverse, empty landscapes during the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene transition. Situated at the geographical gateway to the continent, the project will investigate one of the most momentous demographic dispersals of our species into the diverse environments of north-western South America, encompassing coasts, savannahs and lowland, Sub Andean and Andean tropical forests. This process took place amidst one of the most significant climatic, environmental, and subsistence regime shifts in human history, which contributed to the extinction of megafauna, plant domestication, and today’s remarkable diversity of indigenous South American groups. Despite its geographical importance and a wealth of archaeological and palaeoecological data across its diverse environments, north-western South America has only been given cursory consideration to understand processes of human dispersion. This project will redress this imbalance by applying an innovative interdisciplinary approach that integrates state-of-art archaeology, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology, ancient environmental DNA and isotope studies. The results will provide a global comparative perspective to the study of Late Pleistocene human colonisations, hunter-gatherer adaptations, the demise of megafauna and the beginning of plant cultivation and domestication. The results of the project have broader implications not only for archaeology but also for geography, palaeoclimate, palaeoecology, and molecular biology.

'Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings'. (Ben Okri) One hundred years of hegemonic dominance from Western, predominantly Hollywood, values and aesthetics may have created a long term effect on how filmmakers in the developing world, and independent filmmakers in the developed world, tell stories cinematically. Digital technology is, however, making the filmmaking form accessible, opening up opportunities for diverse individuals and cultures to express their own identities through film. The explosion of filmmaking in black sub-Saharan Africa, the emergence of a strong Latin American cinema and the empowerment of independent filmmaking evident in South East Asia are but a few examples of the consequence of the democratisation not only of production technologies, but means of distribution and exhibition. As filmmakers in the developing world become more confident about their filmmaking and their own identities, how is this growing confidence going to challenge notions of quality, visual aesthetic, narrative structure and story themes for so long set by aspirations towards Western cinema? A team of practice led researchers from leading film education institutions in each of the countries of Malaysia (Multimedia University), Ghana (National Film and Television Institute), Colombia (National University of Colombia) and the UK, led by Professor Erik Knudsen from the University of Salford, will run a series of workshops for emerging independent filmmakers in developing countries on three continents. A unique feature of this network is the lateral collaboration that it will encourage between practice led film and media researchers in developing countries across continents. This team of four researchers will collaborate with the host institutions involved to deliver these workshops over the period of the network project, followed by a summarising symposium hosted by the University of Salford at MediaCityUK. Utilising interdisciplinary approaches inspired from music and anthropology, the Research Network will develop a methodology entitled Ethnomediaology. An interdisciplinary approach inspired by practices in Ethnomusicology and Autoethnography, Ethnomediaology involves the active and immersive participation of researchers in the research culture and process, using this active personal engagement as a basis for knowledge generation, data gathering and evaluation. The StoryLab Research Network seeks to explore the following questions: What are the consequences for the democratisation of the means of filmmaking and film dissemination on how filmmakers in the developing world tell cinematic stories and in what ways are these stories, and their mode of expression, reflecting a different perspective on living in an increasingly globalised world? In what ways may these emerging narrative developments impact cinematic storytelling in the UK and beyond?

'Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings'. (Ben Okri) One hundred years of hegemonic dominance from Western, predominantly Hollywood, values and aesthetics may have created a long term effect on how filmmakers in the developing world, and independent filmmakers in the developed world, tell stories cinematically. Digital technology is, however, making the filmmaking form accessible, opening up opportunities for diverse individuals and cultures to express their own identities through film. The explosion of filmmaking in black sub-Saharan Africa, the emergence of a strong Latin American cinema and the empowerment of independent filmmaking evident in South East Asia are but a few examples of the consequence of the democratisation not only of production technologies, but means of distribution and exhibition. As filmmakers in the developing world become more confident about their filmmaking and their own identities, how is this growing confidence going to challenge notions of quality, visual aesthetic, narrative structure and story themes for so long set by aspirations towards Western cinema? A team of practice led researchers from leading film education institutions in each of the countries of Malaysia (Multimedia University), Ghana (National Film and Television Institute), Colombia (National University of Colombia) and the UK, led by Professor Erik Knudsen from the University of Salford, will run a series of workshops for emerging independent filmmakers in developing countries on three continents. A unique feature of this network is the lateral collaboration that it will encourage between practice led film and media researchers in developing countries across continents. This team of four researchers will collaborate with the host institutions involved to deliver these workshops over the period of the network project, followed by a summarising symposium hosted by the University of Salford at MediaCityUK. Utilising interdisciplinary approaches inspired from music and anthropology, the Research Network will develop a methodology entitled Ethnomediaology. An interdisciplinary approach inspired by practices in Ethnomusicology and Autoethnography, Ethnomediaology involves the active and immersive participation of researchers in the research culture and process, using this active personal engagement as a basis for knowledge generation, data gathering and evaluation. The StoryLab Research Network seeks to explore the following questions: What are the consequences for the democratisation of the means of filmmaking and film dissemination on how filmmakers in the developing world tell cinematic stories and in what ways are these stories, and their mode of expression, reflecting a different perspective on living in an increasingly globalised world? In what ways may these emerging narrative developments impact cinematic storytelling in the UK and beyond?