This proposal has two overarching aims. The first aim is research-driven: we wish to understand the unusual behaviour of a a genome repair pathway termed nucleotide excision repair in two important human pathogens, Trypanosoma brucei (an African trypanosome, which is also an important animal pathogen) and Trypanosoma cruzi (a major parasite in South and Central America). Our rationale for this research is based on previous studies in T. brucei, which have suggested that the nucleotide excision repair machinery that acts to protect the parasite's genome from various forms of damage may have a different composition from what has been described in other organisms, including humans, and that some of the predicted machinery may in fact provide a different (and at the moment unknown) function in the cell. Currently, it is easier and quicker to do genetic experiments in T. brucei than in T. cruzi, and we will pioneer the nucleotide excision repair studies in the former and extend this work to the American trypanosome. In the second aim, we wish to run a residential meeting in Brazil on parasite genome repair and replication, with the purpose of fostering greater long-term links between Brazil and UK researchers in this area.

This international network brings together different global perspectives to critically respond to the current smart city agenda. It is timely and innovative in approach and networks together a key set of academics working in different global contexts. It addresses a gap in current knowledge exchange and seeks to redress the balance of focus from the existing highly urbanised, first-world contexts to concentrate on more marginalised urban communities and people-centred urban change in relation to ICTs. The network activities delivered through a series of workshops will address the topic of the impact of digital marginalisation in the 'Smart City' context and its effect on urban space. It will explore models and tools for urban change within marginalised communities, by investigating and analysing positive and negative initiatives developed through the smart city approach. Within this context of what can be considered sustainable urban development in marginalised communities it aims to question how ICTs contribute to this process. The network will investigate a series of Smart city projects in a series of global contexts to study and understand how marginalised communities can appropriate and benefit from impacts of ICTs within the city. The network works with the framework of Henri Lefebvre's seminal work The Right to the City to consider the role of everyday and people centred agency in urban change. Taking the right to the city, the network questions 'Whose right to the "Smart" City". The current Smart City agenda, championed and promoted by ICT companies such as IBM and global city leaders is problematic, since it adopts a technologically deterministic approach that homogenises urban problems across different economic, political, social and cultural contexts. It tends to focus on ICT solutions to be applied top-down, and therefore, fails to address particular issues related to different types of marginalised communities. The network seeks to counter this approach by exchanging and mapping examples of knowledge of ICTs and marginalised urban contexts to understand how such communities might benefit from ICT driven change and how this might support a 'right to the city'. The network workshops will adopt a case study method and will have an open and discursive ethos. Each workshop will comprise contributions from selected invited guest speakers to represent local areas of expertise and knowledge, activities with early stage and doctoral researchers as well as a field visit with selected local community stakeholders. Early stage researchers will be invited to participate in an open forum session and to contribute to forming the outcomes of the workshop meetings. The concluding symposium event will take place in Plymouth; comprised of a series of focused sessions with presentation of the investigators of all partner universities and of other related work. Guest speakers will also be invited from a range of disciplinary and sectorial backgrounds. This will close with an open forum session to determine crosscutting similarities and differences between the different forms of marginalisation discussed along the partnership, possible guidelines for further research and case studies. Knowledge exchange and the outcomes of the workshops will be documented and shared through a website mapping platform. This will act as a live and open platform to disseminate the work of the network as well as providing a tangible outcome as a mapping of knowledge. This will make the work of the network available to the wider community, and will be supported by an ongoing use of social media (e.g. Twitter) to share work in progress. The network will produce an edited book with contributions from all network partners, as well as a co-authored journal paper. The network website will also be developed from the outset of the project and act as a mode of dissemination of the academic outcomes to a broader audience.

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity promotes using an ecosystems approach (EA) to support the delivery of ecosystem services and benefits (ESB) as a dynamic conceptualisation of environmental quality. It is promoted as enabling an easier integration of environmental goods and services into economic processes and policies. However, many researchers suggest that an EA is 'science in the making' and emerging policy initiatives overlook complexities that stem from both uncertain scientific underpinnings and socio-economic divisions. These include gender divisions and inequalities, yet these topics are largely absent from ESB discussions. While feminist writers (and others) suggest caution with adopting an EA, ADEPT seeks to explore if and how the approach could be useful for promoting wellbeing for women and men. While environmental justice scholars have long suggested that socio-economic hardship and the distribution of environmental goods and bads are correlated, recent applications of intersectional theory suggest that practical experiences of exclusion from opportunity always intermesh with other divisions such as those based on race, social class, disability status, sexuality, age and geographical location. There is then a need to address environmental and socio-economic vulnerability in an integrated manner. To do so an EA needs to first address a binary exclusion; firstly, there is a need to highlight ways in which ESB frame environmental quality, often affording stronger representation to expert interpretation of how environmental quality is experienced. Secondly, there is need to understand how intersecting vulnerabilities influence access to a range of ESB (with a focus on those linked to urban blue-green space e.g. clean water, flood mitigation and recreational opportunities). The focus of the current research will be a major urban zoning project in Belo Horizonte (BH), which covers a range of land-use types from dense low-income urban districts to rich gated neighbourhoods, protected areas, commercial and industrial districts. This provides an ideal case study area in which to trial and extend understandings of gendered vulnerability to environmental change within local urban contexts. Research to be undertaken will involve identifying socio-economic and environmental vulnerabilities and zones of interaction, exploration of differential experiences of urban ESB and scoping the potential of these as a means to support poverty alleviation in urban transformations. Results from BH will also be discussed within a Sao Paulo (SP) context, through the involvement of field researchers from SP currently involved in a local community engagement project involving the redevelopment of urban water management policies. The research collaboration is organised around a series of four international research workshops. An online research community will support the combination and interrogation of both new and existing data sets and development of new evidence of the processes which underpin urban vulnerability, forming the context within which any resilience solutions would need to be derived.

Savannahs are the "Cinderella" ecosystems of the tropics; overlooked and over-exploited. Despite covering almost half of South America, only a tiny fraction are protected, in comparison to the better-publicised and researched Amazon rainforest. Savannahs are heavily exploited as cattle pastures and agricultural fields in order to reduce deforestation in the Amazon, but the impacts of intensive farming on this rich and diverse environment are poorly understood. Intensive burning of the landscape to promote the growth of grasses for cattle and clearance for agriculture has been linked to the loss of plant species and the release of carbon into the atmosphere, however, recent efforts to limit fires have also seen forests begin to encroach into the savannah, further endangering savannah species. Fire has always been an integral natural aspect of savannah ecology, but both setting and extinguishing fires appears to be harmful. So what is the natural burning pattern of South American savannahs? Do natural fires balance the prevention of forest invasion but also preserve the natural structure of this globally important biome? Here we ask, how have fire patterns changed through time in Brazilian savannahs? How have these changes affected the composition of plants in these savannahs? And, can we aid savannah conservation by establishing the most beneficial 'trade-off' between increasing tree cover and preserving the unique savannah environment? In order to answer these questions, we will examine the modern plant species from Brazilian savannahs that have experienced little, moderate and intensive human activity. Following which, the last 1000 years of fire activity and changes to savannah plant species will be recreated through the analysis of charcoal fragments and plant pollen preserved in lake sediment and the chemical signal left in soils by different plants. This combination of analyses will be done in partnership between Brazilian and UK scientists and will allow us to understand how the relationships between changes in farming, fire patterns and vegetation through time have changed the make-up of Brazilian savannahs. This understanding will then be used to create a fire management plan that will aid in the conservation and restoration of the Brazilian savannah.

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.