Sanitation - broadly defined as hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of waste and in particular human waste - has long been acknowledged as an indispensable element of disease prevention and primary health care programmes (Declaration of Alma-Ata, 1978). An estimated 2.3 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation services, and 4.5 billion people do not have access to safely managed sanitation. Hence the scale of the problem is urgent, and improving sanitation is included in both the Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals (MDGs and SDGs). It is estimated that better sanitation could prevent the majority of diarrheal-related deaths of 361,000 children aged less than 5 years each year. Improved sanitation would also have substantial impacts on developing countries' economic growth: the Water and Sanitation Program of the World Bank estimates that India, the context of the proposed research, loses more than 6% of its annual GDP due to inadequate sanitation. Strategies to improve sanitation coverage across the developing world have focused predominantly on providing information and credit or subsidies to encourage the construction of private household toilets. However, a large number of recent impact evaluation studies on sanitation interventions in low-income countries find only modest impacts on toilet uptake and usage. It is crucial for the design and targeting of policies aimed at improving sanitation, and consequently health and productivity, to gain a deeper understanding of what imperfections and constraints are driving this observed failure of sanitation interventions to achieve their full potential. The proposed research aims to inform the design of effective sanitation interventions and policies by identifying the importance of social factors in explaining sanitation adoption decisions. In particular, our research will focus on understanding the role of dynamics within the household, such as between husband and wife who may value sanitation differently, and within peer groups, which are particularly important in interventions such as micro-credit which are delivered through groups within the community. We focus on the context of India, which contributes almost 60% of the close to one billion people who defecate in the open globally (WHO/UNICEF JMP, 2017). The Government of India is committed to achieving SDG 6 of clean water and sanitation for all by 2030, including via its ambitious Clean India Movement which aims to make India open-defecation-free by 2019. At the same time, India remains a patriarchal society, where women are often seen as subordinate to men, and a society with very strict norms governing social interactions within the community. Social factors, and in particular those related to gender and community, are therefore likely to pose particularly strong constraints on sanitation investments in India. We will seek to answer a number of important and related questions. First, we will ask whether women indeed bear higher costs of open defecation and place a higher valuation of toilets relative to men. Yet second, since women often have lower bargaining power within poor Indian households, we will investigate to what extent bargaining within the household over budget and mobility constrains their ability to invest in sanitation via building private latrines or using community toilets. Third, the effectiveness of encouraging individuals to invest in private latrines via microfinance lending is also likely to depend on the preferences and behaviour of key individuals within joint-liability microfinance groups. We will explore such intra-group dynamics and how leaders influence sanitation investment decisions. Finally, we will model and test whether investing in toilets allows grooms on the marriage market a better chance of attracting higher-quality brides (or any bride at all).

The project will examine gendered experiences of trauma, marginalization and recovery in militarized settings and protracted conflicts through the case studies of Colombia and Sri Lanka. Research on transitional justice - the processes through which societies address past violence and abuses - has generally focused on formal institutional interventions in cases in which there have been clear transitions from authoritarian rule or violence. Less has been written on how to address the past in highly securitized settings with significant militarization and lingering conflict. Transitional justice literature has also tended to focus on formal institutions over informal and particularly psychosocial healing processes. Integrating trauma theory into transitional justice studies, this project examines the significant effects of militarization and protracted conflict on collective trauma, marginalization and recovery. Although highly securitized environments may curtail or limit public participation and compromise formal transitional justice proceedings, the project contends that long-term militarization may also open new spaces for transitional justice and community recovery efforts. The project looks at militarized contexts as repositories of collective trauma and hidden narratives, which encompass individual experiences and loss. The project's goal is to examine more innovative and unconventional healing and justice processes even with little political space and to assess the contributions that such processes can make alongside more conventional transitional justice mechanisms. It pays attention to voices that are often not heard in transitional justice research, particularly women who participated in or were directly affected by combat, focusing on former cadres, war widows and internally displaced populations. The project advances a multi-method innovative interdisciplinary framework that combines rigorous qualitative interview-based and ethnographic observation with survey research, and supplements the research with visual documentation.

1) The big questions Convergent evolution is a natural experiment in repeated evolution of similar phenotypes, offering unique insights into the evolutionary process. When similar patterns evolve in different lineages, to what extent are the same molecular mechanisms deployed? Are the same regulatory changes co-opted into generating convergent phenotypes? How can evolutionary change at a single locus regulate complex patterning changes during rapid evolution? What are the precise genetic changes necessary for the evolution of a new developmental pattern? Heliconius butterflies are an excellent system to address these questions. 2) The background Many tropical butterflies have mimetic wing patterns to warn predators of their toxicity, and these have become an excellent system in which to understand the molecular basis for convergence and diversification, and make the link between natural selection in the wild and evolution in the genome. Here we will study the molecular basis for pattern convergence in tropical Heliconius butterflies. Genetic mapping and gene expression experiments have identified a simple system of three genetic loci that control the complex diversification in wing patterning seen in Heliconius. One of these loci regulates yellow pattern elements and the same genomic locus is also involved in wing patterning of both the peppered moth, Biston betularia, and the butterfly Bicyclus anynana, suggesting an ancient shared patterning system in butterflies and moths. Patterns of expression and genetic data from natural populations, suggest that cortex is the functional gene at this locus, although expression data also point to involvement of other linked genes. We will apply recently developed CRISPR/Cas9 methods for gene knockouts to investigate the molecular basis for pattern convergence between species of Heliconius butterflies. 3) Objectives and expected results We will test the frequency with which similar patterns evolving in mimetic butterflies use the same genes. At a closer resolution, we will also test whether those genes are controlled by the same regulatory switches to turn them on and off, when they control similar patterns. This will test for the repeatability of evolution in different genetic backgrounds. These experiments will involve developing and applying novel gene editing techniques to study patterning in these butterflies, which will set the standard for evolutionary studies in the future. The remarkable patterns of mimicry in these butterflies have long been considered an exemplar of evolution by natural selection, and this project will offer unique new insights into the molecular mechanisms that produce such strikingly similar patterns in so many different species.

Convergent evolution, the independent acquisition of similar traits in multiple lineages in response to the same selective pressures, is ubiquitous, facilitating adaptation and diversification across the tree of life. Therefore, understanding the genetic mechanisms by which convergence occurs is critical if we are to understand adaptations that already exist, and the predictability of evolution in response to common selection pressures. We propose to study mimetic convergence across the Lepidoptera using high-throughput sequencing and gene expression analyses to address a major challenge in this field: the contributions of different genetic mechanisms to convergence across evolutionary timescales. This will be the first genetic analysis of convergence for a trait evolving under the same selective force over 2-110 million years of evolution and will uncover the genetic landscape of convergence across evolutionary time. The genetic changes causing convergence can be categorized as divergent genetic mechanisms, parallel evolution, or collateral evolution. We hypothesize that these three processes act at different evolutionary time scales. Most recent understanding of convergent evolution has focused on parallel and collateral evolution among closely related species. We lack studies that investigate the genetic basis of convergence over a range divergence times (from recent to deep time) for a single trait under the same selective force. Only by considering convergence among lineages that split anywhere from a few million to 100 million years ago, or more, can we understand the overall frequency distribution of the genetic mechanisms of convergence. The relative contributions of the three genetic mechanisms will impact on the tempo and direction of evolutionary convergence. For example, interspecific hybridization can greatly facilitate convergence among closely-related species, yet its contribution to convergence is largely unknown. We also lack knowledge of the genetic basis of deep time convergence. An important unanswered question is whether convergence between distant lineages is difficult to evolve. Alternatively, is convergence aided by the existence of conserved genetic architectures and developmental pathways, which may facilitate parallel evolution even after 100 million years of separation? We propose to tackle these fundamental questions about the genetic mechanisms of convergence by exploiting a unique system in the Lepidoptera in which multiple species have converged on the same defensive wing colour patterns across a wide range of evolutionary timescales (2-110 million years). We will use a combination of fieldwork, gene expression analysis and the latest high-throughput sequencing technologies to identify and verify genes responsible for convergence in multiple butterfly and moth species. These data will allow us to assess the relative contributions of divergent genetic mechanisms, parallel and collateral evolution to convergence among 18 species of butterflies and moths representing 2-110 million years of evolution, and will allow us for the first time to visualize the genetic landscape of convergent evolution for a single trait evolving under the same selective force across a wide evolutionary timescale.

Our inter-disciplinary project addresses the first challenge of the Colombian Bio Resources call by examining: (1) the socio-ecological system of páramo habitat in Boyacá and Cundinamarca; (2) the value of biodiversity in this system to local communities and wider society; and (3) the response of páramo ecosystems to environmental change and anthropogenic pressures including social and political change. Through investigating the current and potential value of biodiversity and ecosystem services provided by páramos, both in monetary and non-monetary terms, the project will promote the economy of páramos in the Departments of Boyacá and Cundinamarca, thereby contributing to economic development and social welfare in Colombia. We will integrate ecosystem-based and historical conceptions of human-nature interactions to reveal how socio-economic, political and cultural changes have interacted with environmental pressures in shaping páramo ecosystems over time, and use this new understanding to inform future sustainable and equitable governance options. In this way we will address the programme's challenge of "functioning and resilience of socio-economic systems" by bringing together researchers from natural sciences and humanities. The history of high-elevation páramo habitat is fundamental in understanding the pressures this ecosystem now faces. For the Muisca people and for many páramo inhabitants today, páramos are sacred places from where the gods came that controlled water and the origin and maintenance of life. To European colonists, páramos were seen as the source of abundant mineral riches based around the legend of El Dorado. More recently, the critical importance of páramos in providing fresh water to the growing urban populations of Colombia and supporting unique biodiversity have come to the fore, along with the recognition that the system faces significant challenges from climate change and land-use pressures. These competing pressures are placing increasingly diverse demands on the system, and, despite a number of initiatives both nationally and internationally, tensions over the management and governance of the system persist. The páramo socio-ecological system is therefore ideal for addressing the challenges of the Colombia Bio Resources programme. Our project will show how an integrated environmental-historical understanding of páramo ecosystem patterns, processes and pressures can provide insights to new governance solutions. We will take a 500-year historical perspective to analyse changes in the socio-ecological system of páramos over time, focusing on the central role of human-nature interactions and how these have changed in response to differing social, political and cultural contexts. We will quantify how páramo habitat has changed, from decades to centuries. We will consider how these changes have impacted on ecosystem dynamics, and predict what further changes are likely to occur in the future under climate and other drivers of change. We will explore how human-nature relationships in páramo landscapes have changed and compare the perspectives of local communities with other private and state actors. We will identify the potential for páramo communities to obtain monetary values from páramos and the ecosystem services they provide, examining the synergies and trade-offs between different ecosystem services. Our research will provide a unique historical context for the development of future governance options, including new partnerships between different stakeholders underpinned by greater social and cultural understanding. The project will deliver recommendations for mechanisms to promote more sustainable and equitable futures for páramo landscapes, in the context of key political and social challenges such as post-conflict displacement, illegal mining, changing climate and increasing water demand from urbanization.