While Fully electric vehicles (EV) have zero tailpipe emissions and are seen as a key solution to meeting the European Fit-for-55 target of reducing CO2 levels in 2030 and climate-neutrality by 2050, much more can be potentially achieved if the global market uptake of innovative EVs is accelerated. The ZEV-UP project aims to address this urgent need by developing modular, cost-effective, and user-centric EVs for both passenger and goods transportation. Leveraging innovative design and engineering techniques, ZEV-UP vehicles will be tailored to meet the specific needs of users in both developed and emerging markets, ensuring high levels of user acceptance and market uptake. Key innovations include a base L7e BEV model that is designed respectful of affordability and can be upgraded and adapted for various purposes and needs, including commercial applications and higher-value passenger vehicles. By optimizing vehicle components for reduced material usage and enhanced structural properties, the project will achieve lighter vehicles with increased autonomy and minimized environmental impact. ZEV-UP will also develop digital-twin models to improve vehicle development efficiency and reduce validation costs, as well as designing charging capabilities compatible with a variety of regional power systems. Novel business and usage models, such as Battery as a Service, will be explored to maximize the benefits and impact of the L7e BEV platform. User-centric design, informed by market research and field interviews in both established and developing countries, will be a central focus of the project. Additionally, ZEV-UP will develop a proliferation model to assess policy intervention scenarios and strategize for short- and long-term BEV uptake in various markets. By delivering these key results and adhering to its objectives, ZEV-UP will accelerate the transition to sustainable urban mobility and contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector.

Whilst trends in internationalisation continue to develop, from its beginnings as the inward recruitment of international students, moving on to outward mobility and now, to internationalisation at home, Pakistan’s involvement on the global stage has been limited to the outward mobility of students, transnational education programmes and international research collaboration limited to a small pool of internationally ranked universities. The majority of staff and students will receive little to no international experience.Adopting a comprehensive approach to internationalisation, there are clear areas where building capacity will have significant impact on higher education in Pakistan: internationalising research and accessing funding, increasing international partnerships, internationalisation of the curriculum, support for international students on campus, and providing international experiences for all to build global soft skills. In short, enhancing the quality of HE provision that Pakistan is working towards.B-International will begin with training on internationalisation and strategy development for key people within the partner HEIs, it will then work to provide an “induction” for all staff on concepts and practicalities of internationalisation and online learning on subject areas such as TNE, Bologna Processes and developing international partnerships for collaboration, which will be targeted at all staff and will build comprehensive knowledge. Students and staff will benefit from international experiences through the development of on-campus programmes for intercultural exchange and international skills development, improving graduate employability and building an internationally connected network. Equipment will be provided to support the development of the training programme and to enable international connections. This will be collated in to a toolkit for use nationally.

The aim of this project is to show how popular religious practices and texts subvert a range of powerful knowledges and techniques that attempt to fix religious identity. In the context of the region of Punjab spanning India and Pakistan, as well as in Britain, the religious identities Hindu, Sikh and Muslim are ostensibly treated as separate traditions with their own unique practices of worship and textual sources. This perspective is supported by the state ideologies of India, Pakistan and the UK which, in requiring religious distinction, rely upon tools of enumeration and labeling to perpetuate religious difference. The census and the labels used to define 'religous minorities,' for instance, are examples of such tools. However, viewing these identities from the perspective of ritual practices at places of worship in Punjab reveals a range of syncretic and boundary crossing formations. In particular, it is women and low caste groups who are more engaged and enabled in carrying out these practices through their marginal gender and caste positions. In some senses, it could be argued, they are less invested in fixed religious identities. \n\nOur intention is to specifically examine how gender and caste contribute to the framing of religious experience in terms of the practices of worshippers at sites which are ostensibly labelled as Muslim, Hindu and Sikh in East and West Punjab. The region of Punjab is significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, the partition of colonial India in 1947 led to the mass expulsion of Muslims from East Punjab and a similar movement of Hindus and Sikhs from West Punjab. The modern nation states of India and Pakistan were forged in through a 'religious cleansing' process in which an Islamic republic of Pakistan and a 'secular' India were formed. In both states the boundaries of the identities Hindu and Muslim became increasingly pronounced. However, despite state sponsored technologies of difference, common places of worship such as the tombs of saints, or pirs, and Gurdwaras are sustained as sites of syncretic practice and boundary crossing. \n\nOur hypothesis is that women and marginal caste groups in Punjab, over time, have been the least invested in fixed religious identities, despite their co-option in political mobilisations. Further to this, their participation in more popular religious forms offers an important insight into how gender and caste shape the experiences of religious practice while also undermining or reworking centrally-defined religious identities through `popular' means. We also argue that gender and caste shape what is mainstream or orthodox and what is seen as syncretic and marginal. \n\nThis is an interdisciplinary project which will engage in literature from religious studies, sociology, anthropology and textual criticism. This will result in the use of plural methods. The research will involve ethnographic fieldwork in six sites ostensibly marked as Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. Interviews will be undertaken to establish patterns of religious worship, ensuring a balance in terms of our interest in gender and caste. The project will also collect 'biographies of worship' in the form of diaries which will offer in-depth insights into rituals and reference points, with a specific interest in how gender and caste mark people's religious experience. Uniquely, the project will also span two nation states and will therefore be able to explore the impact that different state ideologies have on similarly marked spaces, for example a Gurdwara in India and another in Pakistan. Once this analysis is completed, the implications of this practice in the context of the Punjabi diaspora where sites for worship are limited will also be posed in the dissemination dimension of the project. \n\nThis is a collaboration between scholars in the UK and South Asia with direct involvement of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan and Punjabi University in India.

In order to manage the long-term challenges of global migration, Europe must create effective and coherent policies for engaging with countries of origin and transit. Effectiveness and cohesion depend on the real-world mechanisms at work: How do the root causes of migration operate? What do prospective migrants see as alternatives to migration? How do policy measures interact with other factors in shaping migration outcomes? Because the quality of policies is so intimately connected with the actual development-related causes and consequences of migration, MIGNEX addresses the full scope of the topic as described in the Work Programme. The project’s overall objective is to contribute to more effective and coherent migration management through evidence-based understanding of the linkages between development and migration. Steps toward this objective comprise extensive research in ten strategically relevant countries of origin and transit, including Afghanistan, Guinea, Somalia, Nigeria and Turkey. The project team will conduct a survey with a target sample of 12,500 individuals, in addition to qualitative data collection and policy analysis. Correctly identifying two-way causal mechanisms between migration and development is imperative but very difficult. The project design incorporates two innovative responses to this challenge. First, it follows a principle of disaggregation, which, among other things, entails specific attention to local-level mechanisms. Second, the analysis combines conventional methods, such as multivariate regression, with Qualitative Comparative Analysis, which is a technique that allows for identifying complex causal relationship on the basis of in-depth case studies. In the analysis of policy coherence, the consortium will focus on identifying the causes of incoherence. The proposal clearly specifies three primary expected impacts and sets out an ambitious and professional strategy for impact maximization.

Newspapers nowadays almost daily report on security breaches, compromised personal information, and cybercriminal activities, and no country is immune from cyberattacks (Symantec Report, 2019). Pakistan is not immune to these attacks and becoming an increasing target of cybercriminal activities, as many companies and the government are increasing their presence in the cyberspace. That is why cybersecurity currently is one of the most important domains within computer science. With considerable delay, the Pakistani government has expanded its digital agenda to prioritize the issue of cybersecurity, as there is great shortage of expertise in this field in Pakistan. This shortage is the result of a lacking university-enterprise collaboration in the domain of cybersecurity, especially due to a lack of employability of many of Pakistans cybersecurity graduates, as, amongst technical aspects, there is a lack of interdisciplinary perspectives on cybersecurity in Pakistan, especially in the domain of human factors. To strengthen the links of HEIs to the industry in the domain of cybersecurity and increase the employability of IT students, it is necessary to have a holistic approach to cybersecurity. And this is where ReCyP:HER steps in by addressing cybersecurity training issues in university degree programs and making them more immersive and experience-based, building capacity in the domain of human factors in cybersecurity by upskilling psychologists in Pakistan as well as establishing interdisciplinary formats directly targeted at IT students, enabling Pakistani partner universities to stretch out their arms to the industry by creating a platform on which the industry delivers input for university students to solve real-world problems and lastly creating a cybersecurity awareness center that serves as a training and exploration facility for students, IT experts from the industry, freelance workers, and the average Pakistani public alike, creating a secure society.