Small-scale credit is exalted in mainstream development thinking as a key means of supporting women and their families in dealing with daily, ongoing, and often slow-onset climate disasters. Facing growing crises of agricultural productivity from droughts and floods, and taking primary responsibility for the nutritional wellbeing of their households, women are targeted as credit borrowers globally. Credit provisioning therefore speaks to the push for 'resilience' against climate disasters that is central to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13, 'Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts', and which has serious implications for SDG 5 'Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls' that prioritises the valuing and recognition of women's unpaid care and domestic work. How do we ensure, then, that 'climate resilience' does not come at the cost of women's emotional and bodily depletion through processes of household nutrition provisioning? This is the key concern motivating this two-year project which asks: (1) In what ways is credit, as a form of climate resilience, shaping nutritional provisioning? (2) How are the dynamics of nutrition provisioning and credit-taking in a changing climate being experienced and visualised? (3) What are the gender and social reproductive dynamics of the climate-credit-nutrition nexus? (4) What lessons can be learned to deliver improved and more equitable credit provisioning and nutritional outcomes to households and communities affected by slow-onset climate disasters? The project's methodology is anchored in environmental science, visual arts, and social science methods which are combined into a well-integrated research design to effectively probe these complex questions. Set within the political economy contexts of Cambodia and Tamil Nadu, India, fieldwork encompasses the collection of environmental profiles, socio-economic and nutritional indicators, measurements of energy expenditure, and oral and visual analysis; all through a lens that foregrounds gender dynamics. In each country, research will be carried out in 3 rural villages and 2 industrial worksites given that rural households are often maintained by labour migrants engaged in non-rural work. The 20-strong interdisciplinary team of investigators, consultants, and a seconded UN Women staff member, from Cambodia, India, the UK, and continental Europe, will work together with non-governmental and private sector project partners, and an advisory board of (non)academic experts, to deliver this ground-breaking research. The project will also foster the research excellence and development of 7 early career researchers, the majority of whom are women, and/or black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME). Mentorship includes two early-career residential writing retreats, one in Cambodia and one in India, to support the development of publication writing skills and confidence. The research will be published across 10 journal articles, an accessibly-written project report, and 6 policy briefs (in English, Khmer, and Tamil) which will bring together (non)-academics from 6 stakeholder workshops to amplify the integrated research findings and enhance policy impact. A unique and compelling exhibition of participant and artist photography will also be shown in Phnom Penh, Chennai, and London, to promote the research to a wider audience still. The exhibition will act as a space for the project report launch, galvanise media interest, and will be timed during the stakeholder workshops to maximise impact on political, developmental, and private sector decision-makers. Ultimately, given the status accorded to small-scale credit as a significant lever in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, our research is crucial to informing its thinking on, and operationalisation of, gender-equitable climate resilience.

Our Network entitled 'Digital Health for Migrant Mothers' establishes an innovative collaboration between the UN, African and UK-based academics, industry (African-based VR company 'Black Rhino') and midwives to explore how digital tools can be used to enhance maternal care for refugees within camp environments. The UN has noted that despite improving global trends, maternal and neonatal mortality rates remain disproportionately high for women living in humanitarian settings, such as refugee camps. A central component in this challenge is the lack of trained midwifes with Combating these pressing challenges facing women's maternal health care has been strategically identified as part of the SDGs (5 & 3). Our project builds upon previous GCRF-funded research ('Birthing at the Borders' PI Bagelman) and addresses these challenges in one of the worlds' largest and longest-standing refugee camps: Dadaab camps in Kenya which borders Somalia. The Dadaab camps currently host over 400,000 refuges (40% of reproductive age) where maternal morbidity and mortality is notably high (Gee et al, 2019). Our project proposes an innovative Network bringing together a diverse but coherent team to co-design a digital health response to the urgent challenges facing migrant mothers in an environment of protracted displacement. Our project is collaborative in nature, employing agile participatory modes of research rather than imposing models from above. Given the urgent need for midwives to have a more empowered role in the digital provision and education of maternal care our project will develop an engaged Network to explore the possibilities of 'training up' midwives, enhancing their digital literacy through the design of digital 'teaching toolkits' for midwifery education supported by UN. Despite significant international funding spent on reproductive health in Dadaab, maternal and neonatal death rates are disproportionately high as compared to other hardship areas in the region (Gee et al, 2019). Research demonstrates that this discrepancy is due to a systemic disconnect in maternal care within the camp: while most refugee women rely on midwives (as they perceived to provide emotional, culturally-sensitive support) there are only few trained midwives available (Bagelman et al, forthcoming. See CV). Despite the key role that midwives play in supporting refugees in pre to post-natal care, midwifery training remains under-resourced and designed on an ad-hoc basis. While significant resources are earmarked for promoting digital learning and training for biomedical practitioners, midwifery-led health education platforms remain under-supported (WHO, 2016). In particular, digital health tools remain inaccessible to most midwives. For instance, while Virtual Reality (VR) have been well-established within biomedical communities as a productive mechanism for learning and teaching, midwives have little access to such tools. This digital gap is problematic for two main reasons: 1) the absence of digital technology underprivileges women in their ability to provide care 2) and directly impinges upon refugee women in camps who rely - sometimes exclusively - on midwives in receiving care. In sum, our Network places primacy on African digital expertise, is gendered in its approach and centres those often marginalised in digital debates to promote an innovative, and agile response in emergency camp geographies. Reference: Gee, S., Vargas, J. and Foster, A.M., 2019. "exploring the role of sociocultural context and perceptions of care on maternal and newborn health among Somali refugees in UNHCR supported camps in Kenya". Conflict and health, 13(1), p.11.

Led by the MENA Social Policy Network, University of Bath, www.menasp.com (founded in 2012 and convened by Jawad, PI), in partnership with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), this proposal brings together a host of UK and international research leaders and partner organisations to undertake an ambitious programme of cross-disciplinary innovation and capability development in the governance of social policy in MENA. The distinctive contribution this network will make is to introduce a paradigm shift in MENA conflict prevention research, policy and practice that will enhance the social welfare politics of Arab countries in the Sothern Mediterranean region (Levant and North Africa) - our geographical focus. These are ODA compliant countries, the highest exporters of economic migration to Europe and historically, at the nexus of armed conflict in MENA. The Network management team includes expertise in ethics, mental health and disability, Middle East history, anthropology, urban planning and the environment, gender, visual arts and education. Our Network vision is: to demonstrate, through a mutually supportive framework of innovative, cross-disciplinary research and capacity development for policy change, how effective social policy governance in MENA can provide nuanced and contextualised pathways to peace and emerging localised solution-driven initiatives. We will do this through a programme of work that will serve GCRF goals as follows: (1) maximising the impact of Co-I-led proof of concepts and an £800,000's worth of LMIC and UK-led commissioned research strand that is co-designed with LMIC partners and builds on localised expertise; (2) fostering shared learning across innovative peacebuilding research projects and testing the feasibility, scalability, transferability and effectiveness of different approaches across diverse fragile MENA countries; (3) bringing conflict prevention research more centrally into sustainable development planning and programming through the apparatus of social policy governance and its affiliated concept of social protection thereby addressing directly SDGs 1, 3 (reduce poverty; achieve wellbeing across life course), 5 (achieve gender equality), 10 (reduce inequalities) and 11 (promote inclusive peace). Our aims are: (1) Cross-disciplinary innovation: to improve knowledge bases and practices in conflict prevention and sustainable peace in MENA by focusing on the interconnections between community-level social justice grievances and the macro-level governance of social policy; (2) Capacity development of existing research and policy practice: we will support policy learning and "design thinking" such as through policy labs, social policy governance seminars and an e-learning course for policy-makers. We argue that there is momentum for a fresh and expanded reassessment of the nature and scope of conflict in MENA which directly addresses the long-overlooked question of community-level social justice grievances and how these react against or are reproduced by macro-level political decision-making. We will advance current knowledge and practice by showing how conflict prevention and social policy governance share common concerns: how to enable communities to live cohesively and share resources equitably. This is a fundamentally cross-disciplinary question about state-society relations, otherwise referred to in the contemporary international development literature as "political settlements". It is an issue of relevance to volatile MENA countries that are now implementing austerity policies at a time when they are also mandated to produce national development plans supporting the universal social protection vision of the SDG 2030 agenda. The challenges of social and income inequality in MENA are stark: in a 2015 report, the World Bank acknowledged the need to address the "quality of life" grievances that had fueled the Arab uprisings.