The women of interwar Labour were pioneers in party politics. Whilst many belonged to affiliated organisations such as the Women's Labour League in the past, those who joined from 1918 could play a full role in the party ranks. Like other party members, Labour women had incentives to participate. They sought to influence policy, to achieve shared goals and to enjoy the social aspects of politics. However, when their experience is considered, it is often their failure to achieve shared aims which are emphasized. Women are said to have chosen the party of their class and, in doing so, to have forfeited the best interests of their sex. The Labour Party, dominated by trade union opinion, has been seen as a vehicle to contain women rather than offer opportunity. However, such interpretations overlook the agency of women, the choice they made to participate and to continue participating. Women not only formed part of Labour, but theirs represented one of the most active sections of the party. They may not have been offered enough room by the party leadership initially, but the significant contributions they made within the space available to them should not be overlooked. This study, focussing on the experience of Labour women through the archives of records from their local sections, will redress this balance. It will historicise the experience of women in interwar Labour Party politics, restoring their agency and pointing to what it means to be a party member, then and today.

During this project we will demonstrate controlled interactions between individually trapped calcium fluoride molecules. The early stages of the project will include slowing and trapping molecules, then loading into optical tweezers. The latter stages will involve identifying techniques to reduce sensitivity of molecular transitions to external fields, cooling molecules to the ground motional state of the optical trap (tweezer or lattice), and controlling the internal quantum state of the individual molecules.

The ongoing migration crisis in the Mediterranean affects all European Countries and is one of the major challenges in European policy making. According to the UN Refugee Agency, 103,000 boat migrants crossed the Mediterranean in the first six months of 2015. 54,000 of them arrived in Italy and 48,000 in Greece. More than 1800 perished, or are missing at sea. In 2014, Kirtsoglou, Lyon and Knight carried out a Durham University funded pilot study of migrant communities in Greece and established links to an international network of academics, governmental and non-governmental organizations eager to develop new grassroots initiatives and collaborations. We propose to extend and deepen our initial involvement, by investigating in situ the management of migration emergencies in the critically affected regions of south Italy and the eastern Aegean islands. Our aim is to document and understand migrant subjectivities and motives behind high-risk irregular migration, to identify potemtial gaps in reception structures and to assess the effects of migration on receiving communities. We will engage in a programme of rigorous anthropological research that will involve extended interviews with migrants, local communities, NGO staff and policy makers. We will also carry out extensive observational research in a range of settings such as reception centres, migrant support groups and other community-based locations. Working in collaboration with humanitarian organisations and local government authorities, we will use this data to inform migration policies in the region. Capitalising on our existing links with a network of major stakeholders in two countries and a bottom-up comparative research approach we will pursue the following interconnected questions that demand immediate attention: 1) What are the main drivers of high risk migration journeys and how do migrants calculate and weigh-up risk prior to the journey and in its aftermath? 2) How do migrants negotiate the macro-processes that govern migration including border control and asylum seeking policies, and what are the main deficiencies in governmental structures and local systems of reception, including accommodation and screening infrastructures? 3) What is the role of local communities in managing migration flows and what is the importance of new forms of social interaction and relationships that emerge from emergency migration encounters in building networks of solidarity toward irregular migrants? 4) What can the comparison of Italian and Greek contexts teach policy developers and NGOs as they endeavour to respond to this crisis? Irregular migration is a complex phenomenon intimately related to different fields such as human rights, national and supranational policies, labour exploitation and economics, lack of sustainable development, international conflict escalation, corruption and security. A fine-grained anthropological account of the social dynamics of emergency migration encounters can provide critical insights on all these different fields. The proposed research aims to go beyond offering a critique to migration policies. By focusing on key actors involved, we lay the basis for comprehensive collaborations between social scientists, humanitarian aid practitioners, governmental and non-governmental authorities. A network of Greek and Italian NGOs support the project, alongside a team with long term involvement and a track record of outstanding research in the critical regions of south and south-eastern Mediterranean. We are uniquely equipped to deliver a wide evidence base of the social, material, legal and political dimensions of migration emergencies and to build new information channels that will help practitioners and authorities exchange knowledge, refine policies and improve the management of future migration crises.

There are an array of tools which have been developed in order to understand 3- and 4-dimensional spaces. These include knot cohomologies, Heegaard-Floer homology, and various derivatives of each. This project will aim to understand and use these tools, both for concrete topological applications as well as achieving more theoretical understanding of their interdependence.

In an on-going collaboration with P&G, we have identified a key "quality control" pathway that is altered in the response of human facial skin to ageing. The aim of this project is to characterise this novel regulatory response to stress and ageing in skin fibroblasts and to evaluate materials that target this network to improve the quality of the extra-cellular matrix. We will examine how the expression and biological activity of key "quality control" genes is differentially regulated in the skin, to understand how specific cell types in the organ (e.g. keratinocytes and fibroblasts) respond to ageing and environmental stresses. Improved understanding of these processes will lead to the establishment of novel mechanisms that will in turn lead to new products to ameliorate stress and ageing. Methodology and Training: The studentship will involve training in a number of laboratory methods including mammalian cell culture (2D and 3D), SDS-PAGE and western blotting, immunofluorescence and confocal microscopy, live cell imaging, proteomics, transcriptomic/pathway analysis, ECM assays, biochemical assays, PCR and molecular biology. The student will also be trained in IT, presentational skills, poster making and report writing; will be encouraged to attend and present at national and international meetings; and will be required to participate in our laboratories fortnightly journal club.