Biodiversity is the true driving force of a sustainable, circular bioeconomy (CBE). While the CBE needs advanced technology and innovation to succeed, biodiversity determines the capacity of biological systems to adapt and evolve. For this reason, biodiversity considerations need to be reflected in economic practices and valuation. CircHive will measure and integrate the value of nature into public and business decision making by: 1) improving data availability, accessibility, and harmonisation; 2) developing a standardised method for biodiversity footprinting (BF) and integrating it with natural capital accounting (NCA); 3) mainstreaming the use of BF and NCA in public and private decision making, incl. improving disclosure, risk management, and investment practice; 4) testing and improving the developed methods and models; and 5) building a wider community ‘BEEHive’ for peer support and exploitation of results. A strong emphasis is put developing scientifically robust and standardised methods that bridge BF (life cycle analyses) and NCA (bookkeeping), given their multiple overlaps but also divergences that hinder operationalisation and uptake. An equally strong emphasis is placed on practice-testing to understand current practices and opportunities for further mainstreaming of biodiversity and natural capital into disclosure, ecolabelling, and investment decisions. Transitioning theory to practice is put to the test via a case study network who will apply different biodiversity-centric approaches in real life. This is carried out in sectoral case study hubs (industry, retailers, investors, cities) for peer learning and capacity building. In CircHive’s approach, CBE and biodiversity reinforce each other as a basis for resources and inspiration for sustainable business practices. The integration of the value of nature into public and business decisions, will benefit both the protection of ecosystems and their services and the profitability of sustainable businesses.

The Branching Out project has assessed social and cultural values of urban treescapes, linking a state-of-the-art values framework based on the IPBES Values Assessment (2022) to a novel transdisciplinary methodology integrating storytelling, mapping, citizen and stakeholder deliberation, and citizen science. Branching Beyond intends to package up the Branching Out framework, approach, and results in a user friendly online values porting template aimed at local government planners, tree officers, voluntary organisations and community groups. Initially compiling results from the three Branching Out case cities (Milton Keynes, Cardiff and York), Branch Beyond will develop a rapid assessment approach to 'horizontally port' these results to two replicator cities: Edinburgh and Camden (London). Horizontal portability is a highly innovative concept emerging from the field of relational values that presents an alternative to generalisation (common in quantitative research) and benefits transfer (common in environmental economic valuation) to port and adapt policy relevant research results from qualitative, deliberative and mixed method approaches, without compromising the contextualised and place-based nature of qualitative data. We will achieve this by packaging up the qualitative associations between treescape characteristics and social and cultural values previously identified through storytelling, mapping, and deliberation, and validating and refining ported results through a rapid participatory porting assessment. Finally, Branching Beyond will work with its local authority partners and the Local Government Association to develop training in and disseminate the porting template and process to further local authorities and local third sector and community groups.

Child protection systems across the English-speaking world have been subject to damning critique in recent decades, to the extent that some commentators conclude that they may be doing more harm than good. A recent UK government-sponsored review conducted by Professor Eileen Munro argues for fundamental change in child protection practice and culture. Specifically, Munro argues that 'Local authorities and their partners should start an ongoing process to review and redesign the ways in which child and family social work is delivered, drawing on evidence of effectiveness of helping methods where appropriate and supporting practice that can implement evidence based ways of working with children and families' (2011, p.13)' Munro identifies the need to 'help professionals move from a compliance culture to a learning culture' (2011, p.6). Munro's recommendation forms the central objective in this proposal: to help children and families social workers in two local authorities review and redesign their services in line with evidence of what is known to be effective and to do so in the context of a learning culture. The project partners include social work and knowledge exchange (KE) academics at the University of Edinburgh and key managers and practitioners in two neighbouring local authorities, The City of Edinburgh and East Lothian. The proposal builds upon a previous successful project, which involved academics and social work practitioners from six local authorities working together on small pieces of practitioner research around effective practice in working with involuntary social work service users, involuntary being understood as those whose contact with social work was mandated. The focus of three of these projects was on children and families social work. This new proposal takes the findings of this project forward, casting the spotlight across a wide spectrum of social work practice with children and families. Historically, social work agencies have invested in training events and initiatives in the hope that learning on these might be cascaded from participants into wider organisational structures. The evidence for this sort of transfer of learning is not strong. On the contrary, it is known that very little training activity results in positive changes to practice. One of the reasons for this is that training often occurs as a free-standing activity that is not clearly linked to organisational or practice objectives. Models of knowledge exchange, through recognising the prior knowledge, skills and values that practitioners bring to a subject, are considered to be more effective than traditional training initiatives in getting knowledge into practice. In this project we will utilise specific knowledge exchange activities, derived from the literature and shown to be effective in our previous project, to help bring about cultural change in the partner local authorities. Our proposal consists of three strands, a horizontal one that will operate across organisations to discuss key themes relating to the current discourse on child protection; a vertical strand, which will aim to support practitioners develop examples of what is known to be effective practice and a third strand, which will work with managers around effective learning transfer. Together, the various strands are in line with Nutley et al's (2007) organizational excellence model of knowledge exchange whereby organisations, working in partnership with universities, become the locus for local experimentation, evaluation and practice development. Our project will offer pointers and models about how cultural change in child protection might be brought about more widely. As such, it will be of interest to local authorities and to Government bodies across the UK and thus holds out the potential to evidence demonstrable social policy and practice benefits.

The project stems from Transnationalizing Modern Languages (TML), one of three large grants awarded under the AHRC's Translating Cultures scheme. TML's established group of Modern Languages experts has conducted research revealing the centrality of a variety of language practices, ranging from multilingualism to translation, in migration contexts and multicultural societies. An important part of TML has been to develop methodologies aimed at embedding awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity within educational practices, from primary to higher and adult education. TML has cemented links with The Phoenix Project (http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/phoenix-project), led by Prof. Judith Hall, that links Cardiff University and the University of Namibia (UNAM) and which supports the Welsh Government's International Development Wales for Africa initiative, promoting mutual capacity building and sustainable collaboration. The aim of the project is to take the expertise and practical knowledge acquired within TML to Namibia by working closely with The Phoenix Project and its educational partnerships. Methodologies developed in TML will be adapted and refined to co-produce with researchers from UNAM and local practitioners materials tailor-made for the Namibian context. The new research seeks to facilitate educational and professional development through multilingual education in the local environment, identifying the school and health systems as key areas of social wellbeing and economic development. The promotion of multilingual education has been identified as a key target with social and economic benefits for Namibia with clear connections to a number of UN sustainable development goals. Issues relating to languages and communication affect the country's ability to grow economically; they are central to successful healthcare provision; they have a clear impact on poverty, income disparity and gender and generational inequality; they impact upon capacity building and access to job markets; they are relevant to conflict resolution as well as to the promotion of human rights; and they are clearly related to issues of cultural heritage and memory. The project concentrates on two specific areas: supporting multilingualism and translingual practices and their embedding in school education; and sensitizing health specialists to the role played by multilingual communication, including translation and self-translation, in their professional practice. In both cases, the focus is on co-research practices, mutual learning and capacity building. The aim is to achieve enduring impact through curriculum development, the production of teaching resources, and the creation of a transnational mentoring network that will amplify the effects of the project throughout the country and beyond. By promoting awareness of the impact of language capabilities and translation practices in Namibia's multilingual environment, the project aims to support sustainable action regarding cultural heritage and cultural memory (in education and the media), produce new research insights on the impact and sustainability of language and translation practices in a variety of locales and landscapes, and promote more efficient communication within health and medical practices (working with multilingual teams in multiple local contexts), all of which involve complex interactions among indigenous, colonial and post-colonial linguistic and cultural heritages. By engaging with creative practices of translation and language learning in Namibian schools and by building on an on-going project between Cardiff University's Phoenix Project and UNAM in health education, the project will make an enduring contribution to educational provision and access to healthcare for excluded sectors of the population as well as to the conservation of cultural memory and intangible heritage in Namibia through the validation of indigenous tongues as languages of education and information.

Focus of the project Eastern Europeans who have arrived in the UK in the last decade are the fastest growing ethnic groups in the UK. This study will be the first to focus specifically on Eastern European migrant children who have lived in the UK for at least three years, and to compare their everyday lives and sense of cultural and national identity and belonging in Scotland and England. The primary aim of the research is to inform public debate, policy makers and service providers on the issue of children of Eastern European migrants settled in Britain. The study will promote social inclusion, by exploring the experiences of settled migrant children in relation to the distinct discourses around migration, identity and citizenship in the UK and by ensuring that voices of children from the 'new' minority groups are taken into account in current debates on national identity. Settled migrant children's perspectives help us understand whether or not they are being socialised into their local communities' culture and can highlight the spatial and temporal dimensions of their social lives and opportunities for future. Concepts of ethnic and diasporic identity, belonging, transnationalism, culture and nation are taking new meanings across Europe and need reassessment and questioning when discussing national identity and social inclusion. Evidence to be produced By bringing together discourses on migration and integration of migrant groups with knowledge on how children experience these discourses in their everyday interactions, the study will generate new knowledge on the UK's new ethnic minority children and their long-term experiences of integration. Focussing on children aged 12-18 of Eastern European migrants living in the UK for 3+ years, the study will provide a unique understanding on migrant children's long term experiences of settlement, exploring family, peer and community social networks. Another key area of investigation will be children's expressed needs in terms of the array of services they use, issues in access and the extent to which services are meeting their needs. Third, we will explore the factors that enable children of Eastern European migrants to adapt to the new social, economic and political context of the regions in which they live, as they negotiate national, social, cultural and political identities in the context of a changing Europe. Data will be generated through a review of existing evidence, a survey of between 500-600 children across six urban, semi-urban/rural areas in the UK and focus groups with between 70-100 children. In depth case studies 16-20 families will also be conducted. A young people's advisory group will have a central role in the project development and dissemination. Originality, contribution to knowledge and anticipated impact The originality of the project stems from the consideration given to the ways in which Eastern European children living in diverse geographical spaces are engaged in on-going, dynamic processes of making sense of the world, and their place within it, at local, national and global levels. The study will fill a gap in information on newly settled migrant communities, with a view of informing policy and practice. Information on settled migrant children's social practices, educational achievement and aspirations, sense of cultural and national identity and belonging will provide insights into the extent of European migrant communities' integration in the UK, in the context of various representations of 'nation' that circulate in policy, political and public discourses. The study will address the relative absence of migrant children's voices in public debates and provide policy makers and the public with an improved understanding of the lives of children who were originally migrants, but have settled long-term in the UK. This information will be disseminated widely, to benefit children, service providers, policy makers and the general public.