AP4L is a 3-year program of interdisciplinary research, centring on the online privacy & vulnerability challenges that people face when going through major life transitions. Our central goal is to develop privacy-by-design technologies to protect & empower people during these transitions. Our work is driven by a narrative that will be familiar to most people. Life often "just happens", leading people to overlook their core privacy and online safety needs. For instance, somebody undergoing cancer treatment may be less likely to finesse their privacy setting on social media when discussing the topic. Similarly, an individual undergoing gender transition may be unaware of how their online activities in the past may shape the treatment into the future. This project will build the scientific and theoretical foundations to explore these challenges, as well as design and evaluate three core innovations that will address the identified challenges. AP4L will introduce a step-change, making online safety and privacy as painless and seamless as possible during life transitions To ensure a breadth of understanding, we will apply these concepts to four very different transitions through a series of carefully designed co-creation activities, devised as part of a stakeholder workshop held in Oct'21. These are relationship breakdowns; LBGT+ transitions or transitioning gender; entering/ leaving employment in the Armed Forces; and developing a serious illness or becoming terminally ill. Such transitions can significantly change privacy considerations in unanticipated or counter-intuitive ways. For example, previously enabled location-sharing with a partner may lead to stalking after a breakup; 'coming out' may need careful management across diverse audiences (e.g - friends, grandparents) on social media. We will study these transitions, following a creative security approach, bringing together interdisciplinary expertise in Computer Science, Law, Business, Psychology and Criminology. We will systematise this knowledge, and develop fundamental models of the nature of transitions and their interplay with online lives. These models will inform the development of a suite of technologies and solutions that will help people navigate significant life transitions through adaptive, personalised privacy-enhanced interventions that meet the needs of each individual and bolster their resilience, autonomy, competence and connection. The suite will comprise: (1) "Risk Playgrounds", which will build resilience by helping users to explore potentially risky interactions of life transitions with privacy settings across their digital footprint in safe ways (2) "Transition Guardians", which will provide real-time protection for users during life transitions. (3) "Security Bubbles", which will promote connection by bringing people together who can help each other (or who need to work together) during one person's life transition, whilst providing additional guarantees to safeguard everyone involved. In achieving this vision, and as evidenced by £686K of in-kind contributions, we will work with 26 core partners spanning legal enforcement agencies (e.g., Surrey Police), tech companies (e.g., Facebook, IBM), support networks (e.g., LGBT Foundation, Revenge Porn Helpline) and associated organisations (e.g., Ofcom, Mastercard, BBC). Impact will be delivered through various activities including a specially commissioned BBC series on online life transitions to share knowledge with the public; use of the outputs of our projects by companies & social platforms (e.g., by incorporating into their products, & by designing their products to take into consideration the findings of our project) & targeted workshops to enable knowledge exchange with partners & stakeholders.

The North of England has played a central role in debates about the causes and consequences of the Brexit referendum, especially in the widespread perception of a divided Britain. There is a pervasive vision of the North outside of the bigger cities, that it represented a "heartland" vote: notably in David Goodhart's romantic vision (2017) of "somewhere" people (core national, rooted, working class, "left behind") against the "anywheres" (affluent, educated, cosmopolitan, metropolitan elites). At the same time, Brexit has raised fears about the future of a multi-racial society with high levels of immigration. The North of England is also viewed as a place of simmering racism and xenophobia: pitting White British, older British minority groups, and newer incomers such as asylum seekers or East European workers against each other in deprived and depressed post-industrial locations. Not least, these tensions are thought to have provoked the murder of a sitting MP - Jo Cox - and to lie behind rising racially motivated hate crime in the region. Northern Exposure interrogates these perceptions of the North, while broaching sensitive questions of everyday nationalism, race and racism in largely understudied and marginalised places. The project fills out and enriches the argument that the disaffection expressed by voters, or in tensions seen in particular communities, is linked to the long term post-industrial transformation of the region. We must consider the varied paths of industrial, population and spatial change experienced by different localities. There has been a hollowing out of proud old civic solidarities anchored in class and occupation. Northern towns, with their grand histories and identities, have become amorphous, peri-urban entities, ringed by motorways and large shopping malls, with struggling centres and declining populations (Hatherley 2012). Some residents find it impossible to move on or move out. This changing geography, and its fragmenting diversity, have made it ever harder to imagine how to manage shifting ethnic relations or achieve social integration. The project will offer a detailed statistical profile of 16 "ordinary" large towns and small cities in the North of England, going back in time. We then engage in intensive ethnographic work on four localities- running from the North West, through West Yorkshire, to the North East-which capture key elements of the post-industrial North in their histories, changing identities, and contemporary struggles: Preston, Halifax, Wakefield, and Middlesbrough. Talking with local stakeholders, community organisations, and social work practitioners, we build up a clear vision of the everyday concerns that damage positive visions of diversity, community and inclusion. This leads on to interviews with older long term residents from different origins and backgrounds, gathering personal oral histories and views about the urban, social and political change around them. Policy makers in the region feel that conventional multiculturalism and anti-racism are not working, yet that a narrow focus on socio-economic solutions will not solve the riddle of "inclusive growth" or address emergent ethnic conflicts. Our research will transmit voices not often heard into local policy formulation. It will feedback residents' concerns into neighbourhood policing. With our partners, we seek tools for local intervention, identifying mechanisms that lead to community breakdown or community cohesion. Our work will also lead to a comprehensive of study of the state of Northern England in all its diversity as it comes to terms with Brexit. A website, policy roundtables, local presentations, and a large final event will make our work public. Alongside other academic outputs, we are also filming our research and the people we meet. This will result in short online films which portray residents and their lives today, along with a full length documentary for general release.