We are more connected than ever before but are we communicating effectively? Amid COVID-19 and the so-called 'digital pivot', online virtual communication has been placed at the heart of our daily lives, both professionally and privately. As we move into a post-COVID context, the affordances of this digital turn have shown that we can operate professionally online but there is a need for a better understanding of what has become, and is likely to remain, a new way of communicating in the workplace. The current pandemic has acted as a catalyst for change and has impacted on the behaviours of producers and consumers of digital interactional content. Businesses, for example, have changed their interaction with customers. Cultural organisations have embraced different forms of digital delivery of content, often co-produced by their audiences. Education has seen large-scale adoption of online modes of interaction. In this time of substantial change to how we interact online, there is a need to take stock of whether the virtual communication is equitable and whether our existing paradigms for analysing discourse are fit-for-purpose. This project draws on the expertise of leading researchers in the UK and Ireland to propose the next generation of analytical frameworks for analysing this new type of discourse and will make these frameworks available to all arts and humanities research and end user communities, leading to a step change in our ability to develop equality of access in online communication. Firstly, this project aims to examine virtual workplace communication so as to gain depth of insight into the potential barriers to effective communication. These may relate to external (e.g. gender, age, status, ethnicity, etc) or internal variables (e.g. linguistic variables such as talking over one another or not understanding when it is appropriate to take a 'turn' in conversation) of the interaction. We aim to explore not only what makes for success or failure in virtual workplace discourse, but what also allows for the identification of specific variables associated with such successes and failures. This study will be multi-modal, focusing both on what is said and also on how it is said (e.g. pitch, intonation, facial expression, accompanying gesture or gaze). Findings from this study will lead to the creation of awareness-raising artefacts which will be based on the needs of our project partners and will include, inter alia, reusable digital objects such as podcasts, vodcasts; digitally badged training presentations (e.g. chairing online meetings; fostering equity and diversity on online fora; simulating a sense of co-presence when demonstrating a process). These awareness-raising artefacts (e.g. podcasts and e-resources) can serve as training materials to enhance virtual workplace communication, to highlight any salient equity issues. These materials will aid our project partners in understanding the challenges, nuances and new norms, as well as best practices, in the cultural shift to digital communication platforms. Our second aim is to enable future research into spoken language by developing appropriate technical protocols for capturing and analysing interaction multi-modally (e.g. how to transcribe a gesture and align it with an utterance). Our goal is to evolve standardised ways of approaching questions about language use which are accessible and (re)producible by other researchers and non-technical experts in the Humanities, with the production of an online archive asset. This asset will identify common and standardised ways to approaching pertinent questions about language use which are accessible and reproducible by others. This will help to inform research practice in relation to gathering, storing, processing and analysing multi-modal data by building a community of practice for future multi-modal corpus linguistic research.

MathSys addresses two of EPSRC's CDT priority areas in Mathematical Sciences: "Mathematics of Highly Connected Real-World Systems" and "New Mathematics in Biology and Medicine". We will train the next generation of skilled applied mathematical researchers to use and develop cutting-edge techniques enabling them to address a range of challenges faced by science, industry and modern society. Our Centre for Doctoral Training will build on the experience and successes of the Complexity Science DTC at Warwick, while refining the scope of problems addressed. It will provide a supportive and stimulating environment for the students in which the common mathematical challenges underpinning problems from a variety of disciplines can be tackled. The need for mathematically skilled researchers, trained in an interdisciplinary environment, has never been greater and is viewed as a major barrier in both industry and government. This is supported by quotes from reports and business leaders: "Systems research needs more potential future leaders, both in academia and industry" (EPSRC workshop on Systems science towards Engineering, Feb 2011); Andrew Haldane (Bank of England, 2012) said "The financial crisis has taught us the importance of modelling and regulating finance as a complex, adaptive system. That will require skills currently rare or missing in the regulatory community - including, importantly, in the area of complexity science"; Paul Matthews (GlaxoSmithKline) stated "Scientists trained in statistical and computational approaches who have a sophisticated understanding of biologically relevant models are in short supply. They will be major contributors in the task of translating insights on human biology and disease into treatments and cures." Our CDT will address this need by training PhD students in the development and innovation of mathematics in the context of real-world systems and will operate in close collaboration with stakeholders from outside academia who will provide motivating problems and real-world experience. Common mathematical themes will include statistical behaviour of complex systems, tipping points, novel methods in control and resilience, hierarchical aggregation methods, model selection and sufficiency, implications of network structure, response to aperiodic forcing and shocks, and methods for handling complex data. Applications will be driven by local and external partner expertise in Epidemiology, Systems Biology, Crop Science, Healthcare, Operational Research, Systems Engineering, Network Science, Financial Regulation, Data Analysis and Social Behaviour. We believe that the merging of real-world applications with development of novel mathematics will have great synergy; applications will motivate and drive mathematical advances while novel mathematics will allow students to solve challenging real-world problems. The doctoral training programme will follow a 1+3 year MSc+PhD model that has proved successful in the Complexity Science DTC. The first year will consist of six months of taught training, followed by 3-month group research projects on problems set by external partners and a 3-month individual research project, leading to an MSc qualification. This preparation will enable the students to make rapid progress tackling their 3-year PhD research project, under the guidance of one mathematical and one application-oriented supervisor, alongside general skills training and group research projects. We have over 50 suitable supervisors with relevant mathematical expertise, all enthusiastic to contribute; they will be supported by a similar number of application-oriented supervisors from across campus and from external partners. The CDT seeks the equivalent of 7 full studentships per year from EPSRC and has commitment from non-RCUK sources for the equivalent of 3 full studentships per year.

The 'MARCH' Network proposes that Assets for Resilient Communities lie at the heart of Mental Health (M-ARC-H) and is dedicated to advancing research into the impact of these assets in enhancing public mental health and wellbeing, preventing mental illness and supporting those living with mental health conditions. Specifically, it will advance our understanding of the impact of social, cultural and community assets including the arts, culture, heritage, libraries, parks, community gardens, allotments, leisure centres, volunteer associations, social clubs and community groups, of which there are an anticipated 1 million in the UK. The network will bring together a Disciplinary Expert Group of researchers with a Policy Group of major national policy bodies, a Patient Public Involvement Group of national mental health charities, and a Community Engagement Group of national organisations. Across three years, our network will unite research with policy and practice to tackle critical questions of research priorities, methods, and implementation in this field; understand and resolve barriers to mobilising community assets; and provide training and support to the next generation of researchers. Specifically, our network will address questions organised in two core work streams (WS): WS1. Cross-disciplinary research and challenges: (a) What evidence is there, from a cross-disciplinary perspective, for how and why community assets impact on public health and wellbeing and the lives of those living with mental health problems, and where are the gaps for future research? (b) How can we use a cross-disciplinary approach to provide meaningful data to different stakeholders and users? WS2. Equity of engagement and access innovation: (a) Who amongst the UK population, demographically and geographically, currently engages with these programmes and how does participation vary dependent on mental health? (b) What are the current barriers and enablers to engagement at an individual, organisational and policy level and how can we develop innovative approaches to enhance engagement, especially amongst the vulnerable? This research work will be complemented by a rich portfolio of impact, engagement and training activities (see 'Impact Summary'). This network aligns with strategic priorities of the AHRC and ESRC as well as having a secondary relevance to the priorities of the MRC (through its consideration of the role of community assets and social prescribing to support medical approaches to mental health), NERC (through its exploration of the impact of green spaces) and EPSRC (through its focus on the opportunities provided by technology for driving research forwards). It has also been designed in response to the Network Plus Research Agenda. In addition to the objectives already discussed in the prior Je-S section, it is responsive to many of the mental health challenges cited in the agenda. For example, the call specification noted that only 25% of people with mental health problems receive ongoing treatment. Whilst there are recognised economic and resource constraints with delivering sufficient mental health services, this Network proposes to focus on the role that existing community assets could play in providing support to a much wider range of people in the UK including those on waiting lists. As another example, the call specification raised that 70% of children and adolescents with mental health problems have not had appropriate interventions at an earlier age. This Network will involve working with policy makers and community organisations to see how research could help overcome barriers to access with the aim of engaging more young people and those who are hard to reach. Overall, the network will seek to understand and support future research into how community assets could be mobilised to encourage more resilient individuals and communities with a greater understanding of and capacity for self-management of mental health.

The Deaf British Sign Language (BSL) using community in Wales have more challenges than hearing populations in accessing healthcare services (especially in emergency situations), health information, mental health care services and support, and family-related services and training. The Deaf in Wales also suffer from inconsistent interpreting services and poor communication in many health-care settings and, as a result, are also at greater risk of underdiagnoses and under-treatment of chronic diseases and tend to have poorer health than the general population (Sign Health, 2019; Shank & Foltz, 2019; Foltz & Shank, 2020; Foltz et al., 2022). Deaf people also have an incidence of mental health problems that is twice as high as the general population and face barriers accessing support services (Terry et al., 2021). Research has shown that access to nature and outdoor activities is a health asset (Houlden et al. 2018; Rebar et al. 2015); however, many of Wales's cultural and natural assets are not accessible because materials are rarely available in BSL. The goal of this project is to design, implement and evaluate Deaf-community-lead solutions for these known and documented health inequities and inequalities. We are a transdisciplinary team of academic and non-academic, hearing, and Deaf partners. Our project will use innovative social networking techniques, community outreach, focus groups, interviews, and custom video-based questionnaires and app technologies to identify sustainable, community-led, culturally, and linguistically driven solutions to improve the health and wellbeing of this community. We will then develop, implement, and evaluate these solutions in five areas that impact Deaf Welsh citizens' health and wellbeing. These areas are: (1) public health, (2) mental health, (3) interpreting services, (4) access to natural resources, parks, and use of natural environment resources and (5) language and communication. In the areas of (1) public health, (2) mental health, and (3) interpreting services we will work with the Deaf community as well as the NHS, Health Boards, interpreters, and other service providers to develop culturally and linguistically driven proposals to improve services at every stage of the healthcare delivery process. Solutions will focus on access to interpreters and BSL language services and improving d/Deaf awareness with respect to language and culture and d/Deaf rights with respect to the law. In the area of (4) natural resources, we will develop BSL video guide apps for better accessibility to Welsh natural resources, parks, and heritage sites at three locations across Wales. In the area of (5) language and communication, the Welsh dialect of BSL, it's lexicon and regional variations, remains undocumented and undescribed. This project will develop an on-line dictionary and corpus resources, with a particular focus on medical terminology, to aid interpreters and service providers in Wales. We will assess the potential positive impact of the resources that we are developing as part of this project and use the results obtained from this project to inform and influence current local and national health care policy, services, practices, and delivery to aid compliance with the 2010 Equality and 2015 Well-being of Future generations Acts.

UK ENABLE Consortium vision, aims and objectives: Local government is uniquely placed to shape the environmental and social factors which fundamentally influence non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and thus our health and wellbeing. Our vision is for local government to consider the health of local populations in all policy and practice decisions and to have the best possible scientific evidence to support those decisions. We will test our vision by working with five different local authority (LA) based public health systems across the UK, learning what works best, and what can be useful for all LAs across the UK. Our consortium brings together academics, practitioners, policy makers and other stakeholders from across the UK in five centres in NE and SW England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales; each with different models of public health delivery. We will develop and test a process that embeds research capacity and expertise in LAs. Working closely with our partners in each LA, we will identify a current priority for improving the health and wellbeing and reducing inequalities of people living in that area. By building relationships between academics, practitioners and policy makers we will enable the LA to access and create new evidence that is relevant for decision making about the priority issue. Scientific rationale for the proposed research: Evidence-informed policy-making aims to improve decision making by using the best available research. Organisational and cultural barriers within the current system have made this approach difficult to achieve. New methods and approaches are needed which bring together researchers, practitioners and policy makers in local government, where evidence is only one contributing factor to decision-making. Embedded researchers and knowledge brokers can help to ensure evidence is used by building understanding of the context, accessing existing, and co-producing new evidence. Intervention(s) of interest and the potential applications and anticipated benefits of the work: By the end of the project we will: 1. Increase research capacity and 'no how' in each LA, focusing on a local NCD priority issue, enabling access to evidence to inform local decision-making. We will develop and share learning which is generalisable across the UK 2. Build and support new partnerships for active and effective research use with practitioners, policy makers, and academia 3. Build knowledge and skills in local government and universities to maximise use of different kinds of evidence for policy, practice and public decision-making 4. Co-create evidence that addresses local government priorities, with a focus on prevention, by working across sectors and disciplines, utilising novel methodological approaches, including complex systems models 5. Develop a range of health and system interventions that have been co-produced and tested across LA areas 6. Create sustained change in research culture in LAs and academia so that evidence use is embedded across local government 7. Evaluate this new approach and methods to see if we made a difference to the health of people living in each area, related to their priority topic, and whether/how this approach could be rolled out across the UK We anticipate that this work will improve population health and wellbeing and increase the use of scientific research. It aims to improve quality, efficiency and effectiveness of public health interventions and services, reduce waste, and improve staff morale and retention. Consortium management: Our across-UK academic leadership brings together experience of applied translational research in prevention from four of the UKCRC funded Centres of Excellence in Public Health. Senior leaders in local government public health, bring practical experience of putting evidence into action. Other members have expertise in systems thinking, embedded research, knowledge brokerage and other skills essential to our success.