As highlighted in UN Sustainable Development Goal #5, gender-based violence and inequality (GBV/I) disproportionately deprive women and girls of personal, social and economic fulfillment and health: physical, emotional and mental. All countries at the centre of this project - South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, UK - are impacted by GBV/I but in South Africa and Lesotho, which have among the highest rates of reported rape worldwide, the situation is particularly acute. In all of South Africa, Lesotho and Botswana, moreover, GBV is compounded by high risk of HIV infection, with socio-economically deprived women and girls particularly vulnerable to both GBV and the hardships procured by HIV and Aids. Expertise and resources from the Arts & Humanities (A&H) alongside targeted international collaboration can go a long way to providing sustainable support and development in innovative and effective ways. The A&H expertise focal to this project focuses especially on two disciplines: - biblical studies, because the Bible is highly influential and unprecedentedly available (in all indigenous languages) in all project countries, which all have Christian-dominant populations; - gender studies, because GBV/I perpetuates damaging gender stereotypes which must be fully understood first to be effectively detoxified and resisted. Another area of A&H expertise applied in the project is music and performance arts, in order to foster a creative, interactive and sustainable media of resistance. Outputs in this area - such as photographs, songs, survivor stories and live performance - also lend themselves to self-representation, allowing persons vulnerable to GBV (foremost girls and women but also members of the LGBTQ community) unfiltered media of expression, aimed at all of healing, empowerment and solidarity. To address especially UN sustainable development goals pertaining to gender equality (#5), quality education (#4) and peace- and justice- building (#16), the project will: 1) Harness energy, expertise and support of A&H academics in the three southern African project countries as well as in the UK and direct these towards social activism in the area of GBV through working together with relevant NGOs and community groups. The project's three core facilitators (one based in Botswana, two in the UK) are all biblical scholars, with each contributing also distinctive expertise in the areas of sexuality, HIV-theology or ethnicity. All have associations with NGOs and community groups active in addressing GBV/I, as well as passion for social justice. 2) Facilitate existing resources and create also new ones that will in a series of workshops explore the relationship between the Bible and GBV/I. Southern African NGOs and community groups are doing fabulous work in demanding circumstances but this is not always effectively shared due to inadequate networks. The project's facilitators will train at an established centre of socially engaged Bible study, the Ujamaa Centre in South Africa, and disseminate tried and tested resources as well as devise new ones to be trialled in a series of workshops in both Botswana and Lesotho. 3) Produce collaboratively artistic and self-representational media that actively resist GBV/I. Alongside educational and information resources produced in and for workshops, the project will facilitate also creative ways promoting personal expression and healing as well as community mobilization and solidarity. 4) Disseminate information and resources in academic and popular forums, including on the open-access project website. In diverse and innovative ways, the project seeks both to infuse academia with social justice, as well as creative outlets and social justice endeavours with high quality information and education. This will both strengthen and diversify existing and form also new networks and take a big and promising step towards sustained social betterment and justice.

The research consortium between, the UK, Africa and other interested partners seeks to provide innovative mathematical solutions to fundamental global problems and questions faced by the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) region (Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe). The statistics are overwhelmingly clear: (i) The top five killer-diseases in Africa are HIV/AIDS, lower respiratory tract infections including Tuberculosis, diarrhoea diseases (linked to water borne diseases and poor sanitation), malaria and strokes; (ii) Despite significant investments, crime activities (murder, sexual offences, assault, robbery, hijacking of cars, etc.) in Southern Africa, particularly in South Africa, continue to be of national and international concern; (iii) Governments and National Parks across SSA are faced with significant challenges in designing efficient methods for wild-life management and conservation; (iv) Almost 80 percent of faculty staff in Departments of Mathematics at Universities across SSA hold at most a Masters degree and in some cases, many senior faculty staff members do not possess a PhD. The figures are astonishingly depressing particularly for Historically Disadvantaged Institutions. Our mission is to offer alternative research-led quantitative solutions to these global challenges by carrying out interdisciplinary and inter-institutionally research in mathematical sciences focusing on six key research strands: (1) Infectious Tropical Diseases: Towards disease control policies supported by scientific evidence theory; (2) Mathematical Modelling of Biological Systems: From data to models and back; (3) Numerical Analysis and High Performance Scientific Computing; (4) Crime Modelling in Sub-Saharan Africa; (5) Mathematics for Public Policy and (6) Statistical Methods for Data Analysis, Model and Parameter Estimation. Outcomes of our programme include (i) innovative quantitative solutions based on rigorous mathematical theories, (ii) training of a new generation of young African scientists agile and competent in skills for model building, validation, interpretation, and communicating modelling results to policy makers, and (iii) influence government and non-governmental organisations through rigorously tested scientific methods and solutions. The mode for delivery of these research activities is through one Postgraduate Advanced Study Institute in Mathematical Sciences and two intensive Workshop Series aimed at training the future leaders of Africa on the latest state-of-the-art mathematical, numerical and statistical methods that allow them to derive new models from data, carry out rigorous mathematical and numerical analysis and then to complete the full research cycle, fit the models and parameters to data by use of rigorous statistical methods. This allows the researchers to select from a wide range of models based on different biological assumptions and their mathematical translations, the best model that fits data and be able to carry out parameter estimation under these conditions. We will partner with the Southern Africa Mathematical Sciences Association (SAMSA) and MASAMU program to deliver our research and pedagogical activities (see letters of support from both). SAMSA represents over 40 Universities across SSA and hosts an annual conference to which many of the SSA researchers are in attendance. One of the postgraduate advanced study institute and workshop will revolve around the SAMSA annual conference in order to reach a wider community beyond that supported by this proposal. The MASAMU program, funded primarily by the National Science Foundation for USA faculty staff only, will complement our research and training activities.

It is estimated that 70% of the population of Uganda, Botswana, and Nigeria directly depend on the rich biodiversity of their ecosystems for their livelihoods, health and well-being. These ecosystems are being damaged at alarming rates in conjunction with a deterioration of social, cultural, and economic prosperity. Land degradation currently leads to annual loss of more than 3% of agriculture GDP in the sub-Saharan region, with two-thirds of arable land expected to be lost in Africa by 2025. While research, innovation, and policy addressing these environmental and social realities is carried out nationally and internationally, these occur largely without community involvement or qualitative input, and mostly without successful implementation. The CSPE Network brings together environmental and social scientists in community and public pedagogies to address this apparent implementation gap. As a matter of urgency, the gap between environmental research, innovation, and policy and the communities impacting and being impacted by the environment needs to be mitigated, in order to effectively address the growing issues related to biodiversity degradation. The CSPE Network will seek to develop Innovation and Economic Growth by facilitating innovative cross-disciplinary and cross-sector collaborations to address biodiversity loss in engagement with the social, cultural, and economic factors experienced by communities. Uganda, Botswana, and Nigeria have a rich, important history of non-formal, community and public pedagogies. Focused on learning and teaching outside formal educational institutions, community and public pedagogies include learning in various public and community spaces and can emerge for example, through instruction, engagement, social arts, and popular culture, amongst many other forms. There is a significant field of research and practice in community engagement, indigenous ways of knowing, and vocational development in the African context, but this social science area rarely works directly with environmental science. Hence, there are parallel objectives (environmental sustainability and the well being of people) but a lack of common language, approach, or expertise. In the context of environment-dependent populations, community and public pedagogies are the strongest, fastest, and most appropriate forms of engagement required to connect new scientific information with existing socio-cultural knowledge and realities. The environmental policy implementation gap is not new but it is predominantly put down to failures of governance and control. The CSPE Network postulates that addressing biodiversity degradation without genuine community engagement is a project destined to continue to fail. Likewise, to address the health, well-being, and education of populations without rich, science-based environmental knowledge is equally futile. Furthermore, the leadership of all three countries recognise that the environmental challenges they face require inter-sectoral and holistic attention (Uganda Vision 2040; Nigeria Vision 20:2020; Botswana National Development Plan 10). The CSPE Network proposes that without the full engagement of communities, governance will only further widen the gap between communities and the policy makers and researchers trying to protect them. This sustained dynamic and the ever-increasing set of problems is due not to a lack of knowledge, expertise or financial resources. It is due to the disconnect between environmental science and the engagement of communities: a disconnect this network is designed to mitigate.