Contemporary political volatility within the Middle East region has led to far reaching socio-economic upheaval and strife with a devastating impact generating mass displacement of Iraqi, Palestinian, and Syrian refugees to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey (UNCHR, 2014). In their host nations, these displaced communities seek to reconstruct their lives in a context of loss, poverty, violence and devastation (Kuttab, 2008; Chatty, 2010). Here, as in other contexts of displacement and refugee movements, women and children are subject to the worst effects of such upheaval given their limited power and resources to counteract the ensuing violence and poverty (Al-Dajani and Marlow, 2013; Holmes, 2007; UN, 2006). As one strategy to address the matrix of disadvantages and especially poverty arising from displacement, the potential of home based self-employment for women has become a focal point of contemporary policy interest. Such micro enterprising is positioned as a development tool across many contexts as it presents pathways for socio-economic empowerment for women which require few resources but also, do not challenge prevailing cultural patriarchal norms. Despite critiques of this argument (Kuttab, 2008; Bruton, 2010; Franck, 2012), home based enterprise is positioned as a critical activity for displaced women as a simple but effective point of entry for economic participation with related social and status benefits (Al Dajani and Marlow, 2013). As such, numerous support and advice agencies aiming to encourage such enterprising activities now focus upon helping displaced and refugee women to undertake self-employment. Our previous research (Al-Dajani et al, 2015) however, suggests that such agencies are perceived to impose numerous stifling constraints upon the displaced refugee women. This tension and the preferences of the displaced women regarding business start-up and trading partners has prompted many women to reject engagement with formal support agencies. Rather, they are finding other pathways and networks to support their enterprising activities. Thus, within this project we will explore the effectiveness and impact of the available pathways for support and advice for displaced and refugee women and analyse the extent to which entrepreneurship is a sustainable conduit for poverty alleviation and empowerment in socio-politically volatile circumstances. The project brings together the Issam Fares Institute (Lebanon), UDA Consulting (Turkey) and the King Hussein Foundation (Jordan) to undertake the project alongside Haya Al-Dajani at UEA (PI) and Susan Marlow at Nottingham University (Co-I). The partners have already attained definite agreement from potential stakeholders to contribute to the project, and are working with key refugee support agencies identified by UNHCR as partner agencies assisting Syrian refugees. In each geographical location, an initial stakeholder meeting will be held, bringing together 20 non-academic key stakeholders, including potential research users, to engage in the design of the ensuing project and conduct through the adoption of a Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) approach (UNV, 2013). This will be followed by individual interviews with 150 Iraqi, Palestinian and Syrian refugee women displaced to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Upon completion of this data collection, another stakeholder meeting will be held in each location to deliberate the findings and to inform the design and development of Phase 2 of the study involving a follow up survey with the refugee women. Finally, a key stakeholder dissemination event will be held at the end of the project in each of the three geographical locations. These events will engage 50 key stakeholders in each location, and will focus on research, practice and policy development for displaced and refugee populations.

WHO and the G20 have identified the growing threats of Anti-Microbial resistance (AMR) as a major concern that will define the future of global health. Despite these urgent calls, the emergence of AMR in settings of war and distress migration has not been systematically explored. Case reports from Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Afghanistan have shown the proliferation of AMR in combatants and civilians injured in these protracted conflicts. With regional conflicts spreading across state borders as well as one of the largest global refugee crises in decades, AMR in the context of conflict has come to pose a serious threat both regionally and internationally. So began penicillin in the Second World War: antibiotics arose in war. Today, in the context of long-running military conflicts we see harbingers of the end of antibiotics. The core question underpinning this proposal is how war, particularly weapons and the industrialised, urbanised context of contemporary conflicts, drives antibiotic resistance by contaminating the environment and the human and non-human organisms that live there. So far, there has been no systematic or holistic consideration of the environmental health impacts of contemporary conflicts conducted in cities. Our program draws together scholars working in the fields of medicine, anthropology, history of science, ethics, epidemiology, microbiology, molecular biology, and environmental sciences to examine the specific intersection of antibiotic resistance and war. Rather than focus on antibiotic resistance as a universal problem afflicting modern societies in general, we focus first on the impact of global conflict on antibiotic resistance more holistically, and second on the case of multi-drug resistant Acinetobacer baumanii (MDRAB), initially reported by American military surgeons under the moniker Iraqibacter, and that has been identified recently by the WHO as a "critical pathogen" for research and the development of new antibiotics. We will focus on a number of specific countries - Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, and Lebanon-places with history of protracted conflicts and with different, yet overlapping, ecologies of war. The potential global health significance of conflict-related heavy metal mediated antimicrobial resistance is enormous and warrants further study. It will contribute to the field of environmental pathways for antimicrobial resistance more broadly as well as informing the specific intersection of war and antibiotic resistance.

Global urban and environmental challenges create tensions and vulnerabilities and the need for rethinking modes of city production. Growing spatial and social inequalities in cities raise a concern that traditional modes of knowing and governing the city are no longer adapted. Our project analyses other modes of city production emerging since a decade in tri or quadripartite cooperation in Europe and Southern countries: broad alliances leading to concrete collaborative urban action between citizens, professionals, the non-profit private sector, local authorities and universities. The research aims at filling the wide gap in comparative understandings of the governance of collaborative practices for a just and sustainable city. Research organizations show greater interest for participatory practices, but new alliances’ potentials and their internal mobilization into collaborative urban actions to drive change in planning practices are underestimated . A multidisciplinary and comparative (North/South) approach is necessary to bring major stakeholders to develop common research on collaborative initiatives for justice and sustainability. FAIRVILLE’s research emphasis is on citizen-based collaborative urban initiatives through a methodology also based on collaborative tools, namely their potential for social and spatial innovation through a co-designed analysis of the full process of alliance creation and knowledge production during implementation. On the one hand, the team will investigate the plural forms of knowledge which emerge through participatory and collaborative tools. Identifying the channels and obstacles to shared knowledge and skills in increasingly horizontal collaborations between researchers, facilitators and organized city dwellers, is an important step in Fairville’s contribution. On the other hand, we will analyse the organizational dimension of collaborative practices and their contribution to democratic governance; and alliances’ ability to counteract social and environmental vulnerabilities, deal with conflicts and define a common agenda of socio-spatial justice and transition-to-sustainability. Thus, the project will inform public policies on the outputs for city planning of inclusionary initiatives in regeneration and upgrading programs, risk mitigation, access to sustainable environments and services. It also aims at enhancing city-dwellers’ recognition and especially the role of the less privileged, migrants and women in research and by research. To do so, it is necessary to bring together different disciplines and all types of actors involved in these alliances, in their diversity and complementarity. The consortium includes four types of stakeholders in urban participatory contexts in the Global North and South who implement horizontal work methods with local residents: (a) SSH specialists involved in international research projects on collaborative urban initiatives (b) supra-local organizations and NGO providing support, expertise and peer-to-peer training to citizen movements (c) regional civil society platforms eager to promote community development and support (d) facilitators and civil society organizations including residents. Citizen science is present all along the research process, by engaging residents of deprived neighborhoods working in collaborative processes with consortium members. Democratization of planning process and change in participatory methods precisely come from alliances of some organizations support and advisory groups with residents and generally women among their active members, added to universities. Integration of all these members including non-professionals will occur through a co-elaboration of knowledge production, co-design of survey and planning co-decisions. Together with critical and analytical research Fairville wishes to unpack power relations and critically assess the outcomes: empowerment, increase in influence and more equitable resource distribution.