The aid and development funding landscape for communication and social change (CSC) is changing rapidly. CSC is a field of scholarship and practice within communication studies concerned with the role of media and communication in processes of social change and development. Historically, much of the practice of CSC has been funded as part of international development cooperation. However, funds from traditional bilateral donors are shrinking, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, philanthropic foundations, especially those linked with tech-sector corporations, are growing in funding scale and programmatic influence. This context is accelerating the uptake of social entrepreneurship inspired discourses and worldviews in CSC practice. This worldview mirrors contemporary capitalist cultures and draws on new business management mantras, emphasising optimism, creativity, boldness, leadership and autonomy as an approach to 'changemaking'. Under this worldview, dependency on donors is seen as the main problem to avoid, and traditional aid and development is framed as having failed. For CSC practitioners on the ground there is validity in this assessment. Practitioners have reported that they see significant benefits from social entrepreneurship approaches, in that it enables them to be more bottom-up, to operate in less precarious and dependent ways, to be more adaptive to local needs, and to determine their own priority actions and approaches. However, this trend is in stark contrast with the momentum of current debates in academia, where of primary interest is in the role of communication in the resistance of global capitalism and in decolonization agendas. Social entrepreneurship discourses and the broader neoliberalisation of CSC are therefore seen as threats to, not enablers of, social justice. Un/Making CSC engages directly with these tensions, investigating the implications of growing entrepreneurial discourses within communication for social change (CSC) from a practitioner perspective. Theoretically, Un/Making CSC will engage in interdisciplinary ways with social entrepreneurship and leadership studies. Empirically it will use participatory and visual methods with practitioners, communities and other key stakeholders to interrogate the implications in terms of shifting CSC concepts, funding strategies, stakeholder relationships, and alternative frameworks. The research will be undertaken in two distinct sites: youth and girls engagement in Malawi which has historically been reliant on international development funding; and feminist digital justice efforts India, where there are complex tensions being negotiated in terms of funding sources, especially philanthropic funding, and the political principles of the organisation. The research aims to advance theory and practice on a justice-driven approach to communication for social 'changemaking'. The Fellowship enables the PI to firmly establish intellectual leadership and the shaping of new interdisciplinary research agendas engaging across communication and media studies, international development studies, and social entrepreneurship and leadership studies. The Fellowship is designed to develop skills and leadership capabilities in project management, methodological innovation, HE leadership, and public engagement and policy impact. This project partners with several well-established CSC organisations with experience of navigating these tensions, to co-develop insights, actionable frameworks and policy briefs for a social justice-driven approach to Communication for Social Changemaking. The Fellowship will positively impact the partner organisations within the life of the project, and lays the foundation for future policy-impact.

This project will investigate how urban futures are made through different global circuits and in turn shape key transnational processes: geopolitics, development and private investment, through a close focus on the transnational actors and decision-making processes involved in large-scale developments and interventions in selected African cities. The research will produce: new theoretical perspectives on urban politics and policy-relevant understandings of state capacity and land value capture in urban development. The project brings to fruition the applicant’s agenda-setting post-colonial critique in urban studies (2006, Ordinary Cities, Routledge), practically worked through in her recent innovations in comparative urbanism (forthcoming, Comparative Urbanism, Sage). This research will bring forward original empirical findings and develop further the innovative comparative methods tested in a recent esrc funded project. It will contribute theorizations of the new territories of global urban politics, starting in African contexts. Engagements with residents, stakeholders, policy makers and practitioners will build understanding of how better urban outcomes might be secured. The project compares three transnational circuits and nine cases of urban development in three cities (Accra, Dar es Salaam, Lilongwe) where all three circuits have a strong presence, and which encompass a range of levels of urbanization and economic development. Focussing on transnationalised urban development processes and the widely spread phenomenon of large scale urban developments will provide a basis to work against the neglect and exceptionalism of African experiences within urban studies, an important motivation for this project. The research seeks to build African based research capacity in urban studies and includes African based collaborators and early career scholars in the research team.

Insufficient reductions in maternal and neonatal deaths and stillbirths in the past decade are a threat to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 3. Overcoming the knowledge-do gap to ensure implementation of known evidence-based intervention during the intrapartum period – the period from onset of labour to immediately after childbirth – has the potential to avert at least 2.5 million deaths in mothers and their offspring annually. Our ALERT approach targets this period and will develop and evaluate a multifaceted health system intervention to strengthen the implementation of evidence-based interventions and responsive care in Sub-Saharan African hospitals, where 40-50% of all births in the region take place. The ALERT intervention will include four main components: i) end-user participation through narratives of women, families and midwifery providers to ensure co-design of the intervention; ii) competency-based training; iii) quality improvement, supported by data from a clinical perinatal e-registry; iv) empowerment and leadership mentoring of maternity unit leaders complemented by district based bi-annual coordination and accountability meetings. We will apply a gender lens to explore constraints in intrapartum care in the context of the multidisciplinary teams providing maternity care. Repositioning midwifery with its preventive, promotive and curative aspects is a cross-cutting theme. We will evaluate the intervention through a stepped-wedge design, the primary outcome being in-facility perinatal (stillbirths and early neonatal) mortality. Our nested realist process evaluation will help to understand what works, for whom and under which condition. An economic evaluation will report on scalability and costs. Our research aims to inform programming for the Sustainable Development Goals and Every Women Every Child Agendas of the United Nations to support Universal Health Coverage and patient-centred care which will be relevant beyond the project focus

This project builds on the arts and social science activities pioneered by the Uganda strand of the AHRC funded INTERSECTION project, under the Care for the Future programme. The project worked over 20 months with 60+ volunteer members of a working class community in Walukuba, Jinja, in eastern Uganda. It built an intergenerational, inter-ethnic, inter-religious, cross-gender community group of widely divergent educational attainment; that engaged in a sustained process of embodied arts-based action research and dialogic debate emerging from locally identified environmental concerns. The project led to both horizontal - community to community, and vertical - community to stake holders and policy makers - interventions and knowledge exchange events combining performance and debate. Marked gains in community cohesion, confidence, advocacy and activism were achieved (McQuaid & Plastow 2017; film 'We Are Walukuba' https://vimeo.com/171216540/e04de5b695). The group registered as a Community Based Organisation 'We Are Walukuba' in November 2015 in recognition of the transformative value participants ascribed to the project. This proposal builds on the unforeseen achievements, beyond original research aims, of the group and our Frierean-inspired methodology (Friere, 1970) that invoked a virtuous circle of action (arts-based embodied exploration of of issues identified as concerning the community) and reflection (group discussion of critical reflections generated by activities undertaken), and appetite expressed by the community to continue to work together and build their skills to become more effective community advocates. In consultation with We Are Walukuba - henceforth WAW - it was agreed that what the group needed in order become self-sustaining in the longer term, and to complete the transformation into a group of self-confident independent advocates for their community, was targeted training by experts in a range of arts and organisational skills. The skills needed were discussed in a series of community meetings with WAW, Plastow and McQuaid in August 2016. It was agreed these would be delivered in 1-2 week blocks where workers could take time out of work and mothers could be provided with child care. Each group of 6-12 trainees would undertake to in turn pass on the skills acquired to the wider group. The impact of this first stage of the project will be evidenced by a series of community organised performative and knowledge exchange events utilising the skills acquired. The second stage of the work is focused on scaling up the project; demonstrating how it provides a replicable model for arts-based, dialogic community empowerment, by reproducing its essential stages, learnt from the Uganda experience, over a four month period in an analogous working class community (Mtogolo village) in Zomba, Malawi. Building on the particular knowledges and contacts of our Malawian Researcher, Zindaba Chisiza, we will collaborate with a local HE partner- the Department of Performing Arts, University of Malawi, and a local arts-based NGO, YONECO. We will enable all three parties, working as equals, to mutually learn, both a new methodology for community engagement, and to share the knowledges and perspectives of all concerned about the community-selected broad topic under investigation. The final 3 months of the project will be given over to: * co-production of a co-authored community book sharing the experiences of the project in both sites * co-production of a manual in the form of a multi-media website, explaining the methodology of the project * supporting Chancellor College in reviewing and reforming its arts for development curriculum in the light of the project * supporting the NGO in reviewing and reforming its arts for development training and approach * dissemination events in Uganda, Malawi and the UK * evaluation of the impact of the work in both Malawi and Uganda and on all involved in the project.

In sub-Saharan Africa 95% of the population has no access to surgical services. In this region surgery – a proven and often life-saving intervention – is only accessible to urban populations, with only one surgeon per 2.5 million people in rural areas. Emerging evidence demonstrates that major surgery can be undertaken safely and effectively at district hospitals, making it accessible to otherwise neglected rural populations. Objectives: Guided by a health systems-strengthening framework and a comprehensive programme of research, Scaling up Safe Surgery for District and Rural Populations in Africa will scale up the delivery of accessible, elective and emergency surgery at district hospitals to national level programmes in three African countries: Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania. How objectives will be achieved: SURG-Africa is a tested intervention, drawing lessons from two large-scale successful interventions coordinated by members of this SURG-Africa consortium (one FP7 EC funded) that have trained and supervised non-physician clinicians to deliver essential and emergency surgery in four African countries. Platformed on comprehensive surgical systems analyses, it will put in place national surgical information systems; and will test innovative interventions for making specialist supervision of district surgery feasible and affordable. Epidemiological, economics and implementation research will evaluate impact, and provide evidence for policymakers. SURG-Africa directly addresses all aspects of Topic SC1-PM-21-2016: Implementation research for scaling- up of evidence based innovations and good practice in Europe and low and middle-income countries. The results will be transferable and scalable national surgical systems models, with implications for national budget factored in, for making safe surgical services accessible, equitable and sustainable in Africa, especially for women in rural areas.