Oceanic islands (i.e. islands that have never been connected to a continent) are natural laboratories of evolutionary and biogeographic processes and key to understanding these in continental settings. Seen traditionally as migratory dead ends, it is now thought that these islands may instead represent 'dynamic refugia' and 'migratory stepping stones' for species that are effective dispersers, such as spore-producing plants (mosses, liverworts, hornworts, ferns and lycopods collectively known as cryptogams). Thus, cryptogams are the key terrestrial plants for understanding the biogeography of oceanic islands; they are primary colonists and hence are sentinel organisms for tracking ecological successions and soil development and, unlike many flowering plants, they have almost all arrived naturally by wind-borne propagules rather than as human introductions. The oceanic South Atlantic Islands include Ascension, St. Helena and Tristan da Cunha (all British Overseas Territories) and the Brazilian counterparts, Fernando de Noronha and Trindade. We are putting together a team of UK and Brazilian scientists who already have considerable experience of working on some of these islands to conduct the first comprehensive study of their cryptogamic diversity and biogeography. This work will enable the drawing up of biodiversity action plans, conservation strategies and lead to the recognition of the islands as key locations for monitoring and understanding the effects of climate change. Our research programme will include extensive field work, which coupled with thorough taxonomic analyses, will lead to the first comprehensive assessment of species richness and diversity of both Brazilian and British South Atlantic Oceanic Islands. Major outputs will be authoritative species checklists for the five islands; an illustrated Flora for Fernando de Noronha like those already published for St. Helena and Ascension Island; popular articles to increase public awareness; taxonomic revisions and articles on island biogeography in peer-reviewed journals. These outputs will provide essential baseline data that will: 1) highlight and publicize the importance of the cryptogamic flora to visitors of the islands; 2) allow for better informed and targeted conservation efforts- e.g. Fernando de Noronha is a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site; 3) provide key reference works for long-term monitoring of the effects of climate change and anthropogenic impacts on the biodiversity of the islands ; 4) form the basis for joint research programmes and funding applications by UK and Brazilian partners on island biogeography embracing the origins of the floras, their evolution, endemism and reproductive biology. Embedded in these activities is a major training programme for early career Brazilian scientists and conservation personnel through workshops and fieldwork. This will enable a new generation of Brazilian scientists to carry out independent, state-of-the-art cryptogamic research.

Natural diamonds are formed at high pressures and temperatures deep within the Earth's interior. When diamonds form, probably from carbonate-rich fluids and melts in the mantle, they sometimes encapsulate small pieces of the minerals that occur at great depth in the Earth. These are called mineral inclusions. The diamonds are then transported from Earth's deep mantle to the surface in uncommon magmas called kimberlites. Diamonds that contain these mineral inclusions are very rare, and offer a truly unique glimpse into what is an otherwise inaccessible portion of the Earth. Some very rare inclusions provide direct samples of lithologies present in the mantle transition zone (400 - 660 km) and the lower mantle (>660 km) - these are often called superdeep diamonds. The chemistry of the inclusions along with mineral phase relations yield important information about the kinds of lithologies they originated in, and constrain the conditions of diamond formation and the depth at which kimberlite magmas form. Thus, superdeep diamonds are very important for studying the types of materials that occur in the deep Earth, for elucidating deep mantle processes, and for understanding how carbon is cycled from the surface to the mantle and back to the surface again - the deep carbon cycle. For example, some diamonds contain materials that are very similar to those occurring near the earth's surface, such as minerals akin to oceanic crust or sediments, and these often have carbon isotopic compositions akin to organic carbon - although this is a controversial subject. From this, we can conclude that surface materials can be transported to great depth, helping to constrain models of mass transfer in Earth by mantle convection. Further, by dating when the diamonds formed, for example by dating of inclusions, we can effectively place time constraints in the geodynamic processes involved in diamond formation and uplift in the mantle. Inclusion-bearing diamonds suitable for study are very hard to come by. We are very fortunate to be in possession of several large suites (over 200 inclusion-bearing diamonds in all!) of diamonds from kimberlite pipes in the famous Juina region of Brazil, a region known for its superdeep diamonds. Our previous study on diamonds from the Juina region has yielded some fascinating results, and has led to a model of material recycling beneath Brazil that we have recently published in the journal Nature and in Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology. We now wish to extend our investigations by studying new suites of diamonds from Juina to test our current model, and to make high-pressure temperature experiments that will allow us to determine at what depths the inclusions formed and equilibrated, and will provide information needed to constrain the rates at which diamonds were transported in the solid-state mantle, possibly in a mantle plume. Here, we propose a three-year project for a comprehensive mineralogical, geochemical, isotopic and experimental investigation of these unique diamonds and their mineral inclusions.

The last decade has seen a significant conservative backlash against women's and LGBTQ rights across the globe. From Russia to the United States, attempts to curtail women's reproductive rights have been accompanied by a backlash against (liberal) feminism and non-heterosexual identities. In Central Eastern Europe and Latin America, in particular, conservative political and religious actors have sought to curb debate about gender inequality, reproductive injustice, sexual violence, and discrimination against LGBTQ communities. The term "gender ideology" has been adopted by a range of actors, including right-wing politicians and catholic and evangelical preachers, to mobilise support for conservative and populist agendas. In both regions, conservative actors portray feminism and LGBTQ rights as the outcome of "cultural colonisation" from international bodies and changing demographics from increased levels of migration. Appropriating the language of rights, they advocate a ban on abortion and parents' rights to educate their children about sex and sexuality based on faith-based values. In countries across both regions, this has led, amongst other things, to the marginalization of equality-based sex education and Gender Studies, a the refusal to ratify the Istanbul Convention, and a rejection of self-identification for transgender people. Gender Wars: East and South is an international, interdisciplinary network of scholars and an artist focusing on gender and sexuality across Latin America and Central Eastern Europe in a comparative, cross-regional perspective . Its purpose is to bring together disciplinary expertise, area-based knowledge, and local know-how to shed light on how different institutional, religious, and cultural histories in and across these regions have contributed to the development of the contemporary backlash. Existing scholarship, mostly by political scientists, has mostly focused on the political dimensions of "anti-genderism", documenting the electoral successes of radical right parties, or the transnational backlash against anti-gender discrimination policies in countires with right-wing, conservative leadership. However, this has left significant cultural and historical dimensions understudied. What role have historical changes in religious life, family structures, and legal reforms in the field women's and LGBTQ rights played in generating contemporary "anti-genderisms"? How has the experience of various forms of authoritarian regimes and processes of post-authoritarian democratization influenced social and cultural perceptions of gender and sexuality? How have the effects of neoliberalism (for instance, changes in labour regulations and social welfare) intersected with "pro-family" conservative approaches in these regions? Across a series of workshops, roundtables, and artistic interventions hosted by academics at network hubs (University of Oxford, Central European University, Federal University of Bahia, University of Amsterdam, University of Brasilia, University of Warsaw), Gender Wars aims to document the similarities, differences, and connections between "anti-gender" movements across the two regions by harnessing the specialist, area-based knowledge and local contacts of network members. It will bring scholars of "anti-gender" movements from across the Humanities and Social Sciences in dialogue with political scientists, in order to expose the historically, socio-culturally, and religiously specific dynamics in each region which generate and underpin the conservative backlash against women's and LGBTQ rights. Finally, it will expose the role of art in critically interrogating and resisting anti-gender movements in Latin America and Central Eastern Europe and integrate artist-led practice in the facilitation, recording, and dissemination of inter-disciplinary dialogues.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

There has been a 40% increase in the number of international migrants in less than two decades with 245 million international migrants on the move worldwide. The majority have their trajectory restricted within countries in the Global South. Increased border limitations into the Global North mean that the promise of humanitarian protection and assistance is also falling disproportionately on the stronger of the southern hemispheric countries that as yet have not the structures in place to respond to new arrivals. Simultaneously, public and private growth initiatives in the latter countries hinge on the availability of flexible labour for large, infrastructure projects The Brazilian Amazon region is a key example of an emergent migrant destination. Brazil's impressive economic performance in the first decade of the 21st century has been accompanied by a positive rhetoric towards immigrants and the rapid expansion of the local labour market. Subsequent movement across the vast border that straddles seven countries and eight Brazilian states has been constituted not just by more conventional Bolivian, Colombian, Paraguayan and Peruvian migrants, but large numbers of recent Venezuelan arrivals, Haitian, Senegalese and Congolese migrants who have arrived in Brazil following rejection from northern borders. They all try to make a living that is so far characterised by precarious status and resources so far. Hence new zones of humanitarian crisis are emerging throughout the rural and urban landscapes, and becoming so far poorly understood corridors of weakly regulated labour recruitment. Through these corridors, informal and formal relations and contracts are channelled and combined, and lead to a critical deficit in so-called decent work in the very sectors on which the 'building' of sustainable economies depends. The key to sustainable development as defined by the ILO is thus not fitting at all. This research explores increasingly dominant forms of employment regimes in the Global South where conventional distinctions between formal and informal work are over determined by local power relations. These relations are expressed in sectoral peculiarities for rapidly expanding infrastructure projects, and in the specificity of each individual's biographical trajectory. In key sectors of construction, energy and agroindustry, these new regimes depend upon, while sustaining, demand for flexible labour. Conventionally sourced from domestic migrant labour it is increasingly being recruited from the Amazonian frontier between Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and the receiving country, Brazil. An interdisciplinary research team will use a participatory and transformative research agenda that aims to investigate: (i) how a deficit in regulation and enforcement between formal and informal actors is turning humanitarian corridors into zones of social crisis for migrants seeking employment; (ii) to what extent the experience of exploitative work and labour analogous to slavery (work endured under threat of penalty, is forced, trafficked or involuntarily indebted) is a product of a series of informal and formal contracts along the migrant journey from home to workplace, (ii) how migrant workers, through collective and active knowledge building, can transform inequitable power relations across a range of spatial and hierarchical nodes. The project seeks to understand the critical deficit in decent work from the perspective of those vulnerable workers most affected by current power inequalities across formal and informal recruitment and employment regimes to inform participatory intervention at a key juncture in Brazil's economic and social development. These migrants will be integral to the global workforce of 2030, particularly in emerging economies, yet in 2018 they remain peripheral to how this is discussed. This proposal take a significant step towards engaging peripheral migrant workers in transforming this reality.