Improving the sustainable management of agricultural biodiversity is a key objective in regional and international natural resource policy, and is also critical for safeguarding food production and adapting to climate change. Within Europe, small farmers are custodians of the region's greatest agro-biodiversity assets, yet without remuneration for this stewardship activity. As public sector budgets struggle to provide compensation, the case for exploring the potential support from the agro-biodiversity based food chain is the driver of this Fellowship which aims to explore innovative business models and learning approaches not only to support sustainable management but also to reconnect food chain players and civil society with conservation values. The prospective Fellow, Dr Humberto Rios Labrada, is an experienced plant breeder and winner of national and international awards for innovating with participatory and action research methodologies for rural innovation. He will be hosted at Coventry University, UK, in its multidisciplinary Centre for Agroecology. Field research, and industry secondments and visits, will involve institutions in the UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Cuba, to explore initiatives that have been generating economic benefits through participatory agro-biodiversity management (termed Agro-biodiversity Management Enterprises) and identify opportunities for their scaling up. The Fellow will receive training in social enterprise development and entrepreneurship which will diversity his skillset to become a lead player in sustainable rural innovation. He will also develop transferable leadership skills in academia and rural development. Key outputs include two peer-reviewed articles, a Policy Brief, an arts-meets-science Performance, and training curricula for the continued development of AMEs.

DIASPORALANDS investigates the continuities and changes in Turkey’s diasporic landscapes during the last decade, which coincides with the democratic decline and regime change in Turkey. By using Turkey’s diaspora communities in the United Kingdom and in Germany as case studies, it investigates how the authoritarian drift in the homeland affects diaspora spaces and how host countries respond to authoritarian states’ engagement with their diasporas in their territory. It proposes a novel methodology which combines qualitative and quantitative methods, bringing together bottom-up voices with top-down narratives in order to present a comprehensive picture of the triadic relationship between Turkey, its diasporas and the host countries. It focuses not only on elite-level political processes but also on domestic transformations and their transnational impact on the everyday lives of diaspora communities in Europe, thus revealing visible and invisible effects of transnational authoritarianism on diasporic landscapes. DIASPORALANDS is interdisciplinary and draws on theoretical frameworks from various fields including political science, international relations, sociology and migration studies. The specific focus combines discussions on diaspora studies, foreign policy analysis, democratic decline, the international relations of authoritarian regimes as well as multiculturalism and opportunity structures in host countries. It aims to significantly advance our theoretical and empirical understanding of diaspora politics in Europe with its comprehensive approach and methodological innovation. The novelty of the project comes from the application of a mixed methods strategy, which has not been previously used to study the recent waves of migration and diasporic landscapes of Turkey after the coup attempt in 2016.

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.

The lasting separation between Turkish and Greek Cypriots on the small island of Cyprus has long been one of the contentious issues of the Eastern Mediterranean. Much effort and energy has been spent trying to find a comprehensive resolution to the dispute. However, the rationale behind the strategy of conflict resolution, which has been mainly based on negotiations between subsequent leaders, remains problematic. The lack of (or limited) direct involvement of societies, particularly disengagement of young people, who have lived in an ethnically divided country since they were born, has prevented mobilization of Cypriot youth in their search for communication and interaction. However, current peacebuilding efforts on the island still focus on reaching an agreement between leaders instead of finding ways to engage the youth of both sides, who are expected to live together despite the fact that they have never experienced it before. As McEvoy-Levy suggests “a peace agreement’s endurance depends on whether the next generations accept or reject it, how they are socialized during the peace process, and their perceptions of what that peace process has achieved.” As the most recent addition to the international community’s repertoire of conflict resolution methods, peacebuilding simply refers to a comprehensive process that tries to remove the root causes of a conflict. According to Lederach, the actors at the national and international top levels are involved in negotiation and peacemaking, while the grassroots, bottom-up level are aiming to promote peace and reconciliation at local and society level. Thus, the linkage between the top and grassroots levels, in which middle-level process aims to facilitate, is essential for an effective and sustainable peace. This research proposal aims to discover, observe and reshape the correlation between youth and peacebuilding particularly in the Cyprus case by borrowing Lederach’s approach on peacebuilding.