DPU staff receive UCL Social Science Plus research awards scheme

UCL's Social Science Plus is the Collaborative Social Science Domain's funding scheme.  The aim of the scheme is to support pilot studies that seed new collaborations between social science and other disciplines across UCL in order to foster future (medium or large) interdisciplinary collaborative external funding applications with a strong social science component. 

For the 2021-22 edition, the Social Science Plus scheme will support three social science led, interdisciplinary projects that will lay the basis for future funding applications.

Professor Haim Yacobi was awarded funding for his project on Overcoming Syndemic Urbanism: Health, Vulnerability and Communities’ Resilience. The main objective of this project is to support a pilot study and a new interdisciplinary collaboration between a social scientist specialising in urban studies (Yacobi), an epidemiologist (Fottrell) and a medical anthropologist (Nkhata). The pilot aims to conceptually develop the notion of Syndemic Urbanism as both theoretical and methodological lenses through which urban health and interventions should be understood.  Syndemic urbanism, we propose, focuses on how urban-spatial elements influence the accumulation of several health conditions and how these are experienced in an urban context.

Dr. Daniel Oviedo (with Azadeh Mashayekhi) were also awarded funding for their proposed project on Are e-scooters contributing to transport-related social exclusion? Mapping supply practices in London’s micro mobility pilot. 

The project aims to leverage the concept of transport-related social exclusion (TRSE), as an entry point for a dialogue with market, state, and civil society actors about their practices and how these practices lead to intended or unintended social impacts. It will map social and spatial inequalities associated with the provision of urban transport service disruptions brought about by the adoption of e-scooters as part of Transport for London’s (TfL) trial in London, and identifying their potential to sustainably address transport-related social exclusion (TRSE), while securing necessary partnerships to co-produce knowledge and foster innovation.

The 2021-22 pilot projects are supported by generous funding from the UCL Faculties of Engineering Sciences, Institute of Education, Mathematical & Physical Sciences, Population Health Sciences, and Social & Historical Sciences