University of Exeter’s partnership with Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

The Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) is a £1.5bn investment by the UK government to deliver cutting edge research and ensure that UK research takes a prominent role in addressing challenges faced by developing countries.

The University of Exeter is thrilled to be working in partnership with the GRFC, who are supporting funding global projects that will benefit many, not just early-career researchers, but also people living in developing countries and the UK.

The GCRF aligns with the University of Exeter’s aim to deliver research that has a global impact and tackles global challenges, such as:

  • Strengthening global peace, security and governance.
  • Strengthening resilience and responses to crises.
  • Promoting global prosperity.
  • Tackling extreme poverty to help the world’s most vulnerable.

The University is working on numerous GCRF projects covering a vast array of themes, and the following are led by the University of Exeter:

Do Nightlights Emissions Enlighten? Exploring the effect of local economic conditions on violence against civilians during civil war

Dr Stacey Hynd (History), Dr Jonathan Cinnamon (Geography) and Dr Nils-Christian Bormann (Politics) are investigating the effect of local economic conditions on violence against civilians in Uganda. This research will help us better understanding the link between local economic conditions and violence against civilians, and will enable us to identify high-risk zones. Also night lights emissions could facilitate the tracking of public resource deployment and thereby enable researchers and citizens to hold politicians accountable.

Emergency flood planning and management using unmanned aerial systems

This project focuses on using instrumented unmanned aerial systems (UASs) to collect and collate information about an unfolding flooding disaster. The relative ease with which UASs can be deployed (often hand launched) to assess damage across large areas provides emergency responders with the opportunity to assess the situation quickly, allowing the prioritisation of resources and their effective deployment where they are required.

The research will address the challenges associated with flying UASs in such (non-ideal) situations: for example maintaining performance during adverse weather conditions, during intermittent loss of communication with the base station, overcoming the loss of operator visuals, providing the ability to recover the vehicle without a runway and avoiding potential collisions with unexpected obstacles within the flight domain.

The project will also consider how the data can be combined with accelerated flood inundation models to generate detailed evacuation plans, and to predict the nature and progress of the flooding to improve allocation of emergency resources, build community flood resilience, save lives and reduce economic damage. The strategy will take into account both the physicality of the flood event itself and the social structures which are subject to the flooding. The novel decision support system (DSS) developed through this research will be of direct benefit to flood emergency planners and responders, UAS operators, trainers and educators engaged in tackling emergency situations

Production without medicalisation: a pilot intervention in global protein production

This project focuses on the growing and under-regulated aquaculture (fish and shell fish production) sector within Asia, which is intensifying to meet domestic demand for animal derived protein and worldwide export markets. We will assess the growing use of antibiotics within this important sector of global food production, and experiment with farm based medicine stewardship strategies that promote sustainable and appropriate use. The project has implications for food security, food safety, human and environmental (aquatic) health as well as the livelihoods of millions of people.

Development of novel blast resistant wheat varieties for Bangladesh by genome editing

Wheat blast is a devastating disease that appeared for the first time in Bangladesh in February 2016. In a very short period of time the disease has already destroyed 15,000 Hectares of wheat. Farmers have resorted to burning wheat fields to try to prevent wheat blast from spreading. This is a potentially catastrophic situation in one of the world's poorest countries. Unless wheat blast is controlled, the disease threatens wheat production, not only in Bangladesh, but right across Asia. An urgent response to wheat blast disease is required.

This project will use the very latest genome editing methods to modify wheat plants so that they are able to resist fungal infection. We have identified potential disease susceptibility factors which, if modified (or removed), may make wheat plants better able to defend themselves against wheat blast. This is a novel approach, which would result in non-GM wheat varieties, which can be provided to farmers very quickly.

The micro-politics of refugee crisis management: the case of Lebanon's municipalities

The purpose of this research is to understand the politics of response to the refugee crisis at municipal and district level in Lebanon to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian response and provide stakeholders with on-the-ground knowledge of the political dimension of the refugee phenomenon in Lebanon. This research will provide an overview of the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon over the past five years contextualising it with the specificities of its territory, history and politics.

Due to the intricacies of grand societal challenges and the necessity for all disciplines to contribute, many of the GCRF’s funding schemes will seek to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to research. By 2020, it’s expected that the GCRF will constitute around 10 per cent of the UK’s public research spend.