Section: Research
PIR has won over £2 million in external funding over the past year. Current projects include:
Elizabeth Bomberg and Nicola McEwen have been awarded close to £90,000 from the UK Energy Research Council to study 'Grassroots Action and the Politics of Energy Governance in Scotland'. This research project will analyse community grassroots groups in Scotland to assess whether they have an impact on community energy use and political decision making related to energy policy. It will ask: Does grassroots action influence the way we generate and use energy in our communities? Does the community level represent a new layer in the multilevel governance of energy policy? Has the network of actors traditionally involved in energy policy (including government officials, bureaucrats and representatives of core industry and certain NGOs) 'opened up' to accommodate community actors and grassroots activists?
While the research will provide an in-depth and comprehensive examination of energy-related grassroots action in Scotland, its wider aim is to integrate political science perspectives into energy research - a field still largely dominated by natural scientists and engineers. Issues of multilevel governance, political networks, policy dynamics and citizen engagement - all of central importance within political science - are crucial to the energy sector, not least because they set the boundaries within which energy policy is made and set conditions for its likely success. The study's findings will thus enhance and refine energy scholars' understanding of the concepts of energy governance, and identify the importance (or otherwise) of grassroots mobilization in supporting government efforts to reduce energy demand and promote renewable energy.
Dr Eve Hepburn of Politics/IR has become Principal Investigator on an ESRC Grant on 'The Politics of Island Regions: A Framework for Comparative Research'. This is a two-year project with a grant of £80,632.
Islands have developed some of the most innovative forms of sovereignty in the world. Being typically small and insular, islands such as Åland, Prince Edward Island (PEI) and Sardinia have repeatedly rejected outright independence in favour of developing unique status arrangements with larger state or supranational bodies. Yet rather than representing an oddity in the world political order, islands are in fact illustrative of the creative governance arrangements that many states have adopted to accommodate diversity. The experience of small islands offers important lessons for states such as the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain, which are undergoing processes of 'asymmetrical' spatial rescaling.
This ESRC-funded pilot project will map the politics of island regions in Åland, PEI and Sardinia, in order to lay the empirical and theoretical foundations for a large-scale research project on island politics. The main research question is: How do island regions negotiate their autonomy within larger political structures?
The project focuses on five independent variables that determine the degree of island 'autonomy'. Dr Hepburn will undertake field research in each case, including the collection of empirical data and interviews with party and government officials, in order to develop and test several hypotheses on island-state relations.
Eve Hepburn Staff Profile: http://www.pol.ed.ac.uk/staff_profiles/hepburn_eve
MERCURY is a collaborative project designed to examine the EU's contribution to multilateralism, and especially its avowed goal of contributing to 'effective multilateralism' globally. It has a total project cost of 2 million, of which 1.5 million is funded by the European Commission under the EUs 7th Framework Programme.
Edinburgh University hosted the launch of MERCURY on 12-13 March, with a plenary session including a number of high-profile speakers. They included Sir John Grant, Britains long-serving Permanent Representative to the European Union; Martin Barber, former UN Chief of Policy Development and Advocacy in the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; and Professor Gerrit Olivier, South Africas first post-apartheid Ambassador to Russia.
From the academic side, the session heard several of the best-known scholars in the field of EU studies, including Christopher Hill, Cambridge University; Wolfgang Wessels, University of Köln; and Alberta Sbragia, University of Pittsburgh.
MERCURY is led by Edinburgh's Politics and International Relations Department. The full team includes the University of Köln; Cambridge University; the Institute of International Affairs (Rome); Sciences Po, Paris; SIPRI (Stockholm); Charles University (Prague); the University of Pretoria; and Fudan University (Shanghai).
Dr Mark Aspinwall is the Project Coordinator and the Research Director is Professor John Peterson.
Website: http://www.mercury-fp7.net
Contact: mark.aspinwall@ed.ac.uk
This is a two year project (2008-2010) funded by the ESF European Collaborative Research Fund. Led by Charlie Jeffery and Ailsa Henderson from the Institute of Governance at the University of Edinburgh, the project team includes collaborators in Austria, France, Germany, Spain and the UK. The grant has funded a 14-region multi-national study of public attitudes at the regional scale. The data allow us to understand ?regional citizenship?, to determine whether individuals expect uniform social and political rights across the state, or whether regions may be now considered primary cites of citizenship.
Contacts: charlie.jeffery@ed.ac.uk; ailsa.henderson@ed.ac.uk
This is a two year project (2008-10) led by Prof. John Peterson and Dr. Andy Thompson (PIR) and Dr. Hussein Kassim (University of East Anglia), funded by a £257,000 ESRC Open Call Grant. The project's aim is to create an original dataset to serve as a primary source for an authoritative study of one of the world's most important and debated international administrations. It is conducted with support from the EU Consent network of excellence.
Website: http://www.pol.ed.ac.uk/eu_consent/commission_survey
This is a 4 year project (2004-8) financed by an EU Excellence Grant of 970,000. It explores the impact of policy change on East-West migration, focusing on migration from Poland and Romania to Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. It also examines how knowledge on these dynamics feeds into European policy-making. It is being conducted by a team of 5 political scientists, sociologists and economists, led by Dr. Christina Boswell. Click here to read about highlights from the project.
Website: http://www.migration-networks.org/
This 2.5 year project (2008-2011), funded under the ESRCs First Grant scheme and led by Dr. Pontus Odmalm, addresses a set of questions regarding party competition and how to explain parties positions in certain policy areas. Focus is on two issues that give rise to conflicting explanatory responses in the scholarly debate: immigration and EU membership. The project compares national and regional parties in Belgium, Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Contact: pontus.odmalm@ed.ac.uk
This is a 2 year project (2008-2010) led by Dr Dominic Johnson and funded by the John Templeton Foundation with a grant of £450,000 supporting 6 collaborators and 3 graduate students in the UK and USA. The project explores the adaptive function of religious beliefs and behaviors in human evolutionary history, using laboratory experiments, cross-cultural comparisons, and empirical analysis, with a view to improving our understanding of religion, cooperation, conflict and terrorism.
Website: http://evolution-of-religion.com/
Contact: http://dominicdpjohnson.com/
This is a 5 year project (2004-2009) led by Dr Dominic Johnson and funded by the Society in Science Branco Weiss Fellowship, with a grant of £320,000. The project aims to improve our understanding of global conflict and cooperation via new scientific knowledge about human nature. New research from evolutionary biology, psychology, genetics, and experimental economics have uncovered systematic human predispositions that, while allowing us to better predict human behaviour, also force us to rethink assumptions lying at the heart of international relations theory.
Contact: http://dominicdpjohnson.com/
This 2-year project (2007-9) investigates the causes of Islamic radicalisation within Russia and their consequences for Russia's relevant domestic policies (for example ethnic, regional, immigration policies, and domestic democratisation), as well as its foreign policy response towards the Muslim world in the context of the global 'War on Terror'. It is funded by the ESRC with a grant of £208,000. The principal investigators are Dr. Roland Dannreuther and Dr. Luke March.
Project Website: www.pol.ed.ac.uk/islam
Contact: r.dannreuther@ed.ac.uk
This project examines China's international energy policy, its impact on global politics, and assesses the risks and opportunities as China seeks to ensure security of oil supply. The project is funded by grants worth £7,000, from the British Academy and by the Caledonian Research Foundation/Royal Society of Edinburgh. It extends over the calendar year 2008, with Dr. Roland Dannreuther acting as the Principal Investigator.
Contact: r.dannreuther@ed.ac.uk
Funded through a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship that brings Dr. Ailsa Henderson to the University of Edinburgh, this research project offers the first systematic mapping of the multiple and overlapping political cultures in Europe. It will locate the constituent regional and sub-state political cultures in 18 Western European states, clarify the socialization processes that set these two types of cultures apart, develop indicators for predicting the presence of cultures and last, identify their impact on individuals and regions.
Project website: http://www.pol.ed.ac.uk/epop/research/constituent_political__cultures
This project explores predictors of voting in sub-state elections in the UK, Canada, Germany and Spain 1980-2005. The project has two goals: to determine whether the reasons that compel voters to go to the polls in national elections also operate in sub-state or regional elections; and second, to see whether in regional identity and the power of regional institutions can affect the likelihood of voting. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada the project is conducted by two academics in PIR and has supported three post-graduate research assistants over three years. For more information contact Dr. Ailsa Henderson.
Project website: http://www.pol.ed.ac.uk/epop/research/substate_voting
Do global inequalities exhibit an injustice which can be conceived in terms of ecological debt? Who owes what, to whom, and why? Construing allegations of ecological debt as claims about injustice in the distribution of property rights in the planet's various natural resources, the project assesses such claims with respect to private property regimes in specific sectors, identifying where these conflict with human rights principles. It is being carried out by Prof. Tim Hayward, funded by a one-year British Academy Senior Research Fellowship
Web link: http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/jwi/ecodebt.htm)
This three-year project (2009-2012) is funded by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowshop and undertaken by Dr. Elizabeth Cripps. The research reassesses the circumstances under which we make up morally or politically salient collectivities and the moral duties we acquire as a result of combined action. The aim is to provide a foundation for discussion, in moral and political philosophy, of how appropriately and fairly to respond to the problem of climate change. A primarily collective duty to tackle climate change will be defended, and the implications considered in terms of individual duties. The project will also address potential conflicts between globally acquired environmental duties and local moral claims.
Contact: ecripps@staffmail.ed.ac.uk
This project is concerned with the ways different kinds of knowledge are mobilized in mental health policy making in Scotland. We're interested in the development both of 'big ideas' and more specific regulatory tools. Our work runs from 2006-2011, and is part of the EU-funded integrated project KNOWandPOL, which covers health and education policy in eight countries and at local, national and international levels. The PI is Dr. Richard Freeman, the co-investigator is Dr. Steve Sturdy (Genomics Forum, SSPS) and the Research Fellow Dr. Jen Smith.
Website: http://www.knowandpol.eu/
The research will inform the development of policy relating to the provision of health information in a variety of ways for five specific conditions: antenatal screening, ending a pregnancy due to foetal abnormality, sickle cell/thallasaemia, lymphoma and caring for people with dementia. It is being led by Dr. Andy Thompson together with health service researchers at Stirling, Glasgow, Dundee and Oxford Universities. The research is funded by an NHS R&D Service Development and Organisation (SDO) award, under the Patient choice research programme. Edinburghs input will be financed by a £232,300 grant.
Contact: andrew.thompson@ed.ac.uk
This page was published on 15 February 2010