Grant winners - 28 February 2013

Economic and Social Research Council

Future Research Leaders Scheme

• Award winner: Vanesa Castan Broto
• Institution: University College London
• Value: £171,459

Mapping urban energy landscapes in the global South

• Award winner: David Clifford
• Institution: University of Southampton
• Value: £139,496

Emerging international connections of philanthropy: exploring the global and local geography of UK-registered charities working overseas

• Award winner: Felicity Boardman
• Institution: University of Warwick
• Value: £166,074

Selecting futures: the social and ethical implications of genetic screening

DFID-ESRC Growth Research Programme

• Award winner: Arjunan Subramanian
• Institution: University of Glasgow
• Value: £390,164

Information, market creation and agricultural growth

Leverhulme Trust

International Networks

Sciences

• Award winner: Davide Mariotti
• Institution: University of Ulster
• Value: £124,507

Materials processing by atmospheric pressure plasmas for energy applications

Humanities

• Award winner: Norman Housley
• Institution: University of Leicester
• Value: £67,358

Reconfiguring the Crusade in the 15th century: goals, agencies and resonances

• Award winner: Giorgio Riello
• Institution: University of Warwick
• Value: £79,261

Luxury and the manipulation of desire: historical perspectives for contemporary debates

Social sciences

• Award winner: Alan Roulstone
• Institution: Northumbria University
• Value: £50,629

Combating young disabled people’s worklessness: an international network

Major Research Fellowships

• Award winner: Bina Agarwal
• Institution: University of Manchester
• Value: £126,933

Agricultural production collectivities and collective action theory

• Award winner: Emma Clery
• Institution: University of Southampton
• Value: £124,166

Romantic women writers and the question of economic progress

In detail

Research Leadership Awards

Award winner: William Pettigrew

Institution: University of Kent

Value: £818,692

Corporations and cultural hybridisation: English overseas trading companies in the 17th century and the development of a global dialogue about governance

This project will investigate the relationship between England’s remarkable commercial expansion overseas in the 17th century and the profound changes to its government that define its domestic history in that age. Dr Pettigrew says that he hopes to reconsider the place of overseas trading corporations - precursors of modern multinationals - and the markets they traded in. “I want to examine how the corporations allowed non-European cultures to influence English thinking about government and governance. The project will depict the formative stages of the English empire as a series of experiments with government,” he adds. It will show that the first multinational corporations played “an unappreciated part as conduits for globalisation and constitutional change…Answering the research question will help us to better understand how corporate experience overseas ‘hybridised’ English thought and practice about government and how this hybridisation catalysed globalisation,” Dr Pettigrew concludes.