Grant winners - 19 February 2015

Leverhulme Trust

Research Project Grants
Sciences

• Award winner: Christopher Bayliss
• Institution: University of Leicester
• Value: £158,130

Mutate and survive: how bacteria fight viruses

• Award winner: Karen Mullinger
• Institution: University of Nottingham
• Value: £264,470

Revealing the origin of human alpha oscillations using ultra high-field fMRI-EEG

• Award winner: Nathan Patmore
• Institution: University of Huddersfield
• Value: £103,250

Electron transfer between hydrogen-bonded “dimers of dimers”

Humanities

• Award winner: Anne Haour
• Institution: University of East Anglia
• Value: £251,634

Cowrie shells: an early global commodity

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

• Award winner: Elizabeth Baggs with Richard Bardgett, David Johnson and Peter Smith
• Institutions: University of Aberdeen and University of Manchester
• Value: £30,561

Other Countries Partnering Award, Australia: A rhizotrait framework for the northern and southern hemispheres

• Award winner: Gerhard Leubner with Tina Steinbrecher
• Institution: Royal Holloway, University of London
• Value: £688,344

Proanthocyanidins in cereals and brassicaceae: a cross-species approach on their roles for seed-coat biophysical properties, dormancy and germination

• Award winner: Carolyn Moores
• Institution: Birkbeck, University of London
• Value: £19,415

3D ultrastructural analysis of the subcellular organisation of inner hair cells and of their innervation during ageing

Arts and Humanities Research Council

Leadership Fellowships

• Award winner: Daniel Grimley
• Institution: University of Oxford
• Value: £40,431

Delius, Modernism and the sound of place

• Award winner: Andrew Dilley
• Institution: University of Aberdeen
• Value: £133,332

Commerce and the Commonwealth: business associations, political culture and governance, 1886-1975

In detail

Award winner: Helen Steward
Institution: University of Leeds
Value: £184,545

Persons as animals: understanding the animal bases of agency, perceptual knowledge and thought

This project will investigate ways in which a proper understanding of human beings as animals might help to resolve philosophical problems such as epistemological scepticism about the external world. Helen Steward, professor of philosophy of mind and action, said her working hypothesis was that an “animalistic approach to these issues might be transformative, helping us to ask questions in new ways and making new forms of solution possible”. She observed: “Although philosophers were often happy enough to concede that of course we human beings are animals, the influence of this claim on much of our thought about ourselves has actually been rather thin. Our animality continues to be thought of as something relevant only for understanding basic ‘bodily’ desires or considered through the lens of sociobiology, as shedding light on such things as relationships of dominance and subordination, and mating behaviour.” Professor Steward said that she would like to be able to show that an “animalistic perspective can yield great dividends for our self-understanding”.