Grant winners – 20 August 2015

Royal Society

Wolfson Research Merit Awards

Awards are worth £10,000-£30,000 a year, which is a salary enhancement

• Award winner: Candace Currie
• Institution: University of St Andrews

Developmental transitions in adolescent health

• Award winner: Robin May
• Institution: University of Birmingham

Understanding the evolution of virulence in fungal pathogens

• Award winner: Daniela Schmidt
• Institution: University of Bristol

The future of shelf ecosystems in a warmer, more acidic ocean

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Standard Research

• Award winner: Andrew Beeby
• Institution: Durham University
• Value: £343,880

Single molecule plasmoelectronics

• Award winner: Zhiguo Ding
• Institution: Lancaster University
• Value: £305,891

Simultaneously Wireless InFormation and energy Transfer (SWIFT)

Platform Grants

• Award winner: Fiona Meldrum
• Institution: University of Leeds
• Value: £1,408,821

New strategies for controlling crystallisation

Technology Programme

• Award winner: Carole Perry
• Institution: Nottingham Trent University
• Value: £147,204

Recovering and processing of high value food and pharmaceutical ingredients from waste eggshells

Arts and Humanities Research Council

Research grants

• Award winner: Gabor Thomas
• Institution: University of Reading
• Value: £29,159

Monumentalising kingship: places of royal residence and the making of early medieval British kingdoms AD 500-800

• Award winner: Thomas Moore
• Institution: Durham University
• Value: £155,409

REFIT: Resituating Europe’s first towns: a case study in enhancing knowledge transfer and developing sustainable management of cultural landscapes

• Award winner: Lucy Frith
• Institution: University of Liverpool
• Value: £31,760

Medicine, markets and morals: a multidisciplinary research network on health and social care prioritisation

In detail

Award winners: Leanne McCormick (PI) and Elaine Farrell
Institutions: Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast
Value: £166,419

Bad Bridget: criminal and deviant Irishwomen in North America, 1838-1918

The researchers hope a focus on Irish migrant women, comprising those who engaged in sex outside marriage, neglectful mothers and criminals, will give a fresh perspective on the familiar narrative of Irish female migration to North America. The study will highlight the multifaceted experiences of the “American dream”. “Elaine and I had been carrying out some research independently on Irish women in Boston and New York and were struck by the potential for a bigger project that investigated criminal and deviant women,” Leanne McCormick, lecturer in modern Irish social history at Ulster University, told Times Higher Education. “Toronto was added to provide balance with its higher levels of Protestant Irish immigrants compared with the high rates of Catholic immigrants in Boston and New York. Studies of unmarried Irish women in the US have often focused on the servant, the childminder or the religious sister. Other studies of Irish migrants have looked at marriage, reproduction and fertility rates. An examination of the intertwined strands of the sexually active woman, the deviant mother and the criminal will offer an alternative account of the Irish female migrant experience.”