Two School of Law academics awarded local innovation fellowships
Dr Ali Malik and Dr Rebecca Shaw have been awarded Creating Opportunities through Local Innovation Fellowships (COLIF).
The fellowships aim to spread opportunities and reduce regional inequalities through working with local businesses, third sector organisations and policy communities.
They are delivered through ESRC’s Impact Acceleration Accounts (IAA) via the members of ESRC IAA Cluster 2 (comprised of the Universities of Leeds, York, Liverpool, Manchester, Huddersfield and Sheffield).
The Fellowships are geared towards creating place-based activities around key priority thematic areas such as cost of living and social protection, productivity and employment through a place lens and understanding and encouraging pro-social behaviour in communities.
Equitable approaches to climate emergency planning, preparedness and response
Dr Ali Malik’s fellowship will facilitate the development of a climate emergency and community resilience toolkit, ensuring inclusive and equitable strategies for responding to climate disasters.
The toolkit will be co-produced with key third-sector organisations based in Leeds and other regions of the UK and will be aimed at statutory public sector bodies involved in Local Resilience Forums (LRFs), such as the police and local authorities.
He says:
I am delighted to be one of the recipients of this Fellowship. As we continue to experience more extreme weather events here in the UK, my emergent research findings indicate that the impacts of climate emergencies and disasters are felt differently by diverse communities. This Fellowship will not only facilitate the co-production of an emergency response and community resilience toolkit but also enhance our ability to prepare emergency responders to better respond to such extreme weather events. I look forward to working with the project partners, police practitioners, and fellow researchers to make a meaningful impact in this important area.
Changing the narrative of domestic abuse
Dr Rebecca Shaw’s fellowship proposal notes that a 2022 Women’s Aid Survey of UK attitudes to domestic abuse revealed the persistent presence of dominant socio-cultural narratives which enable and excuse domestic abuse.
This fellowship will provide the opportunity for Dr Shaw to work alongside local and regional government, schools, third sector organisations and West Yorkshire Police to establish a ‘Changing the Narrative’ working group to assess current educational resources for school children and identify gaps in provision.
Additionally, the fellowship will facilitate the collaboration between partners in the working group and those with lived experience of domestic abuse to develop a funding proposal for a ‘joined up’ cultural programme, and accompanying hub, aimed at young children to improve understanding and change the narrative of domestic abuse.
She writes:
There is an urgent need to begin conversations with children regarding domestic abuse in order to change the discourse and facilitate an attitudinal and cultural change, and this Fellowship will allow for the opportunity to forge that local and regional level policy required to underpin that change.
The Co-Director of the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, Professor Conor O’Reilly, congratulates Dr Malik and Dr Shaw, saying:
These COLIF awards recognise the excellent and important research that Ali and Rebecca have both been doing in their respective fields of community resilience to climate change and tackling domestic abuse. Through these Fellowships, they will extend their research efforts to develop locally-engaged and co-created responses to these major societal challenges. We at the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies are immensely proud of the important research that they are undertaking.
Dr Malik is currently working on the ESRC-funded project Policing and community resilience in the context of climate change and is a member of the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies. He can be found on X/Twitter @DrAliMalik_
Dr Shaw has recently completed her ESRC-funded project Domestic Abuse Service Providers and their Stories and is a member of both the Centre for Law and Social Justice and the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies. She can be found on Twitter/X @Dr_Rebecca_Shaw.
