Professor Steve Brammer in the Department of Management at Birmingham Business School has been awarded an application to the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) newly launched Pilot Urgency Grants Mechanism, a scheme designed to enable a fast response to urgent or unforeseen events and a unique opportunity to undertake research of high scientific importance in response to the event.
The project, titled “The Summer After the Floods: a real-time examination of the social, economic and environmental dimensions of flood recovery and resilience”, will engage with academic and end-user stakeholders to assess the differing responses to the floods which impacted the south of England in the winter of 2013/14, and explore the steps being taken to prevent similar upheaval in future flood events.
Worth just under £200,000, the award is of particular note as it brings together a multi-disciplinary cross-college team at the University of Birmingham with involvement from Dr. Layla Branicki (also of the Department of Management), Professor David Hannah, Head of the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and two early-career academics in the College of Life and Environmental Sciences, Drs. Steven Emery and Megan Klaar. This is also the first successful University of Birmingham-led bid to the newly launched scheme.
The proposal was facilitated by James Sharp in the College Research Support Office who worked in the early stages to identify interdisciplinary links between the two Colleges and bring the members of the research team together. Anybody who is interested in bidding for research funding, or simply learning more about the processes involved, can contact James directly at j.s.sharp@bham.ac.uk.