Bringing together an international and multi-disciplinary team of researchers, this project investigates potential inequalities experienced by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) people at three ‘transition’ points in life highlighted in the call for application themes: school to work transitions; employment progression in mid-life; and the transition into retirement and its implications for end of life. The key objective is to provide cross-cultural evidence, for the first time ever, concerning life course inequalities experienced by LGBTQ people, comparing and contrasting these across four European countries with different yet interrelated social, historical, economic and political backgrounds: England, Scotland, Portugal and Germany. Additionally, the project examines how inequalities related to gender identity and/or sexuality vary and intersect with others, such as social class, ethnicity, citizenship status, health status, dis/ability, religion and geographical location across the life course. Work-packages, led by research team members will be conducted in each of the four countries to gather data from existing national and international surveys, new qualitative research and the critical examination of relevant legal, policy, organisational and practitioner documents. The accumulated data will be integrated into social simulation models, which will be used to inform theoretical development in relation to the LGBTQ intersectional life course and impact in terms of indicating future policy and research agendas. The findings will be disseminated to other academics and other relevant stakeholders (e.g. organisations/service providers) through reports, social media, presentations and knowledge exchange activities in each applicant country.

Bringing together an international and multi-disciplinary team of researchers, this project investigates potential inequalities experienced by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) people at three ‘transition’ points in life highlighted in the call for application themes: school to work transitions; employment progression in mid-life; and the transition into retirement and its implications for end of life. The key objective is to provide cross-cultural evidence, for the first time ever, concerning life course inequalities experienced by LGBTQ people, comparing and contrasting these across four European countries with different yet interrelated social, historical, economic and political backgrounds: England, Scotland, Portugal and Germany. Additionally, the project examines how inequalities related to gender identity and/or sexuality vary and intersect with others, such as social class, ethnicity, citizenship status, health status, dis/ability, religion and geographical location across the life course. Work-packages, led by research team members will be conducted in each of the four countries to gather data from existing national and international surveys, new qualitative research and the critical examination of relevant legal, policy, organisational and practitioner documents. The accumulated data will be integrated into social simulation models, which will be used to inform theoretical development in relation to the LGBTQ intersectional life course and impact in terms of indicating future policy and research agendas. The findings will be disseminated to other academics and other relevant stakeholders (e.g. organisations/service providers) through reports, social media, presentations and knowledge exchange activities in each applicant country.

Arsenic contamination of shallow tube well drinking water in Bangladesh is an urgent developmental and health problem, disproportionately affecting the rural poor, i.e. those most reliant on this source of drinking water. The research proposed explicitly takes on the challenge to assess social-technical feasibility of an arsenic mitigation option in geo-hydrologically and socially diverse conditions of rural Bangladesh, in close collaboration with a parallel acceptability and implementation assessment. Subsurface Arsenic Removal (SAR) relies on existing infrastructure of a shallow hand-pump based tubewell and retains arsenic in the subsurface. As such, it has crucial advantages over other household/community arsenic removal filters (no costly filter media, tube well is 1st preferred drinking water option, (minimum) additional hardware widely available, additional removal of iron, and potential for post-deployment monitoring of water quality). Although there has been extensive practical experience with subsurface iron and manganese removal in Europe, the application for subsurface arsenic removal is novel. For the wide dissemination of SAR in Bangladesh it is essential to fully understand the geochemical and microbial processes of iron and arsenic (im)mobilization under shifting redox conditions in the natural multi-component subsurface environment; and to understand how compatible SAR is with local belief systems and practices relating to health and water use; and local modes of risk governance. The project comprises of four disciplines in interrelated research projects: Project 1: Social Science/Environmental Policy Project 2: Drinking Water Engineering Project 3: Geohydrology Project 4: Microbiology Project 1 aims for a theoretically and empirically grounded social acceptability and sustainability assessment of SAR in a rural developing country context; Project 2 aims for identification of the dominant process parameters to formulate design criteria for optimum operation and implementation of SAR in a rural developing country context; Project 3 focuses on effective SAR simulation and operation in the multi-component natural groundwater and aquifer conditions in Bangladesh; Project 4 aims at exploring the microbial processes involved in arsenic (im)mobilization and its potential to enhance effectiveness of SAR application. A key interdisciplinary concern across the projects will be to synergistically analyse appropriate scale of SAR use (household versus community) as well as governance arrangements necessary for technical efficacy and social acceptance of SAR. This will generate essential knowledge which will also be applicable to other future household and community arsenic mitigation options. In the project there will be intensive collaboration between key stakeholders, including the Bangladesh government (DPHE), UNICEF and WaterAid.