The Victoria & Albert Museum has a large collection of Chinese export paintings from the 18th and 19th century painted by artisans from Canton and other Chinese ports. These paintings were often sold as souvenirs to Europeans. They typically depict contemporary life in China, illustrating the various trades, costumes, boats, birds, insects and plants, aimed at satisfying foreign clients and their curiosity (and perception) of China and Chinese things. These paintings are valuable for the study of trade and cultural exchange between Britain and China in the 18th and 19th century. There is considerable interest in these paintings amongst researchers studying the economic and cultural history, international trade and cultural exchange of that epoch both within the UK and internationally. A number of museums, libraries and charities in the UK have similar collections. Internationally, similar collections exist in continental Europe, Russia, America and Asia. While the majority were painted as souvenirs for tourists, some were painted for scientific research. The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) owns a large collection of early 19th century Chinese watercolour paintings of plants. These were commissioned by the RHS and the Chinese artisans in Canton and Macau were supervised by the RHS representative John Reeves to paint accurately plant species to serve as a plant catalogue. This collection is different from most Chinese export paintings in that they were scientific drawings and well documented by both the RHS's minutes and Reeves' notebooks. There paintings are, therefore, confidently dated. A mixture of both Chinese and European painting techniques and materials were used on some of these paintings. For example, European paper and pigments such as Whatman paper and Prussian blue were used. Technical art history is an emerging field especially for East Asian art. While there is considerable curatorial interest in the historical study of Chinese export paintings, there have been relatively few studies involving scientific analysis. Most institutions do not allow samples to be taken from paper-based objects because of conservation ethics. Consequently, conventional scientific analysis (often destructive) can only be conducted on residuals fallen off the paintings. These studies are therefore rather limited and the results may not even be representative of the paintings on the whole. One of the major problems with the study of paper-based objects is the lack of a wide range of non-invasive instruments to systematically study a large collection of materials. With the development of imaging science and technology, it is increasingly possible to conduct effective scientific examinations non-invasively. This proposal intends to address art historical and conservation research questions related to these paintings through the application of novel imaging technology developed in past research council funded projects in combination with complementary non-invasive spectroscopic techniques. This will be the first time a wide range of complementary non-invasive imaging and spectroscopic techniques are used to study a well-defined collection to address specific questions such as the nature and provenance of the painting material, date and provenance of the paintings, the relation between the painting/drawing techniques and the provenance of the material, the light sensitivity and the state of conservation of the paintings. The project will explore trade and cultural exchanges through insights from technical art history; contribute to the new emerging field of technical art history for East Asian art; demonstrate the usefulness of non-invasive scientific examination for the understanding, enjoyment and preservation of paper-based objects; contribute to future exhibitions of these paintings; and establish a network of interdisciplinary researchers with a broad common interest in the study of paper-based objects.

Environmental research has the power to connect with people's everyday lives and spark their imaginations. In 2016: a NERC scientist's graphic illustrating global temperatures spiralling upwards went viral on social media and was then used during the Opening Ceremony of the Rio Olympics, being seen by more than 1 billion people; 12.3 million people watched episodes of BBC's Planet Earth II programme making it the most-watched nature show; over 500,000 volunteers contributed 8 million sightings to the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch; 12,000 people donated the idle time of their computers to ClimatePrediction.net to run climate models; and 500 people were involved in Biohacking and DIY Science experimentation. Our ambition is for large-scale public involvement in participatory research practices, such as citizen science, in order to benefit research, researchers and members of the public. We want to progress from 'engagement' being solely passive consumption of media-channelled facts, or ad hoc one-off contribution to a single initiative, to an ongoing active and routine engagement with environmental research, participating, questioning and debating. Our vision is to leverage the power of the people and their involvement in environmental science at all stages of the research - from research design to explaining the evidence and impact - to address major environmental challenges, co-produce novel research and engage on their own terms. We want to create a generation of researchers who know how to utilise these techniques of successful public engagement and citizen science, and pay attention to the ethical and social implications of participation and the environmental issues in question. We want to establish the research commitment and NGO link that will enable successful co-production of environmental knowledge. Recent research by ComRes (2017) suggests that people's interest in environmental research increases when they are able to make a connection to their own lives. Yet, only a minority understand what constitutes or regularly engage with environmental research, although many want to hear more. In order to create genuine and sustainable change in public engagement with environmental research, OPENER combines the shared enthusiasm for the environment and the public's curiosity for the natural world with the expanding public engagement capacity of multidisciplinary researchers, practitioners, public-facing organisations and community groups. OPENER will scope out and build commitment for a national community of practice (CoP) for public engagement with environmental research. We believe that active public engagement and debate must: 1. be a multidisciplinary and partnership-building endeavour; 2. actively build on existing expertise in citizen science and participatory engagement; 3. acknowledge people have a complex identities, often with contradictory opinions; 4. respect and value all knowledge as meaningful and promote pluralism in expertise; 5. develop increased capacity, interest and skills of researchers and audiences; 6. enable avenues of engagement that acknowledge different needs, interests and availability; 7. facilitate public involvement in all stages of the scientific process and make explicit links to everyday life. Our Team who co-created OPENER is made up of national- and world-leaders in: environmental science (climate, ecology, soil, marine); public engagement and citizen science; cross-disciplinary social science; and public- and membership-facing organisations. We share a commitment to collective learning and embrace the new ways of thinking and doing required to ensure the sustainability of a national CoP. We will engage with a wide range of stakeholders to deliver an intergrated vision, mission, core values and joint activities for public engagement with environmental research in the UK.

Inspired by the Enlightenment, from the late 18th century, the European colonial powers such as Britain and Spain, and local officials in their colonial dependencies, were collecting information from around the world. Maps and charts, as well as scientific drawings of flora and fauna, were commissioned, and local artists were often employed to draw and paint these. Several Spanish scientific expeditions, such as the Royal Botanical Expedition to the Viceroyalty of New Granada (Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela today), led by José Celestino Mutis from 1783 to 1816, among others, hired local artists, such as Francisco Javier Cortés to provide the illustrations. Botanical paintings following European conventions of scientific drawings were also commissioned from Chinese export artists in Canton (Guangzhou, China) by the Royal Horticultural Society and the Royal Botanical Gardens in London and painted on Whatman papers sent from London. Similarly, during this period, the East Indian Company was actively employing Chinese and Indian artists to paint flora and fauna in South East Asia and India respectively. These cultural encounters have often resulted in hybrid artistic practices. By about 1818, in the context of the coming of Peruvian independence, watercolours of Peruvian subjects are documented in Lima. The earliest are associated with Cortés, soon to be joined by his presumed pupil, Francisco "Pancho" Fierro in the 1820s. By the 1830s, watercolours by Fierro, his followers, and imitators became widespread, and were eventually produced in the thousands, with the phenomenon tapering off around 1850-60. Similar ethnographic drawings are found in Colombia and Ecuador. In the meantime, trade in Chinese export painting, depicting daily life of locals, from Canton flourished in the late 18th to the 19th century. Costume paintings of Peruvian types are also found in albums with provenances and artistic styles suggesting that they were made in studios in Canton. These works produced in north-western South America and in Canton from 1780 to 1850 are connected to a complex web of social, political, artistic, geographic, economic, and technological phenomena, all of which affected the motives for their creation, the materials from which they were made, the means of their dispersal and preservation, and the lives of the people who made, sold, bought, and collected them. This project will focus on a large group of ethnographic as well as selected scientific watercolours (e.g. maps and botanical drawings), made for export to Europe or North America by local artists in north-western Latin America and Asia. These are now found in widely dispersed public collections in the US and UK. One of the project goals is to use the study as a lens to reveal details of global trade and information exchange networks among the Americas, Asia and Europe ca. 1780-1850. Pigments, dyes and paper are commodities that were traded extensively throughout history; their identity and the way they are used are often traceable to their geographic and cultural origins. This period also saw the synthesis of new pigments, especially in Europe, making it easier to date an object using these pigments. Advanced imaging and material analysis techniques, used by heritage scientists and conservators to detect, identify and understand the composition of artworks/heritage items, create large data sets that require expert processing and interpretation (hence, creating a barrier to entry and use by non-scientists). This project aims to streamline the data collection and interpretation processes and open the results to researchers and audiences in the humanities by (1) advancing an AI-assisted method of data analysis, (2) providing an online, linked open data platform for the results and their interpretation, and (3) demonstrating the impact of the collected and interpreted data for humanities research in this large scale humanities-led project.

The Organic-PLUS project has the overall aim of providing high quality, trans-disciplinary, scientifically informed decision support to help all actors in the organic sector, including national and regional policy makers, to reach the next level of the EU’s organic success story. By doing so organic food systems can be more true to organic principles but equally to the EU Bioeconomy agenda. Organic-PLUS objectives are to: 1) identify and valorise contentious inputs currently used in European agriculture 2) provide specific technical solutions to minimise or phase-out their use 3) provide environmental, social and economic assessments of phase-out scenarios 4) disseminate and broker knowledge, ideas and results to maximise impact. We use a trans-disciplinary research approach; the consortium includes 11 universities and 15 multi-actors from 9 EU and 3 associated countries. We combine scientists from many academic disciplines with advisors, farmers and other stakeholders in participatory research design. Organic-PLUS has three large ‘topical’ workpackages called PLANT (researching alternatives to copper and mineral oils), LIVESTOCK (researching alternatives to synthetic vitamins, antibiotics and novel animal bedding) and SOIL (researching alternatives to peat, animal-derived fertilisers and plastic mulch). The topical work is supported by IMPACT (researching consumer conceptions of contentious inputs and disseminating knowledge together with stakeholders) and by MODEL (using sustainability assessment methodology to deliver phasing-out scenarios). The LEAD workpackage is also responsible for managing the International Scientific and the European Industry advisory boards ensuring impact to industry and policy development. The results of the project are disseminated through peer-reviewed and farmer-facing publications, social media, on-farm events and international conferences and we will also ensure impact through citizen juries and engagement with policy makers.

Climate change is an area of environmental science with far reaching social, political and cultural implications. How members of the public think about and engage with the science of climate change - and the consequences for everyone's lives - is a crucial piece of the puzzle for making progress on climate change as a society. Effective adaptation policies, national targets for energy efficiency, and rapid decarbonisation through energy technologies all depend on committed and sustained public engagement. This means that in addition to a solid evidence base on climate science, the science of communicating climate change is critical too The Climate Consortium project aims to provide the 'infrastructure' to ensure that efforts to engage the public on climate change are coordinated, effective and based on the most up-to-date evidence from academic studies and tried-and-tested practitioner expertise. The project team includes internationally recognised specialists on public engagement, high profile science communicators and a blend of climate science, social science and communications expertise. Using our networks and experience, we will ensure that the Climate Consortium is an inclusive one year programme, producing evidence-based but accessible resources to catalyse public engagement with climate change at a national scale. The first stage of the Climate Consortium project involves an 'audit' of the diverse pool of expertise on public engagement with climate change that already exists in the UK. Rather than 'reinvent the wheel', we will identify opportunities for better coordinating and drawing value from existing initiatives, including producing a publicly available register of climate change public engagement expertise. But public engagement experience is only one side of the equation - central to the Climate Consortium project is working closely with diverse representatives of public groups (including Refugee Action and regional Community Centres) to identify and establish possible channels for effectively reaching beyond the 'usual suspects' with climate change communication, and instead creating a dialogue with diverse communities and who bring new and distinct perspectives. A key output for the project will be a website that captures areas of agreement and 'consensus' between experts on public engagement (and areas of disagreement), and presents them in an easy-to-use tool for public engagement practitioners. This is crucial so that the diverse range of individuals and organisations undertaking public engagement on climate change in the UK can access a trusted and reliable source of guidance on strategies and approaches for effective communication and dialogue.