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CONTEXT In recent years, the 'turbulent triangle' between China, Japan, Korea and Russia has been a focus of global attention. This zone of Northeast Asia is a vital geostrategic and economic location, and the legacy of conflict during the period of this project remains keenly felt and continues to influence international relations in Northeast Asia. The period to be studied by researchers working on this project was one of intense imperial competition in Northeast Asia, involving Britain and the US as well as the Northeast Asian powers, and it had enduring implications. The project runs from the start of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894, through the Russo-Japanese War, the First World War, the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Second World War in the Pacific, the Chinese Civil War, and the Korean War up until the Korean Armistice in 1953. Japan was the dominant imperial power in the region during this period until 1945. Japan began seizing the Chinese Eastern Railway, a Russian-owned line, during the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Ultimately Japan drove Russia out of Manchuria, and it occupied Korea from 1910. The Russian Revolution in 1917 ended Tsarist imperialism, but the increasing assertiveness of the USSR led to the Soviet reconquest of Sakhalin in 1945, along with the seizure of the Kuril Islands: both remain disputed by Japan seventy years later. Another legacy of the Cold War in Asia, the Korean War, has never formally ended. US troops are also still in Japan more than six decades after the end of the postwar occupation. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES This project on the history of Northeast Asia will establish an international and interdisciplinary research network. This will bring together researchers based in Japan and the UK to work collaboratively. We will use innovative methods, including from disciplines outside history such as historical geography and history of art, to identify the transnational, global and local influences which shaped the region in this period. Links between Britain and Japan in this region during the period of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902-1923), will also be a particular focus. By working collaboratively, researchers on the project will be able to learn from comparisons and connections to adjacent areas of research, and so will build up a more complete picture of the conflicts, connections and resistance which shaped the subjugated territories of Korea and Manchuria, and the adjacent region. The project will consider the impact on communities, daily life, trade, infrastructure and the borders, enabling us to understand the influence of imperial competition, connections and resistance in the region, and so to understand the enduring impact of the conflicts and tensions of this period. During the 16-month project, researchers will produce scholarly publications including an edited volume and a journal article. We will also publish a paper on the legacies of this region's history of imperialism and subjugation, aimed at policymakers. In addition, researchers will curate public exhibitions on this theme in the UK and Japan, and will establish a website aimed at general readers and students. BENEFITS The history of this region is of enormous interest to scholars, but the benefits of this research are much broader. A better understanding of the past is essential to make sense of the complex pressures at work in the region today; this is a vital consideration in a region widely perceived as critical to global stability. Through this research project, researchers will gain and share new insights.

This proposal is a collaboration between Professor A.M. Glazer (Crystallography Group, Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford) and Professors P.A. Thomas and M.E.Smith (Physics Dept., University of Warwick). The overall aim is to make for the first time, the crucial link between the absolute crystal structure of solid solutions in the lithium niobate and lithium tantalate series (hereafter LNT) and some of their highly unusual physical properties. A particular focus and point of key interest in this proposal is the existence of a composition in the series where the birefringence is zero at room temperature, so that the crystals become optically isotropic and yet remain electrically polar, which is an unique and extremely odd combination of properties in a nonlinear-optical, functional ferroelectric material. As part of our research programme, we intend to investigate this fascinating composition closely with a view to establishing whether such a material has potential as an unusually sensitive component in optically-based sensing applications, which are of high technical importance and timely relevance. For other LNT compositions, the point of optical isotropy can be obtained by raising the temperature, so that a locus line of zero birefringence points exists in the two-dimensional composition-temperature map. It is our goal to understand the occurrence of this behaviour across the LNT series from a fundamental point of view, whilst keeping in mind the potential for devices based on a combination of compositional and temperature tuning. In an entirely new and innovative twist, we will investigate for the first time the effect of the additional parameter pressure on the structure and properties of LNT in general, and particularly in the vicinity of the points of zero birefringence . Using birefringent imaging microsocopy, x-ray diffraction and solid state NMR at elevated pressures in a powerful combination of methodologies, we will map out the occurrence of the contours of zero birefringence in a three-dimensional parameter space to construct a composition-temperature-pressure (x-T-P) diagram. Since LN itself has large photoelastic and piezoelectric coefficients, we expect the pressure-dependence of the zero-birefringence points to be extremely high, thereby opening up the potential for a highly-sensitive and tunable pressure sensor. Our research will concentrate on expert x-ray structural analysis including absolute polarity determination (that is determination of the relationship between the direction of off-centre ions in the structures and the sense of electrical polarization) using anomalous x-ray scattering. These studies will be extended to non-ambient temperatures and pressures in order to fill out the parameter map and give the necessary data for interpretation of the zero birefringence contours. Alongside this, birefringent imaging microscopy will be used to map out the optical properties and thus, the zero birefringence contours of LNT compositions as a function of temperature, pressure and optical wavelength. Multinuclear solid state NMR will include 7Li, 17O and 93Nb, particularly to understand the role that octahedral distortions and cation displacements play in structure-property relations for compositionally-disordered crystals such as the LNT family. These will be extended to high temperatures using a dedicated probe constructed for 93Nb NMR and ultimately, to pressures of up to 5 GPa for sensitive zero-birefringence compositions as high-pressure NMR comes on-line. In summary, this research programme combines state-of-the-art methodologies to undertake novel science of a fundamental nature on the LNT series. It will both reveal new materials physics and answer some long-standing questions in the x-T-P space for LNT. Ultimately, and most speculatively, it may provide a new impetus for the development of devices based on this most unusual combination of physical properties in future years.

This project is an intervention into transnational mining history and heritage research, building on existing contacts between researchers in Japan and the UK with the aim of developing long-term, sustainable research collaboration. The history of coal mining in Japan is intimately connected with the UK, with Scottish merchant Thomas Blake Glover central in the creation of Japan's first modern coal mine in 1868. In both countries, the evolution of the industry tracked wider technological and social transformations. Coal mining was also a significant driver of industrial recovery from war. Over the last decades of the 20th century, however, the coal industry in both countries was in steep decline. The closure of the last deep mine in the UK occurred in 2015 and much of Japan's domestic coal industry had been shuttered prior to 2011. Following on from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster of that year, Japan's energy orientation turned back to coal with plans to decrease Japan's reliance on nuclear energy being compensated for elsewhere. That has not led, however, to a resurgence of domestic mining. Recent years have nevertheless seen a re-engagement with and popularisation of sites of coal mining and its decline through tourism, heritage campaigns, community-led commemorative processes and popular culture. These processes of decline and reengagement have sparked new interest by scholars in how histories of coal mining are both written and engaged with by the broader public. Researchers have explored the development of the coal industry, its workplace cultures, industrial identities, politics and individual and collective experiences, including mining community, miners' family lives, education and social mobility. Official records have been re-examined; previously unexplored archives uncovered, including grassroots and ephemeral collections; and new archives created through oral history and other methodologies. Historical materials are also being made more accessible through digital tools. Project partner NCMME for example, provides access to digital collections through its online catalogue, and the AHRC-funded 'On Behalf of the People' project is building an extensive archive of pit-related materials, including photographs and oral histories, to be made available online. While similar developments are less well advanced in the case of Japanese researchers and institutions, small-scale digitisation initiatives are a core focus of network members' ongoing work with Japanese cultural institutions. The post-closure experience of Japan and the UK also reflects a wider recent interest in transnational experiences of deindustrialisation. In this project we are particularly interested in comparing the post-closure experiences of those who lived in mining communities, to explore what Sherry Lee Linkon (2018) has argued in the US context is the 'half-life of deindustrialization' and the extent to which these sites and communities experience, in Avery Gordon's (2008) terms, from 'social haunting.' Management of former mines as heritage sites and how engagement with these sites is framed for both former residents and the general public are also important focal points for both heritage professionals and affected communities. These concerns structure the work of partners at the NCMME, NUM and GFTU, similar heritage initiatives in Scotland and Wales and the growing number of coalfield community and heritage organisations. In Japan too, initiatives exist across a wide range of locations, including the successful 2015 bid to have the Hashima and Miike coal mines included on the UNESCO World Heritage list, as well as local associations and institutions across a number of former coalfields. This project seeks to share best practice and innovative methodological approaches from this new coal mining history and heritage scholarship in both the UK and Japan by building on the nascent connections between national networks.

This proposal is a collaboration between Professor A.M. Glazer (Crystallography Group, Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford) and Professors P.A. Thomas and M.E.Smith (Physics Dept., University of Warwick). The overall aim is to make for the first time, the crucial link between the absolute crystal structure of solid solutions in the lithium niobate and lithium tantalate series (hereafter LNT) and some of their highly unusual physical properties. A particular focus and point of key interest in this proposal is the existence of a composition in the series where the birefringence is zero at room temperature, so that the crystals become optically isotropic and yet remain electrically polar, which is an unique and extremely odd combination of properties in a nonlinear-optical, functional ferroelectric material. As part of our research programme, we intend to investigate this fascinating composition closely with a view to establishing whether such a material has potential as an unusually sensitive component in optically-based sensing applications, which are of high technical importance and timely relevance. For other LNT compositions, the point of optical isotropy can be obtained by raising the temperature, so that a locus line of zero birefringence points exists in the two-dimensional composition-temperature map. It is our goal to understand the occurrence of this behaviour across the LNT series from a fundamental point of view, whilst keeping in mind the potential for devices based on a combination of compositional and temperature tuning. In an entirely new and innovative twist, we will investigate for the first time the effect of the additional parameter pressure on the structure and properties of LNT in general, and particularly in the vicinity of the points of zero birefringence . Using birefringent imaging microsocopy, x-ray diffraction and solid state NMR at elevated pressures in a powerful combination of methodologies, we will map out the occurrence of the contours of zero birefringence in a three-dimensional parameter space to construct a composition-temperature-pressure (x-T-P) diagram. Since LN itself has large photoelastic and piezoelectric coefficients, we expect the pressure-dependence of the zero-birefringence points to be extremely high, thereby opening up the potential for a highly-sensitive and tunable pressure sensor. Our research will concentrate on expert x-ray structural analysis including absolute polarity determination (that is determination of the relationship between the direction of off-centre ions in the structures and the sense of electrical polarization) using anomalous x-ray scattering. These studies will be extended to non-ambient temperatures and pressures in order to fill out the parameter map and give the necessary data for interpretation of the zero birefringence contours. Alongside this, birefringent imaging microscopy will be used to map out the optical properties and thus, the zero birefringence contours of LNT compositions as a function of temperature, pressure and optical wavelength. Multinuclear solid state NMR will include 7Li, 17O and 93Nb, particularly to understand the role that octahedral distortions and cation displacements play in structure-property relations for compositionally-disordered crystals such as the LNT family. These will be extended to high temperatures using a dedicated probe constructed for 93Nb NMR and ultimately, to pressures of up to 5 GPa for sensitive zero-birefringence compositions as high-pressure NMR comes on-line. In summary, this research programme combines state-of-the-art methodologies to undertake novel science of a fundamental nature on the LNT series. It will both reveal new materials physics and answer some long-standing questions in the x-T-P space for LNT. Ultimately, and most speculatively, it may provide a new impetus for the development of devices based on this most unusual combination of physical properties in future years.