Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

This practice-as-research project takes choreography as a site for examining this turn to the occult; defining 'choreography' as the artistic practice of making dances and 'the occult' in both the philosophical sense as that which is hidden, and in the cultural-historical sense as a set of practices encompassing witchcraft, tarot and divination. Offering a reconsideration of choreography's ontology, the project explores dances as phenomena containing hidden dimensions, possibilities and powers, as well as drawing on magic as a choreographic tool which attunes both dancers and audiences to altered states of being in and envisioning the world. The project focuses on specific dance practices in the US and Europe from the 1960s onwards, a turning point in the inclusion of improvisation scores in dance works, which made space for unprecedented levels of spontaneity, altered consciousness and collective transformation. I trace the institutionalisation of these practices during the 7 / 42 neoliberalism of the 1980s and 90s, when scores became codified into somatic techniques for the improvement of the individual, through to their recent re-emergence in avant-garde choreography of the late 2010s, as fresh waves of capitalist crisis fuel a renewed concern with the collective, the transformative and the mystical. Drawing these enquiries through Marxist engagements with magic, the project explores the becoming-occult of choreography through its troubling of reality, rationality and possibility. Two sets of questions unfold across both practical and written enquiry: 1) What happens when dance is approached as a kind of magic? What does this do to how dance is both practised and perceived? Through the generation of scores - imaginative frameworks entered into by dancers and/ or audiences live in performance, engaging with alternative realities and rationalities - I consider how improvisation-based dance practices engage speculatively with parameters and forces that extend beyond human perception and agency. 2) In what ways can choreographic practice be considered prophetic? Through both analogy with and incorporation of divinatory methods such as tarot reading, I ask how choreography might be understood as generating visions of, or from, the future, suspending the divide between the actual and the virtual and engaging nonlinear notions of time and causality. Extending from these research questions, this project distinguishes itself from writing about spirituality in phenomenological accounts of somatic practices (Batson, Weber, Whatley & Williamson, 2014), as well as anthropological research into ritual dances of Global South and indigenous cultures (Grau, 2001; Brown, 2003). While this project follows that scholarship's affirmation of embodied knowledge against Eurocentric, mind-centric ways of knowing, it draws on occult studies to further affirm the creative and subversive possibilities of understanding dance as a kind of magic. The integration of Marxist thought also enables a shift from the transcendent qualities of dance onto its particular material capacities at this sociohistorical juncture. This project also intervenes in dance studies' dominant understanding of the score as notation, or archival document, and its attendant notion of choreography as a set of fixed movements. Rather, I understand scores as live, time-based, experimental practices, akin to magic spells, and choreography as the conditions and processes that both create and result from them. By shifting attention beyond the immediately sensible aspects of dance, onto partially-hidden processes which bring dancer and audience into dialogue with the unknown, I will unearth an ontology of choreography that is itself occulted within existing scholarship, by virtue of its existence on the artistic fringes; particularly in the UK, where the mainstream of dance is dominated by the practice of choreography as a fixed set of movements

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Context: Smart Local Energy Systems (SLES) are critically important for the UK transition to net zero. Developing through a variety of demonstration projects and niche markets, SLES use new technologies, digitalisation and market incentives to maximise household consumption of locally generated renewable electricity by flexibly managing demand and storage amongst neighbours. Research to date has looked at the engineering, organisational and marketing aspects of SLES, with households conceived in terms of their ability to invest in the assets and skills needed to become smart customers.?Whilst useful, it is an approach that completely overlooks the 'energy housekeeping' work that system operators need from households in order for the former's designs to be effective. Aims: This project analyses the work households and communities do to domesticate SLES technologies and use them flexibly. In doing so, the project explores what kinds of rewarded and unrewarded labour households and communities contribute to the production of SLES, and how that work is distributed within and across households and communities. Applying a labour process analysis, we will study activities like learning to work with the technologies, rearranging domestic chores, and supporting neighbouring households, in order to better understand the value such work contributes to the system. We will work with community energy organisations and households, who will provide us with qualitative and quantitative information about the support work they both undertake in order to domesticate SLES.? Significance: Inspired by feminist scholarship in domestic labour and social reproduction around digitalisation in other sectors, our research posits that human work is the ultimate source of value. We argue that failing to recognise the divisions and changes in domestic and community labour needed to make SLES work risks alienating households and entrenching conflicts that will undermine the high levels of participation needed across 28 million households for effective SLES. Impact on policy and practice: The research team is a partnership between the Sussex Energy Group (SEG) and the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE). Both will work closely with community energy organisations (CEO) who will help fine tune our framework and support access to households in SLES projects. Results will inform CSE policy advocacy on community energy, where a labour-based perspective will provide novel insights for integrating community energy organisations and households into SLES governance. The project will produce three policy briefings, a comic and organise policy and community workshops that engage with our results and debate how new policies can recognise and reward more fairly and inclusively the labour that households and community organisations provide in the operation of SLES. Our research will guide questions about ownership, incentives and benefit sharing. In working with a comic artist, we will produce a visually engaging explanation of these issues. And CSE develop learning resources and an online tutorial for energy professionals that helps them navigate labour-based issues in their work. Academic impact: Our innovative analysis of household and community labour will advance social science research in three areas: 1) contributing labour process analysis to the increasingly important study of energy housekeeping; 2) given SLES are an important component in energy transitions, our analysis will contribute a missing focus on labour to the field of sustainability transitions research; and 3) we will contribute to feminist labour theories an empirical case study of the complexities of energy systems (re)production.

My research will focus on the app 'ClassCharts'. This software enables the monitoring and tracking of individual student behaviour, where teachers can award positive and negative points through customisable categories such as 'ambition' or 'lack of focus'. Points are displayed on a pie chart, for example, displaying 40% positive and 60% negative. Data is available in real-time for staff, students, and parents to view. The app can also hold data on attendance, set homework and detentions, and display timetables. Despite ClassCharts' vast uptake in UK schools since its launch in 2013, with a user base of over 350,000 teachers (Hayes, 2016), there is scarce empirical evidence on how students, parents, and staff experience and understand these technologies. There is a significant gap in research surrounding behaviour-tracking apps, as DiGiacomo et al. (2022) explain, following their research on how students and principals perceive the app ClassDojo in the US. While their study provides emerging insights, they emphasise that "there is a grave need for more empirically grounded research...this work should centre the voices, experiences, and perspectives of children" (DiGiacomo et al., 2022: p.183). My research will contribute emerging, much-needed knowledge that is currently incomplete, critically exploring the potential of this technology to transform education, ensuring all stakeholders have a voice in how these technologies are used, to understand how they experience any changes these apps introduce. Current literature shows that concerns are genuine. However, this must be thoroughly studied and further understood, examining impacts, particularly on disadvantaged students, as data surveillance exacerbates educational inequalities (Lu et al., 2021). There exists a dearth of empirical research exploring the effects of behaviour-tracking apps, with existing literature overwhelmingly theoretical. Further, students have recently lived through the COVID-19 pandemic, with suggestions of long-term impacts from loss of education (Eyles et al., 2020), are experiencing a drastic drop in living standards (JRF, 2023), and spending in schools is falling (UNISON, 2023). It is, therefore, a particularly poignant time to examine these technological practices. Additionally, surveillance and the data collection of human behaviour are increasingly pervasive. For children especially, there remains little evidence that specific strategies to safeguard children's rights in response to dataveillance have been developed or applied (Lupton and Williamson, 2017). It is crucial then to examine how this behaviour-tracking technology manifests inside and outside the classroom. esearch Questions How do students, parents, and teachers understand, experience, and navigate the data surveillance of classroom behaviour, and in what ways (if at all) do class, racialised and minoritised identities and (dis)ability shape their experiences? How does ClassCharts mediate relationships between students, teachers, and parents? In what ways (if at all) does ClassCharts shape students' learning and educational experiences? Methodology My approach with students will be ethnographic and participatory, taking place over an academic year, embedding myself in the school's environment and culture by participating and observing from within to explore students' lived experiences (Emond, 2005). I will employ participant observations and take field notes. My time will be divided between two classes in year groups 7 and 11, following pupils in lessons 1 day per week. These year groups offer stark comparisons to examine the differences in experiences between the two critical moments in the educational timeline. Once rapport is established, I will select approximately six volunteers from each class representing the school in terms of race, gender, class, and ability. I will conduct a 1-hour focus group with each set to build rapport.