There is a major Ebola epidemic affecting parts of West Africa. Ebola is a highly infectious disease that carries a significant risk of death. New therapies and potential vaccines that can be distributed to the affected populations are being developed. Stricken communities have appealed for help. One response from the UK government has been to deploy UK military healthcare personnel to Sierra Leone (operation Gritrock), initially to provide a small facility for affected healthcare workers and to assist with training of local healthcare workers. It is possible that the scope of this involvement will increase, and prudent planning is in place for further deployments. This is the first major, purely humanitarian military deployment since Rwanda (1994). It is known that civilian humanitarian healthcare workers experience complex ethical tensions when deployed as expatriates. Military healthcare workers face both related and different (uniquely military) challenges when deployed in conflict scenarios but it is not known how they will experience the novel ethical challenges and complexities in a purely humanitarian setting, dealing with a highly infectious disease in conditions of near disaster for the affected communities. This project aims to collect interview data on the ethical challenges experienced by the deployed UK military healthcare personnel. It plans to recruit up to 25 nurses, doctors, and allied health professionals. An initial analysis of the resulting data will enable training materials to be developed quickly to benefit those, including civilians, about to deploy to Ebola-affected regions. These materials will be evaluated by a subset of the participants and used to inform, train and support existing and future (military and civilian) deployments during the Ebola outbreak. The data collected will also be used in the longer term to expand and enrich existing understanding of the ethical experiences of expatriate healthcare workers volunteering for humanitarian work in other contexts, for instance working with non-governmental organisations or as part of governmental responses. It is predicted that the UK medical military will increasingly be expected to contribute to similar humanitarian responses in the future. This work will also contribute to military preparation, training, support and policy in other humanitarian contexts.

Last year, the UK received 5,152 applications for asylum from unaccompanied children: children under 18 who arrived seeking asylum without a parent or legal guardian to care for them. We refer to this small but vulnerable group as UCYP: Unaccompanied Children and Young People. Their vulnerability is underscored by reports that many UCYP who were housed in hotels since July 2021 have gone missing. Research has also repeatedly found poor mental health among UCYP, often linked to post-migration factors. There is an urgent need for a deeper understanding of the day-to-day lives of UCYP, and to improve their welfare and reduce risks of harm. Critical to this is understanding how UCYP engage with digital technology. Excessive screen time and social media use are affecting mental health of current youth, and young refugees increasingly use digital technology: it is a key tool to meet their needs during their flight, and to support them to establish and maintain social connections and integrate in their new country. However, it also exposes them to risks. Investigating the digital worlds of UCYP is important in examining safeguarding risks, but it is also crucial to investigate how their engagement with digital tools relates to their sense of belonging, social integration and wellbeing. This understanding will enable those responsible for their care to better support and safeguard their wellbeing. We will investigate this in a multidisciplinary, participatory mixed methods project. The research takes place throughout the UK, and adopts a longitudinal approach so that social networks and wellbeing of UCYP can be tracked over time. It addresses the following questions: How do UCYP in the UK engage with and experience digital technology, and how does this change over time and across context and place? How does UCYP's engagement with the digital world link to their social networks (online, offline, in the UK, and elsewhere), their sense of belonging, social risks, and their wellbeing? How can services and stakeholders better support and protect wellbeing of UCYP while they navigate the intersection of child protection and immigration control in an increasingly digital world? The project uses a participatory mixed methods design: we collaborate with organisations supporting UCYP, and four UCYP will have pivotal roles in all stages of the research process as co-researchers, with the Project Leads and Research and Innovation Associate (RIA) providing training and support throughout. Data collection consists of: Life mapping interviews with UCYP in Brighton and Manchester (N = 20) to gain biographical and visual information about how UCYP use digital technology over time, and how this links to their social connections and their wellbeing in various stages in their lives (links to RQ1); A longitudinal online survey of 200 UCYP throughout the UK, available in multiple languages, to measure relationships between variables such as their digital technology use, online/offline social capital, sense of belonging, and wellbeing (links to RQ2); Six group workshops with 15 UCYP each, in Brighton and Manchester, where UCYP will discuss their own experiences, reflect on and add to the findings of the above, and discuss dissemination (links to RQ3) The UK Home Office, Refugee Council, British Red Cross, organisations supporting UCYP, and academics are represented on an Advisory Group to advise on the research, and ensure the widest dissemination and impact. The project will finish with a policy-focused conference.

The 'Small Island Developing States' (SIDS) of the Caribbean are at the frontline of our changing environment and strategies to respond and cope with their consequences are now of paramount importance. The damage from the hurricanes of 2017 demonstrate starkly the challenge such countries face in dealing with recurrent high intensity hazards; on average the Caribbean incurs $835 million of losses from hurricanes per annum. This is in addition to the challenges posed by 'everyday' risks e.g. slope stability, water resources and the rainy season where longer term planning is blighted by the annualised expenditure subsequently incurred. Swift, strong, and inclusive recovery reduces impact on livelihoods and well-being and improves resilience towards future events. Attention to re-building strong physical infrastructure is important, but, long term benefits accumulate faster when strategies are inclusive and clearly tailored to the local cultural, social and physical environment (Hallegatte et al., 2018). This underpins the 'leave no one behind' strategy of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and demands disaster risk reduction strategies that place a strong emphasis on a wide range of knowledges as set out by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030). Our recent research includes three fundamental findings: (1) cultural responses to hazardous events in the Caribbean contain powerful knowledge about impacts, response and recovery and (2) the process of their transmission provides a strong mechanism to include communities in their own preparedness and recovery. (3) the historical as well as the recent past contains important knowledge that deepens understanding of how and why people place themselves in areas of high risk (problems) but reveals important strategies or moments when national and international response acted to counteract the impacts of hazardous events (solutions). The aim of this 'Follow-on-Fund' proposal is to share these findings to highlight the importance of cultural and historical knowledge in disaster risk reduction in the Caribbean. We want to put our research to work to help shape effective strategies, both directly in a country where they are responding to future hydro-meteorological risks while recovering from a geophysical disaster (Montserrat) and indirectly in the United Kingdom via agencies responsible for providing support and advice during and after hazardous events. We will create a new exhibit for communities on Montserrat, working throughout with MVO, involving the Montserrat Red Cross and Montserrat National Trust to access a wide cross-section of local views. However, we want to push this engagement further: our findings do not just map out a means for a more inclusive approach to sharing disaster risk reduction information locally, but contain positive experiences of transformation and coping that could inform policy and disaster response at an international level. Thus we also want to create an exhibit for the UK, demonstrating our findings across Dominica, St. Vincent and Montserrat aimed at those responsible for shaping response and policy in the English-speaking SIDS in the Caribbean. To do this we are working with the Overseas Development Institute, creating new partnerships with the British Red Cross, and responding to advice from the Emergency Response Team from the Department for International Development. Collectively, we will work together to understand how to create effective engagement. Finally, we will draw both elements together using a website as a digital tool to bridge between the different communities, as a means to further enhance conversations between these groups and to document and continue the process of sharing and learning, including our own.

Friends, family, and local volunteers are usually the first to respond in a crisis, including war, conflict, and disaster. If and when international humanitarian organisations arrive, they enter communities that are already responding to health and care needs. The provision of effective humanitarian aid therefore requires sensitivity to the roles and expectations of local caregivers and their communities. This is becoming more important as international organisations seek to take on health issues that were previously in the hands of local caregivers, such as mental health, yet for which there is a lack of contextual knowledge in the humanitarian sector. Through this research network, we aim to develop a deeper understanding of decision-making and health-seeking in humanitarian settings such as the refugee camp, hospital, and clinic, and to foreground humanitarianism as something actively and continually shaped by diverse actors. The network brings together historians of humanitarianism, medical humanities scholars, and refugee historians who are starting to explore the ways that health and care are negotiated in war, conflict, and disaster. How do expectations, emotions, and power dynamics shape encounters with health workers? Why do some people refuse care or act in unexpected ways? And who has a say in defining what is meant by a health or care need? This research is important because it provides innovative ways of foregrounding individuals and communities who are marginalised in research on humanitarianism, as well as in documentary and archival practices. Yet such inquiries remain under-developed, and humanities researchers' insights have been largely disconnected from the research and advocacy of humanitarian, refugee, and diaspora-led organisations who are grappling with similar questions on community health, as well as from museum and archive professionals' initiatives to capture refugee and aid worker 'voices' and experiences. The network redresses this by creating a space for productive dialogues between academics, humanitarian and medical practitioners, refugee and diaspora-led organisations, and museum and archive professionals. Over 2 years, we will organise 3 research and 2 participatory workshops, enabling practitioners and refugee and diaspora-led organisations to work alongside academics and archivists to better understand decision-making and health-seeking in humanitarian settings. This will allow the network to analyse relationships between differing forms of caregiving, such as how local caregiving has worked alongside and conflicted with international humanitarian aid. It will also allow us to explore different ways of engaging with historical collections, to explore and critique the ways in which humanitarian and refugee documents are displayed and organised, and to reflect on the complex and emotional relationships people have with humanitarian objects, such as first aid equipment. We will use our online presence (website, Twitter) to foster international collaboration, using hybrid workshops to allow Global South scholars, who are under-represented in research on humanitarianism, to participate. Demonstrating the relevance of humanities research to contemporary health humanitarianism is at the heart of the network. Shared objectives and outputs will be developed in collaboration with participants, particularly project partners Shabaka, the Living Refugee Archive, the British Red Cross, and the Humanitarian Archive. Our findings will transform our understanding of how health and care has been negotiated in humanitarian settings in the past and lead conversations on methodologies to foreground agency and negotiation. In this way, the network will inform advocacy on inclusion in health humanitarianism, engagement strategies in the museum and archive sectors, and advance research that is more effectively able to centre the individuals and communities who are marginalised in research and practice.

There is a major Ebola epidemic affecting parts of West Africa. Ebola is a highly infectious disease that carries a significant risk of death. New therapies and potential vaccines that can be distributed to the affected populations are being developed. Stricken communities have appealed for help. One response from the UK government has been to deploy UK military healthcare personnel to Sierra Leone (operation Gritrock), initially to provide a small facility for affected healthcare workers and to assist with training of local healthcare workers. It is possible that the scope of this involvement will increase, and prudent planning is in place for further deployments. This is the first major, purely humanitarian military deployment since Rwanda (1994). It is known that civilian humanitarian healthcare workers experience complex ethical tensions when deployed as expatriates. Military healthcare workers face both related and different (uniquely military) challenges when deployed in conflict scenarios but it is not known how they will experience the novel ethical challenges and complexities in a purely humanitarian setting, dealing with a highly infectious disease in conditions of near disaster for the affected communities. This project aims to collect interview data on the ethical challenges experienced by the deployed UK military healthcare personnel. It plans to recruit up to 25 nurses, doctors, and allied health professionals. An initial analysis of the resulting data will enable training materials to be developed quickly to benefit those, including civilians, about to deploy to Ebola-affected regions. These materials will be evaluated by a subset of the participants and used to inform, train and support existing and future (military and civilian) deployments during the Ebola outbreak. The data collected will also be used in the longer term to expand and enrich existing understanding of the ethical experiences of expatriate healthcare workers volunteering for humanitarian work in other contexts, for instance working with non-governmental organisations or as part of governmental responses. It is predicted that the UK medical military will increasingly be expected to contribute to similar humanitarian responses in the future. This work will also contribute to military preparation, training, support and policy in other humanitarian contexts.