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.

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.

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.

Asylum seekers who appeal against initially negative decisions are more than twice as likely to be successful if their case is heard in North London than if their case is heard in Newport or Manchester. This is true for all asylum seekers in the UK, but also applies to specific nationalities. Iranians, for example, enjoy a 34% success rate at one hearing centre and only an 18% success rate at another, Afghans' success rates vary from 31% to 17% depending upon the court, and Zimbabweans' from 54% to 22%. These geographic disparities have not been investigated in the UK because the data on appeal success rates is not publicly available. This proposal draws upon two successful freedom of information requests (FIRs) however, in order to piece together the geography of asylum appeal success rates (see Figure One, case for support). An examination of these disparities is important for various reasons. First, asylum seekers who appeal may be facing a lottery in terms of the court that hears their case, which is arbitrary and unjust. Second, immigration law firms and their clients (such as the Legal Services Commission) may be facing an uneven landscape in terms of the degree of success they can expect in different parts of the country. Understanding this 'lawscape' will empower them with the knowledge to direct their resources more effectively. Third, official bodies with responsibility for asylum appeals, such as the Ministry of Justice and UKBA, need information and analysis in order to make a judgement about whether steps should be taken in order to improve the geographic consistency of the asylum appeal system. Fourth, the wider legal community, beyond immigration law, should be alerted to the existence and impact of geographic disparities in legal processes. The obvious research question arising from these disparities concerns why they exist. Accepting that the discrepancies are unlikely to have occurred by chance (less than 0.01% likelihood according to statistical analysis of the FIRs), four explanations present themselves. First, there may be administrative processes that direct strong cases towards certain courts, although preliminary enquiries put to officials from UKBA, immigration judges and practising immigration lawyers do not support this explanation. Second, some asylum seekers have legal representation and others do not, and this geography of legal aid may be driving the discrepancies. In light of the 10% contraction in legal aid funding in the UK as part of recent austerity measures, this explanation seems particularly important to address. Third, different judges may be predisposed towards particular decisions. This was the finding of quantitative US-based research that demonstrated that the gender and age of immigration judges has significant impact over their decisions, underscoring the importance of investigating this set of factors in the UK case (Ramji-Nogales et al, 2009). And fourth, there may be differences in the daily practices of courts - their rhythms, cultures and routines. This set of factors, centring upon courts as distinct and non-homogenous places, remains understudied in legal geography as well as legal studies more broadly. This research will examine the relative salience of these four groups of variables in explaining disparities in asylum appeal success rates. In so doing, the research will bring together qualitative and quantitative forms of analysis in order to generate a rich and innovative set of explanations for the disparities; constitute the first statistically informed UK-based analysis of national disparities in asylum appeals; impact upon the way policy makers, politicians and lawyers in the field of immigration law, as well as appellants, approach their activities; and have wide implications for the theoretical and empirical study of the relation between geography and law in the future.