Professor Lizzie Seal, Professor Thomas Baden and Dr Ben Towler

Professor Lizzie Seal, Professor Thomas Baden and Dr Ben Towler have each been awarded Leverhulme Trust Project Grants for their work.

Professor Lizzie Seal from the School of Law Politics and Sociology has won a grant for her project, Imagining Race, Crime and Justice in Sailortown. Her work combines history and criminology to research and imaginatively recreate experiences of crime, victimhood and justice for people of colour in the dockside communities or 'sailortowns' of London, Liverpool and Glasgow. At a time when people of colour remain disproportionately represented in the UK criminal justice system, the research will inform creative outputs like life stories, infographics, animations and poetry to deepen our historical understanding of race and crime.

Professor Seal will collaborate with Dr Esmorie Miller at Lancaster University, building on their earlier work together. Dr Miller will be responsible for the youth justice part of the research.

Professor Seal said: “I am delighted that the Leverhulme Trust has supported this research, which will help us to expand Britain's national story about race, crime and justice, and to demonstrate some important links between past and present.”

Professor Thomas Baden from the School of Life Sciences has received a project grant for Crystals in the Eye, his project to explore why aquatic vertebrates like fish use highly regular 'crystalline' cone-photoreceptor mosaics in their eyes, while land-vertebrates use irregular cone mosaics. The research seeks to explore and test hypothesis for why this difference persists in fish, despite the apparent limitations it imparts to their vision.

The research will study the eyes of Zebrafish, Seahorses and Geckos (the only known tetrapod with crystalline cone mosaic) to gain insight and break new ground in our understanding of vertebrate eye organisation. Working across neuroscience and evolutionary biology, the project investigates how these patterns help with tasks like motion detection, colour processing and even potential polarisation vision. The findings could change how we understand vision in both animals and humans, possibly even informing new technologies for underwater imaging.

Professor Baden said: “The most interesting thing to point out is that Leverhulme are unique in their approach to funding, specifically aiming to pick "non-mainstream" ideas that are perhaps a little bit more risky than what government funding tends to go on, but in my view, also more interesting and with more potential to truly understanding something new about the rules of life.”

Dr Ben Towler from the School of Life Sciences has received his first research grant for his project, Uncovering the molecular mechanisms regulating stress-induced RNA dynamics, to demonstrate the value of new molecular methods he and his team have developed.

The project will explore how cells control gene activity in changing or stressful environments, which are important during serious illness such as cancer, heart disease and brain disorders as well as chemotherapeutic resistance. It will focus on how ribonucleic acids are regulated under stress and how their control supports cell survival. The award will also support the Sussex Centre for RNA Research and help develop new treatment-focused collaborations.

Dr Towler said: "As a new investigator, this Leverhulme Trust award will be pivotal in establishing my research group by supporting research staff and allowing us to use the new molecular methods we have developed to better understand fundamental cellular mechanisms that aid cell survival under challenging environments. We hope that the work will also support the understanding of stress-related disorders and may identify specific features to improve the design and efficacy of RNA therapeutics."

The Leverhulme Trust is an independent, London-based charity that provides grants and fellowships to support research and education, primarily in the UK. The Trust has been funding research for almost 100 years after being established in 1925 by the will of William Hesketh Lever, the founder of Lever Brothers.

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