Deborah Upchurch (Education & Social Work)

Reclaiming Reading: A collaborative action research project

Over 25% of children in England leave primary school unable to read to the expected standard and worst affected are those already at socioeconomic disadvantage. Current educational policy reduces reading to a set of skills and fails to take into account the importance of reading engagement. This research explores how agentive social reading groups can raise reader engagement for primary aged children in disadvantaged contexts. The resulting rich, highly contextualised data gathered during Spring 2024 illustrates both the immediate and exponential impact of school-based action research and it’s potential to challenge educational policy.

Leonard Chimanda Joseph (Law, Politics and Sociology)

Two homes, no home: the Global Compact on Refugees vis-à-vis 50 years of refugees in Kigoma villages, Tanzania

Burundian refugees are in Kigoma villages in Tanzania since 1972; more than fifty years now suffering from predicaments such as statelessness, poor access to labour market and stigma. Using decolonial theory of knowledge, third world approach (es) to international law in particular; this study seeks to examine the role of the United Nations Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) in identifying durable solutions that enhance the resilience of refugees who are self-settled in Kigoma villages in Tanzania. Adopted by the United Nations in 2018, the GCR reflects the current international legal obligations by states on offering solutions to refugees.

Sunisha Neupane (Institute for Development Studies)

मातृत्व र संघर्षका कथा [Stories of Motherhood and Resilience] - Researching maternal health and care in rural Nepal

Every day, nearly 800 women die from preventable pregnancy and childbirth-related causes, with 95% of these deaths occurring in low and middle-income countries. While the maternal mortality rate has significantly declined since the 1990s, disparities persist. In Nepal, women in remote areas continue to face inadequate care and higher mortality rates. My PhD research investigates the reasons behind this disparity. Over 13 months of ethnographic and participatory fieldwork in a 4000-meter-high mountain village in Nepal, I followed 16 pregnant women. My results show what maternity care means to them and uncover the barriers to maternal healthcare they encounter.

Emily Whelan (Psychology)

Seeing Sounds and Tasting Colors: The Sweet and Sour of Synaesthesia

Have you ever experienced a blending of senses, like tasting colours or seeing sounds? This fascinating phenomenon is known as synaesthesia. My research explores how synaesthetes, their relatives, and experts in colour and spatial fields may perceive and remember things differently. By comparing their abilities, we aim to uncover whether unique perceptual strengths in synaesthesia stem from the condition itself or from a blend of cognitive factors. This study could reveal how our brains connect perception, memory, and imagination, shedding light on the extraordinary ways our senses intertwine and influence each other.

Dolores Teixeira de Brito (Global Studies)

Voluntary Sustainability Standards: to what extent do they work?

I am researching the effectiveness of Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) in Global Supply Chains, with a focus on inequalities in Global Value Chains (GVCs). To explore these issues, I have chosen the açaí berry sector in the Brazilian Amazon. I collected my data through interviews with harvesters, companies and other actors. My analysis centres on understanding how VSS initiatives green value chains in a sector at its early stage of internationalization. I focus on the perspective of harvesters using the Global Value Chain framework.

Edward Langley (Global Studies)

Bullshit jobs and financialisation in neoliberal Britain

‘Bullshit jobs’ should not exist under efficient capitalism. David Graeber (2018) attributed their rise to financialisation: rent-seeking has dominated in neoliberal, post-industrial economies with work evolving accordingly. However the proportion of those employed in financial services has remained stable over recent decades, indicating the possibility of other neoliberal culprits.

My research- analysing macroeconomic data and conducting worker’s surveys- investigates whether Britain may hold some answers, specifically whether its expanding services sector has geared the economy away from producing utility for society and instead towards maintaining institutions and power structures which serve the interests of global capital.

3MT 2024 Judges 

• Prof Jeremy Niven, Dean of the Sussex Researcher School
• Dr Samuel Knafo, Reader in International Relations
• Dominika Varga, 3MT winner 2023
• Dr Priscilla Mensah, Director of Research Development at Nelson Mandela University