IEF
Funder: UKRI Innovate UK
Duration: March 2024 - August 2025
Funder: Institute of Communities and Society, Brunel University
Duration: January 2024 - June 2024
Raqqa, the infamous capital of the so-called caliphate, still bears the brunt of terror. Syria still bears the brunt of war, displacement and economic strangulation. But Raqqa had a different history and heritage before the destruction unleashed. Syria didn’t used to be synonymous with war. The purpose of this pilot project is to collect, document and reveal these alternative histories through the life and works of the late Professor Sulayman Khalaf, who was born to a nomadic heritage in Raqqa, became the first Syrian anthropologist, and whose work have contributed immensely in the anthropology of Syria and the broader Middle East. Exploring his life and his works, this project aims to develop a digital archive and to pilot a documentary film about Sulayman Khalaf’s life, and through this, an alternative story of heritage, culture and hope in Syria.
Funder: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Duration: December 2023 - March 2024
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council
Duration: September 2023 - August 2024
Funder: Korea National Research Foundation
Duration: June 2023 - May 2026
Funder: British Academy Newton follow-up grant
Duration: May 2023 - May 2024
War keeps gnawing away at the textures of social life in the Middle East. As victims of political violence are mourned, as martyrs are celebrated, and as others leave to seek better lives abroad, death, loss, and disappearance remain at the forefront of everyday life. And yet, people in Syria, Kurdistan, and beyond keep dreaming of revolutionary change and imagine novel forms of political belonging. Building on our respective expertise working with Kurdish and Druze communities, this collaborative research project aims to shed light on the temporalities that death engenders in the context of statelessness and stalled sovereignty. It contributes to a growing body of scholarship conceptualizing death as productive of social life and political community.
Funder: Royal Society
Duration: March 2023 - March 2025
Funder: Institute of Communities and Society
Duration: -
The Price of Water is a performative portrayal of the experiences of refugees having fled their war torn country to seek what they imagine to be the ‘grace of safety’ in Europe, transitioning through a processing centre in Greece. This vivid dramatisation reflects on the roles of host and guest, good and bad refugees, the entanglements of migration and smuggling business, experienced in the two female performers’ quietly haunting recital of memories and hopes. The research and guiding concepts for this work relies on ethnographic fieldwork in Greece and in Syria, but they have wider resonances today during the current crisis of the war in Ukraine. The performance will inform a grant application on the consequences of war, exploitation and displacement through investigations of different modalities of capitalist invasion: the sudden and irreparable change of social relations and the policing/government of life..
Funder: Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: October 2022 - September 2028
Funder: Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: October 2022 - September 2027
Funder: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: October 2022 - March 2023
Implement and Evaluate MTS Open Banking CorDapp prototype in HSBC sandbox
Funder: Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: June 2022 - August 2022
Funder: The Worshipful Company of Coachmakers
Duration: June 2022 - August 2022
Junior Research Fellowship for Szymon Polewko
Funder: Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy
Duration: May 2022 - May 2025
Funder: British Council
Duration: April 2022 - March 2003
Exchange the successful model of EV Forecourts in UK to KSA for supporting research, knowledge, and innovation in emerging electric vehicles (EV) technologies. Initialise and maintain networking between universities and EV makers in KSA. Address the challenges of implementation of electric vehicles technologies via research, training and curriculum development.
Funder: Department for Transport
Duration: March 2022 - September 2022
Funder: Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy
Duration: March 2022 - August 2022
Funder: Economic & Social Research Council
Duration: February 2022 - July 2023
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council
Duration: February 2022 - July 2023
Funder: ATHENA SWAN AWARD, Brunel University London
Duration: January 2022 - December 2022
Can sectarianism exist without the nation-state? Can statelessness open up or inhibit the possibilities of political resistance and freedom? Critical scholarship on sectarianism in the Middle East, including my own book on sectarianism within the pre-war Syrian state, locate sectarian belonging within the contingencies and struggles of modern Middle Eastern state formation. But, contemporary crises, such as the devastating war in Syria, the socio-economic crisis in Lebanon, and the right-wing expansionism in Israel, seem to shake the foundational assumptions of states and belonging in the region. By exploring the political resistance among the stateless Syrians, who belong to the Druze sect, in the Israeli-Occupied Golan Heights, this project turns the question of sectarianism on its head. Stateless since the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights during the Six-Days War in 1967, the Syrian Druze have persevered dispossession and occupation and they continue to fight for their liberation and return to Syria. Indeed, they appear to be an example of defying sectarian stereotyping, and the contemporary widespread sectarianisation of political belonging in the region and the rise of populism among rural communities world-wide.
Funder: H2020-EU
Duration: January 2022 - January 2024
To combat climate change, green and eco-friendly resources along with advanced digital technologies are being developed. The construction industry is also facing significant changes in its scale and distribution. With the EU facing resource constraints, new innovations are urgently needed. The EU-funded DigiMat project aims to satisfy this need by promoting a greener circular economic model for production and consumption. Specifically, the project will develop a novel 3D printing technology to design and develop environmentally friendly cementitious feedstock using construction and demolition waste as well as other industrial by-products suitable for structural load-bearing building blocks.
Funder: Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: November 2021 - April 2022
Funder: Brunel Research Interdisciplinary Lab (BRIL)
Duration: October 2021 - March 2022
This project brings together experts in several disciplines: solar energy, economics, health, and law and ethics, whilst also ambitiously looks towards solving a real-life issue (lack of energy) through rating negative carbon energy technologies to enable the consumers to make informed decision in choosing one(s) that best suit them without burdening them with loans and recurring costs such as battery replacement . The project novelty lies in providing unbiased opportunities to consumers to choose their source of energy, thus converting currently deprived households into empowered entities. This work will be truly interdependent, and not just a sum of separate components. The outcome will advance each of these fields, by evaluating a basket of renewable energy technologies, applying a novel legal and ethical framework in combination with economic analysis, and investigating the direct effect of the use of new technology on health and standards of living. This work will lead to further research in the bottom-up approach to sustainable development; for example, emphasizing the role of clean energy unit in delivering Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) especially SDG 7 (clean energy) and its concomitant effects on SDG 3 (health), SDG 6 (water), SDG 8 (economic growth) and SDG 12 (food). The significance of this project is in its focus on world development and net negative carbon energy via demonstrating direct impact on livelihood of local communities. The merit of our approach is in its top-quality research and integration of fundamental and applied academic research and engineering design, which is the distinct feature of Brunel. Our ambition is to lead by example in delivering a state-of-art methodology to evaluate and understand the comparative and collective role of renewable energy technologies to improve health and wellbeing of impoverished communities in a holistic manner via direct interaction with end-users, local producers and local governments. In addition to the health and environmental benefits, opportunities to transfer technology knowledge and skills to local manufacturers will catalyse a sustainable economic revolution. Embedded in the project will be strong commitment and compliance with international laws such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) as well as the local/national regulatory effectiveness and procedural legitimacy with regards to ethical, legal, and social implications of new and emerging technologies. We intend to formulate a toolkit as a comprehensive and pilot guideline to make the most of the New Negative Carbon Energy by realistically quantifying full benefits for target communities. Whilst these would initially earmark the three locales of interest – Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, we foresee that this may subsequently be expanded to other countries in the region. The implementation will additionally employ the framework of adaptive governance incorporated from the management and governance of socio-ecological systems, using non-doctrinal legal approaches and non-top-down methods. The comprehensive evaluation of the benefits and costs of the new energy will be carried out using the advanced methods of economic modelling and data analysis.
Funder: Brunel University London
Duration: October 2021 - July 2022
Funder: Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy
Duration: October 2021 - March 2023
Funder: Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council
Duration: October 2021 - September 2025
Funder: London Mathematical Society
Duration: September 2021 - September 2021
Visit to U of Liverpool
Funder: Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: September 2021 - March 2022
Funder: Research England and Office for Students
Duration: September 2021 -
Funder: Druze Heritage Foundation, London
Duration: May 2021 - July 2024
The Syrian population of the Golan Heights is considered one of the world’s most vulnerable peoples as they are internationally recognized to be ‘stateless’ since the Israeli occupation of their lands in 1967, and its illegal unilateral annexation in 1981. This project aims to collect the life stories and narratives of those currently living in the occupied Golan Heights as well as refugees from the Golan Heights who now live in Europe. What is belonging to them? How do they reflect on the movement of borders, and on their own movements between different countries and different states? Do they still resist occupation, and how?
Funder: Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy
Duration: April 2021 - December 2021
Funder: British Council
Duration: February 2021 - February 2023
The aim of this project is to increase welfare of low-income population in Southeast Turkey by achieving savings in the distribution network that serves them. This will come from digitalizing the energy systems and decreasing power losses. It will allow more renewable energy installations, leading to long term economic benefits.
Funder: Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy
Duration: February 2021 - February 2022
Funder: Royal Academy of Engineering
Duration: February 2021 - January 2024
Funder: Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: February 2021 - July 2021
Funder: Royal Academy of Engineering and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: February 2021 - January 2024
Funder: Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: January 2021 - December 2023
Funder: Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: January 2021 - December 2023
Funder: Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: January 2021 - June 2026
Funder: Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: January 2021 - December 2023
Funder: Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
Duration: January 2021 - December 2023