Current calls

Themes: Livelihood and Land use.

Contact: Ben Anderson, b.anderson@keele.ac.uk

In recent years, the Herdwick sheep has emerged as a central symbol of polarising visions for the future of upland places across Britain. First brought to broader prominence via the Foot and Mouth crisis, ‘Herdies’ rapidly became associated with rugged Cumbrian characters, the plight of upland sheep farming, and the landscape itself. Yet since 2014, Herdwick’s have been leant a darker side – the source, for environmental campaigners, of desolate, treeless fells, local and regional flooding, and poor biodiversity. Neither caricature, however, fully acknowledges the landscape, social, economic and biological engineering of this unique breed, or the way it is deeply entangled in the lives of every other resident and visitor to the Lake District. Proposals to this call are invited to place the Herdwick sheep in the centre of their study, in order to examine and investigate its more-than-sheepy connections, human and beyond, and interrogate what a future might be for this most controversial of icons and the landscape it inhabits.

Potential questions that may be addressed:

• What human and non-human ecologies do Herdwick sheep take part in? How do these interact with other aspects of human and animal life in the Lake District?
• How far do Herdwick-engineered landscapes reproduce other species’ imagination of the Lake District?
• What can a study centring on Herdwick’s tell us about entrenched, polarised attitudes to rural places?
• What are the deeper connections of Herdwicks to agricultural and biological processes beyond their immediate locality? How has this changed over time?

Themes: Landscape and Lifestyle.

Contact: Clare Holdsworth, c.m.holdsworth@keele.ac.uk

Rural landscapes are valued for the opportunity to observe the night sky in the absence of light pollution. These opportunities are associated with our curiosity about the night sky and more-than-human well-being (that is benefits to wildlife and human health). This popular endorsement of dark skies is associated with formal designation of dark sky parks to promote areas with little light pollution and good public access to facilitate stargazing (there are currently nine designated areas in the UK).

Potential questions that may be addressed:

• How does the demarcation of dark sky impact on everyday activities in these areas and how are tensions with different land users negotiated?
• How are darks skies marketized through astronomical tourism?
• How do dark skies benefit more-than-human well-being?
• How does the popular endorsement of dark skies develop our understanding of more-than-human nature and incorporate different experiences of dark sky as therapeutic and/or frightening?

Themes: Landscape and Land use.

Contact: Ian Oliver, i.oliver@keele.ac.uk

The UK has a rich mining history that has transformed the landscape and in parallel has also had a profound influence on societal development, community structure, rural economy,  and cultural identity in many mining regions. Across England, Wales and Scotland there are thousands of abandoned mines and mining associated sites that leave an important and lasting cultural and environmental legacy. Many rivers are adversely impacted from metal and other discharges from abandoned mining sites, with frequent exceedance of environmental quality standards, while other such sites have been linked with potential health risks from dispersible dusts, water pollution or soil contamination. At the same time, many mining sites in the UK are celebrated and protected for their cultural and historical significance and are officially listed as historic monuments. Additionally, because of their unique landscapes and characteristics, some abandoned mine sites are even protected on environmental grounds as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Projects on this topic seek to investigate the ongoing cultural and economic importance of abandoned mining sites and to investigate how the continued environmental and health risks from them may be better understood, resolved or minimised without loss of heritage.

Potential questions that may be addressed:

• Is the cultural and historic benefit of preserving old mining sites worth the continued environmental costs?  
• Do large spoil heaps listed as historical monuments present an unacceptable environmental and/or health hazard?
• Development and examination of management strategies that preserve historic mining locations whilst minimising ongoing environmental impacts. 

Themes: Lifestyle and Landscape.

Contact: Pawas Bisht, p.bisht@keele.ac.uk

Creative rural enterprise not only contributes to the economic sustainability of rural communities, but these activities also co-produce new meanings of landscapes and diverse ways of being creative. Creative practitioners working on socio-ecological themes constitute an important group of citizens who are trying to mediate the rapid set of transitions demanded of rural places. This project seeks to better understand the conditions under which they work, the challenges that they are experiencing, and the contributions they are making to the development of sustainable rural futures.

Proposals may also explore how sustainable rural creative practices are developed through close attention to landscape and more-than-human materials. In acknowledging the landscape as a creative reservoir that goes beyond the vista to its material and lived elements, project may seek to establish the place of local landscapes in broader currents of activity, lifestyle and identity, and unlock the landscape as a resource in its own right.

Potential questions that may be addressed:

• What do rural creative practitioners gain from, and give back to, their location and community?
• What are the challenges experienced by creative practitioners working in the rural as they seek to navigate intersections between creative practice, community participation and scientific knowledge?
• How can creative practitioners working in the rural be best supported to engage with policymakers, to foster greater support for the crucial role of artistic practice in essential dialogue, translation and shared knowledge generation?
• How can we best account for the role of landscape (broadly conceived) as inspiration for creative practice, inside and outside of rural enterprise?
• Where art and creative practice seeks to capture biodiversity, what are its successes and limitations? How can it best capture and communicate complex ecological systems?

Themes: Land use and Landscape.

Contact: Christian Devenish, c.devenish@keele.ac.uk

Solar farms are an emerging divisive issue in rural communities: a source of sustainable energy on the one hand, or a scarring of the landscape on the other. This project will investigate how potential biodiversity benefits and employment net-gains, can be assessed against changing cultural landscape value. To do this, and working alongside the existing BIOGAIN project, the project will first evaluate potential biodiversity benefits at a sample of solar farms across the UK by using audio recording technology to estimate the presence of birds, bats and insects within them as compared to nearby farmland. Within the landscape around the same sample of solar sites the project will also assess changes in community attitudes and in employment patterns as a result of solar farms. Using results from these evaluations, techniques may be proposed to foster better understanding and relationships between communities and solar providers, where win-win situations for local cohesion, environmental and economic sustainability are sought. This study offers an excellent doctoral training to SURF PhD students who can learn how to use visual observations, bioacoustics, cutting-edge radio tracking, and advanced data analysis to measure and enhance biodiversity at renewable energy sites.

Potential questions that may be addressed:

• What is the potential impact of solar farms on biodiversity, taking into account different types of habitat management within them? How does this compare to biodiversity on local farmland?
• How have the placement of solar farms changed attitudes towards local landscapes and within communities in their areas of influence?
• How have the placement of solar farms changed local employment structures?
• What outcomes are feasible for environmental sustainability, economic sustainability and local community cohesion where solar farms have been built? Can these outcomes be improved with better management of both landscape within solar farms and communication within local communities?

Themes: Land use and Lifestyle.

Contact: Ian Stimpson, i.g.stimpson@keele.ac.uk

Many regions of Britain have long histories of mining for coal and mineral ores, and quarrying for dimension stone and aggregates. Geological extraction is an essential rural land use that, without remediation, can scar the landscape, but enhances rural economies. Many rural villages only exist because of their mining and quarrying heritage, and buildings are often made from the local stone. In Staffordshire, for example, most Grade 1 and Grade 2* listed buildings have their stone sourced from a now-abandoned quarry less than a kilometre away, and many rural villages have a protected character based on their particular local building stone. Repair to these buildings is often done with inappropriate imported stone, despite supposed protection by listing.  This project will explore how industrial scale processes of the past could be reclaimed using artisan practices aligned to more-than-human perspectives.

Potential questions that may be addressed:

• How best to remediate former mining/quarrying landscapes? Return to greenfield conditions or remediate and use as brownfield for housing and/or leisure?
• Should access be kept to former quarries to extract small quantities of dimension stone for repair with authentic original materials for heritage-listed buildings in the UK, and buildings in conservation areas? Could protection from listing be more strongly enforced as a result? How can we define 'artisan' activities in contradistinction to 'industrial' or 'commercial' ones?
• To what extent are communities able to mobilise artisan quarrying or mining traditions in order to prevent the use of former quarry and mine sites for further harmful, toxic or polluting activities? How can artisan extraction skills and traditions best be valued alongside built heritage?
• We are familiar with the concept of ‘food miles’, sourcing food locally to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and to support local rural economies. Could there be the equivalent concept of ‘stone miles’ developed, using local artisan-quarried stone for building and renovation rather importing stone from further afield?
• To what extent might local rural communities lead future artisanal quarrying in their area? How can rural mining heritage be balanced against a potential source of noise, dust, and lorry movements on country roads?
• Can geodiversity and geoheritage be maintained as well as biodiversity?

Themes: Lifestyle and Land use.

Contact: Emma Allen, e.l.allen1@keele.ac.uk

Recent research on the British countryside has brought to the fore matters pertaining to access and inclusivity. But access rights in the UK are about more than formal designation. While there are formal laws on who has the right to roam, there are also informal assumptions and a shared code about countryside access. Knowing and understanding the formal, the informal and their interrelation is perhaps the first step in overcoming barriers for non-conventional hikers or visitors to confidently access the countryside. This project will evaluate how different groups encounter rural areas and how we can go about decolonising rural leisure. Using the law, literature and specialist publications, proposals to this call are invited to explore the miasma of legal issues around access to rural spaces, but also wider social issues of inclusion/exclusion, and to consider how these issues can potentially be resolved.

Potential questions that may be addressed:

• Who ‘belongs’ in the British countryside? How ‘safe’ or ‘inviting’ do different people find rural spaces? How has this changed over time?
• How is the above connected to formal law and informal rules that regulate countryside access, to people's perceptions of those laws and rules and to wider social conceptions of rural landscapes?
• What can be done to decolonise and challenge the embedded power structures which shape both legal and social ideas of ownership and belonging in rural spaces?

Themes: Livelihood and Lifestyle.

Contact: Clare Holdsworth, c.m.holdsworth@keele.ac.uk

Farming in the UK has a well-reported ageing labour force. In 2023 over two-thirds of farmers in England were aged 55 and over (Defra 2023). Rural youth report being pessimistic about their futures; citing unaffordability, loneliness, and lack of digital and transport connectivity as their main concerns (CPRE 2021). These two social issues cannot be considered as separate concerns. The sustainability of the UK agricultural sector, and indeed rural communities more generally, depends on young people having the resources, opportunity and support to negotiate transitions to adulthood in rural contexts.

Potential questions that may be addressed:

• What are the main barriers and opportunities facing young people in rural areas?
• What are young people’s experiences of seeking and securing work in the agricultural sector?
• What support do rural youth require to realise opportunities in the agricultural sector?
• How are youth voices listened to and acted upon in rural policy and by rural employers?
• What are young people’s aspirations for the future of rural communities?

Defra (2023) Agricultural workforce in England at 1^st June 2023. Available at: Agricultural workforce in England at 1 June - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) 

CPRE (2021) Young people in rural areas: A report. Available at https://www.cpre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021_CPRE_Young-people-in-rural-areas_full-report.pdf 

Themes: Livelihood and Land use.

Contact: Zoe Robinson , z.p.robinson@keele.ac.uk 

There is increasing policy interest in the ‘place-based’ approaches to decarbonisation, although the places under consideration are typically urban and city-scale, and hence omit the role of agriculture. UK agriculture contributes ~7% of UK greenhouse gas emissions, including 40% of methane emissions, while rising energy costs also have significant implications to costs of food production. Farms have an important and complex role in rural energy transitions and the decarbonisation of rural places, being potential sites of exportable energy generation (e.g. solar farms); sites of on-farm energy generation (e.g. slurry for heat and electricity); on-site energy efficiency opportunities and as well as greenhouse gas reduction from animal sources through precision livestock management. However, developing technical solutions alone does not ensure the uptake of these solutions, with a wide-range of technical barriers influencing potential implementation. Proposals to this call are invited to explore the role of farms in the decarbonisation of rural ‘places’ and the non-technical barriers (e.g., governance and policy; skills, capability and capacity; finance and business models; supply chains; and knowledge and information) to on-farm technical solutions to decarbonisation. This project will work with project partner RAFT Solutions and existing farm networks.

Potential questions that may be addressed:

• What are the key non-technical barriers to energy transition and greenhouse gas reduction technologies in diverse farm settings and how can these be overcome?
• What does a ‘user-designed’ whole farm system to support rural energy systems look like?
• How are farms built into rural place-based approaches to decarbonisation in policy?
• What are the roles of different stakeholders (including vets) in supporting on-farm energy transitions and greenhouse gas reduction?
• How can an optimal sustainable balance be achieved that addresses the potentially conflicting needs of human/animal/environment?
• How can global food security challenges balance global energy and environmental challenges?

Themes: Livelihood and Land use.

Contact: Ghulam Sorwar, g.sorwar@keele.ac.uk

Contrary to the assumption that rural productivity is the antithesis of biodiversity, rural enterprises often take pride in their ecological footprint. The financial viability of sustainable rural enterprises is not at odds with decarbonisation. From a financial perspective, all businesses can be viewed as a series of cash flows. These cash flows can be negative, representing cash invested in the enterprise, or positive, representing cash flow generated by the enterprise. A successful enterprise is one where the generated cash flow exceeds the invested cash flow. Seen from this perspective, the added aspect of the ecological footprint should be viewed as a creative and positive constraint. It allows one to focus on the type of business that will naturally fit into the rural environment. This project aims to identify strategies for economically viable rural enterprises that monetise biodiversity. 

Potential questions that may be addressed:

• What types of businesses are likely to contribute to decarbonisation?
• Can traditional rural businesses be adapted to contribute to decarbonisation? If so, what creative approaches are needed?
• How can we develop renewable energy projects that not only contribute to the local economy but also provide additional revenue by selling the excess energy produced?
• How can we develop community-led enterprises that not only contribute to the local economy in terms of community participation but also provide an added revenue stream to the community?
• How can social media be used to integrate rural enterprises into the global village and, thus, the global economy?

Themes: Livelihood and Landscape.

Contact: Simon Pemberton, s.pemberton@keele.ac.uk 

Traditionally, rural poverty has been viewed in material terms given the challenges of low incomes in rural areas, arising from farm wages and under-/seasonal employment (Newby, 2023). Moreover, whilst the root causes of rural poverty have evolved over time - with contemporary experiences underpinned by a combination of austerity, welfare cuts, the emergence of the low wage tourism and hospitality sector and increasing house prices (Yarwood, 2023) - there is a need to move beyond a focus on material considerations per se. The importance of ‘more than human’ aspects of rural life also need to be considered, including the quality of the natural environment, landscape attachment and nature-ecology-society relations in offsetting material hardship. These aspects may also serve to ‘screen out’ rural poverty and inform social constructions of the rural as ‘problem free’, leading to an emphasis on community ‘self-help’ which can perpetuate a lack of access to welfare entitlements.

Proposals to this call are therefore invited to consider and critically evaluate the extent to which there is a disconnection between the material, ecological and socio-cultural aspects of poverty in the rural (see Milbourne, 2013) and the importance of ‘more than human’ aspects of rural life in shaping experiences of rural poverty. In so doing, the overall intention is to develop more inclusive models of rural well-being.

Potential questions that may be addressed:

• How do material, ecological and socio-cultural disconnections in rural poverty play out in more accessible or remote rural areas?
• How do the ‘more than human’ aspects of rural life affect experiences of rural poverty in different rural settings?
• What is the importance of time and temporality in shaping material, ecological and socio-cultural disconnections in relation to rural poverty?
• How do ‘borders’ - both administrative and those which are socially constructed - matter in shaping experiences of rural poverty and the extent to which the ‘more than human’ offsets material hardship?
• To what extent does a ‘sense of community’ - involving both human and ‘more than human’ actants influence individuals’ experiences of rural poverty?

Themes: Landscape and Livelihood.

Contact: Ben Anderson, b.anderson@keele.ac.uk

Peat bogs are a British treasure: the 10% of UK land covered by them represents 13% of the global total. Yet these rare, natural, carbon-capturers remain undervalued as a cultural asset, and ally for future sustainability. This project investigates how people reconnect to the peat that once kept them warm and understand the landscapes of the Peak District (which contains peat ecologies) as shaped by more-than-human histories of cutting, draining, management, planting and gardening. Building on growing interdisciplinary interest in Peat, this project will seek how best to realise the myriad social, cultural and environmental potentials of bogs, creatively drawing on past histories and memories of peat alongside those who live in its shadow.  

Potential questions that may be addressed:

• How can histories and memories of peat and its more-than-human inhabitants be made relevant today? Proposals might want to consider methods such as creative practice, socially-engaged art, or citizen science.
• To what extent are the prised properties of peat-on-gardens detached from the perception of peat-in-bogs? Can gardeners become the champions of bogs?
• Healthy bogs are often characterised by an abundance of insect life. How has this been represented in the past, and to what extent is it a challenge or opportunity for enhancing the cultural value of peat?
• How do rural dwellers navigate dichotomies between Grouse and Peat? Are there other options?
• Do peat’s many dark stories, histories and myths help to explain the widespread popular silence surrounding its history?