List of projects funded by LSE

• Savings commitment devices and seller-buyer relationships: evidence from dairy cooperatives in Kenya
  Dr Mohamed Abouaziza, Department of Management
• Realising the health co-benefits of mangrove preservation in the Philippines: scaling up sustainable blue finance
  Lei (Alice) Bian, Global School of Sustainability,
• Exposure to pollution, productivity and well-being: street vending sector in India
  Dr Swati Dhingra, Department of Economics
  
• Trade shocks and the political economy of urban development
  Dr Jeremiah Dittmar, Department of Economics
• Transport equity in London: distributional patterns, attitudes and polarisation
  Dr Alexandra Gomes, LSE Cities
• Changing child poverty policy for the better: using research evidence to inform policymaking
  Professor Kitty Stewart, Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion

• Building sustainable communities: learning through partnerships
  Eleanor Benton, Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion
• Healing movements: African LGBTI organizing for diasporic wellbeing
  Dr SM Rodriguez, Department of Gender Studies
• Building partnerships to strengthen the representation of women in diplomacy
  Professor Karen Smith, Department of International Relations

• AI-led interviews
  Professor Xavier Jaravel, Department of Economics

• The Irish in England
  Professor Neil Cummins, Department of Economic History
• Black Atlantic at the United Nations
  Dr Jake Subryan Richards, Department of International History
• Fair car use budgeting: an innovative tool for urban transport policy and deliberation
  Dr Philipp Rode, LSE Cities

• Building voter confidence in election results: a conjoint experiment in Malawi
  Johan Ahlback, Department of Methodology
• The digitisation and economic analysis of (potentially) millions of last wills and testaments: an untapped millennium of economic, social and psychological history
  Professor Neil Cummins, Department of Economic History
• Indigenous American disenfranchisement
  Dr Daniel De Kadt, Department of Methodology
• Women in academia and the responsibilization of mental health: a social identity and intersectionality perspective
  Dr Ilka Gleibs, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science
• Re-thinking green transitions in the city: a collaboration with young people and policymakers in Islington, London
  Catarina Heeckt, LSE Cities
• Inequalities in access to care in Bangladesh: the role of provider choice and gender discrimination
  Dr Ilias Kyriopoulos, LSE Health
• Quality and provider choice in the South African healthcare market
  Dr Mylene Lagarde, LSE Health
• Regulating the risks of risk-based regulation
  Professor Martin Lodge, Department of Government
• Re-inventing self in post-conflict Colombia: life-stories of the FARC guerrilas
  Professor Kai Möller, LSE Law School
• The silver thread of the deep: the cultural history of shark fins in China
  Dr Ronald Po, Department of International History
• Management practices and work-from home: evidence from a multinational firm
  Dr Davide Rigo, Department of Geography and Environment
• Improving the resilience of the UK labour force in a 1.5 degree world
  Professor Elizabeth Robinson, Grantham Research Institute
• Is there a 'green halo' in employment choices?
  Dr Aurélien Saussay, Grantham Research Institute
• Markets for climate experts
  Dr Noah Zucker, Department of International Relations

• Transformers for improved strategic learning
  Galit Ashkenazi-Golan, Department of Mathematics
• Developing and testing a measure of responsivity to patient concerns
  Alex Gillespie, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science
• Practise what you preach: the relationship between AI narratives and actions in S&P 500 companies
  Susanne Klausing, PhD Student, Department of Management
• Causal regressions controlling on images and text: theory on indentification and inference
  Roberto Rafael Mauro, PhD Student, Department of Economics
• Humans behind the intelligent machine: AI, development and the future of work
  Bingchun Meng, Department of Media and Communications
• Personal data stores for national statistics and evaluating socio-economic 'progress'
  Georgia Meyer, PhD Student, Department of Management
• Occupational skill content and technological change
  Thomas Monk, PhD Student, Centre for Economic Performance
• Generative AI and social scientific research Symposium
  Thomas Robinson, Department of Methodology
• Data-driven streetscapes: decoding the social and political landscape of perceived neighbourhood context
  Melissa Sands, Department of Government
• Machine learning for mental health: the use of reinforcement learning in an AI agent to improve depression
  Sia Shahrizad, PhD Student, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science
• Field experiments of social influence and contagion with AI-assisted bots
  Milena Tsvetkova, Department of Methodology
• An Egalitarian Future of Work
  Kate Vredenburgh, Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences (CPNSS)
• Enhancing public deliberation with Generative AI: evidence from an AI-mediated conversational survey experiment
  Chuyao Wang, PhD Student, Department of Methodology
• Graph Neural Networks with Application on Network Heterogeneity in Economics and Social Sciences 
  Yike Wang, Department of Economics
• The AI consciousness debate: ethical, conceptual and political implications
  Jan Wasserziehr, PhD Student, Department of Government
• Transcending Privacy Barriers: the power of eco-positioning in enhancing AI acceptance
  Ziqi Zhong, PhD Student, Department of Management

The overall aim of this project is to reduce UK inequality and improve economic growth through the development and adoption of recommendations set out in the Economy 2030 Inquiry, an initiative led by CEP and the Resolution Foundation funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The funding supports a policy officer to work on the project.

Lead applicant: Professor Henry Overman
Department/Centre/Institute: Centre for Economic Performance (CEP)

This project seeks to produce and validate the content of an open-access wealth inequality framing toolkit for social change organisations. The project builds on prior research and engagement activity including a literature review and report on the framing of wealth inequality and a series of expert convenings with social change actors including JRF, Fairness Foundation, Women’s Budget Group, The Equality Trust, Common Wealth, The High Pay Foundation, Tax Justice UK and NEON.   

Lead applicants: Dr Sarah Kerr, Dr Michael Vaughan and Professor Mike Savage
Department/Centre/Institute: International Inequalities Institute

Find out more: 
Can the media change our beliefs about wealth inequality? | Coffee break research at LSE (video) 

In response to requests from government officials and human rights agencies, and building directly on long term collaborations, this project focusses on improving information literacy for transitional justice actors in Ethiopia, Uganda and South Africa. The main part of the project will be a series of training workshops.

Lead applicant: Professor Tim Allen
Department/Centre/Institute: Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa

This project is supporting CPEC in meeting the requirements to become a World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre, particularly the Global Observatory of Long-Term Care (GOLTC), to better shape development of long-term care systems internationally.

Lead applicant: Adelina Comas-Herrera
Department/Centre/Institute: Care Policy and Evaluation Centre (CPEC)

This project seeks to create an action-learning community of engaged researchers and policymakers to understand the role and impact of Public Health Emergency of International Concert (PHEIC) declarations by the World Health Organization, which is currently renegotiating the International Health Regulations, including the option for the Director General to declare a PHEIC. The findings will be used to create guidance for global health policymakers, and to influence the WHO policies going forward. 

Lead applicant: Dr Clare Wenham
Department/Centre/Institute: LSE Health

Read more: 
What the new “pandemic emergency” concept could mean for global health security 
The WHO’s proposed pandemic treaty raises more questions than answers 

This project aims to apply findings from CPEC research on the costs of mental ill-health to the context of perinatal maternal health (PMH) in Thailand. The project will co-develop a web-based resource with findings on cost impacts and potential returns of investing into PMH, share recommendations with policymakers and influencers, and build long-term relationships to sustain the impacts.  

Lead applicants: Dr Annette Bauer and Professor Martin Knapp
Department/Centre/Institute: Care Policy and Evaluation Centre (CPEC)

This project is designed to scale up research on impactful technologies for humanitarian interventions in two contexts. Firstly, digital payments to women in Afghanistan in collaboration with the World Food Programme. Secondly, providing education to Afghan girls restricted from attending school through mobile phones, in collaboration with Youth Impact and a nationwide Afghan community organisation. The funding supported the recruitment of a Policy Outreach Officer to enhance stakeholder engagement to these ends.

Lead applicant: Dr Michael Callen
Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Economics

Find out more: 
Paying humanitarian aid digitally can help society’s most vulnerable: a study with Afghan women 
Reaching vulnerable women in Afghanistan | Coffee break research at LSE (video) 

Despite substantial progress in using wellbeing data for policy appraisal in the UK, civil servants rarely use this method in their daily work, reportedly because they are not familiar with it and have not been shown how to apply it.
This project aims to bridge this gap, enabling UK civil servants to appraise their policies from a wellbeing perspective, using novel appraisal methods developed at the LSE that are now part of official UK Government regulations (specifically, part of Treasury’s Green Book). 

Lead applicants: Dr Christian Krekel and Professor Lord Layard
Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science and Centre for Economic Performance (CEP)

Read more: 
Placing wellbeing at the centre of government decision-making 

This project aims to improve the design and delivery of the de-novo planned neighbourhoods (greenfields development on cheap land on the urban fringe) in African cities, using LSE research to inform policymakers on how to design neighbourhoods that lead to better quality, safe, more affordable and more inclusive housing.

Lead applicants: Professor Vernon Henderson and Martina Manara
Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Geography and Environment 

This project, a collaboration with the creative agency The Liminal Space supported by the Francis Crick Institute, is using innovative public engagement methods to prompt interest in and  start a conversation about the possibilities, limitations and ethical questions of embryonic research. A greater understanding of this rapidly developing science by the public and policymakers, and a great understanding by policymakers of the public’s feelings about this science, will lead to better regulation, greater levels of trust and ultimately help us get the full potential out of these scientific developments.  

Lead applicant: Professor Emily Jackson
Department/Centre/Institute: LSE Law

Read more: 
The New Facts of Life 

This project has brought together local residents, planners and government organisations for an urban planning workshop exploring an ongoing programme of asphalting in Abomey-Calavi, Benin. The project aims to foster collaborative analysis of urban place-making to forge new pathways to improved implementation of urban development projects in Benin. 

Award holder: Emmanuel Awohouedji

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Geography and Environment

This project raised awareness of the risk posed by mercury to women’s sexual and reproductive health through the participatory co-production of a short film in collaboration with female social leaders from the Bajo Cauca region, one of the most contaminated areas of Colombia. The project strengthened the collaborative network of local female social leaders to support them in taking a more active role in the advocacy efforts of local grassroot organisations.

Award holder: Chiara Chiavaroli

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of International Development

This project produced a four-page infographic in six community languages for young people and families on Asylum Support in the UK to support self-advocacy. The infographics were also shared with frontline practitioners, service managers and policy audiences to promote a better understanding of the unique needs of children seeking protection in the UK with their families and to ensure that these are better reflected in Asylum Support policy and service delivery. 

Award holder: Ilona Pinter

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Social Policy

This project staged a conference bringing together academics, activists and community organisations to increase understanding of how socialist thinkers historically tried to shape a distinctly international outlook and devise a new role for Europe in a changing world, with a view to addressing contemporary issues in international politics. The conference has established a continuing intellectual network, laying the groundwork for future collaborations. 

Award holder: Edoardo Vaccari

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of International History

This project is staging a Beijing exhibition, ‘‘You are what you stock’’, with the additional support of the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology and the Haidan District Bureau of Culture and Tourism. The exhibition explores refrigeration and food storage in China, capturing historical experiences to inform future sustainability and cultural identity practices.

Award holder: Tongyue Zhu

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Anthropology

This project brought together community organisations in Medellín, Colombia, using games and play-based activities as a participatory approach to co-create a community action plan based on visible practices of community-based care. The action plan will serve as a resource for future community advocacy, programming and collaboration.

Award holder: Sophie Legros

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of International Development

This project collaborated with the Common Wealth think tank to produce a policy report and interactive web tool drawing on a political ethnography of the UK towns of Mansfield and Corby. It sought to contribute to better-evidenced regeneration strategies, support calls for greater funding for local issues, and draw more attention to the concerns and experiences of residents in post-industrial towns. 

Award holder: Sacha Hilhorst

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Sociology

Read more

A Tale of Two Towns 

This project collaborated with the independent publishing house, istos, based in Istanbul, to bring academic and non-academic stakeholders together for a one-day event to map out the dynamics of racism experienced by different communities in Turkey and build networks to formulate anti-racist strategies for collective action. 

Award holder: Helen Mackreath
Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Sociology

This project is working in partnership with the US National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) to share and discuss research findings with patients on their views on expedited drug approvals. The collaboration aims to improve educational materials provided by NBCC on this topic and support the NBCC in influencing the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and US policymakers to ensure better representation of patient voices in drug approval regulation.

Award holder: Robin Forrest

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Health Policy

This project was inspired by the award holder's discovery of previously uncatalogued materials in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) archives capturing the displacement of the Rohingya to Bangladesh and their subsequent repatriation to Myanmar in 1978-79. This project worked in collaboration with the Burmese Rohingya Association in Japan and IFRC to hold an exhibition in Tatebayashi city, Japan, displaying these audiovisual materials for the first time to preserve historical memory and raise wider awareness of this central episode in modern Rohingya history.

Award holder: Vishnu Prasad

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Geography and Environment

This project aims to motivate humanitarian practitioners and donors to use a more critical approach that challenges assumptions about evidence-based action and people’s needs in displacement. Through presenting as part of a sexual and reproductive health panel at AidEx 2024, the world’s largest humanitarian aid and disaster relief event, and producing a policy brief, the project has sought to prompt the adoption of longer-term strategies to support sexual and reproductive health in displacement.

Award holder: Rosie Le-Voir

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Methodology

This project is collaborating with UK charity, Praxis, which advocates for migrants and refugees, to collectively identify and co-develop messaging styles that are most effective at changing attitudes and encouraging pro-immigration behaviours for use in charity marketing and advocacy materials. The project aims to use this insight to undertake knowledge-sharing among migrant rights’ NGOs and others in the field on best practices to improve attitudes towards immigration.

Award holder: Sayeh Yousefi

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science

In 2022, a new government policy in Nigeria made it compulsory for primary schools to teach students in both their mother tongue and an Indigenous language. The project developed a policy implementation toolkit in collaboration with stakeholders, including policymakers, educators and communities, to support them in navigating the complexities of the policy's implementation, fostering inclusive pedagogies and improving learning outcomes across diverse educational contexts.

Award holder: Thelma Obiakor

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Social Policy

• The high cost of living: a visual investigation with East London residents
  Dr Eileen Alexander, Department of Methodology
• Disentangling the socio-cognitive underpinnings of impostor phenomenon among UK university students: an exploration of its impact on mental health, with a special focus on underrepresented groups
  Dr Deema Awad, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science
• Political finance reforms, corruption, and voter behaviour
  Dr Sarah Brierley, Department of Government
• Can consumers induce green productinnovation at scale?
  Dr Marion Dumas, Grantham Research Institute
• Forgotten histories of racialized colonial networks of domestic workers in South India: impacts on contemporary labour markets
  Dr Shalini Grover, International Inequalities Institute
• Developing a culture of heat: informing responses to heak risk in the UK
  Candice Howarth, Grantham Research Institute
• Analysing the equity dimensions of auniversal health care program in Kenya
  Dr Lucy Kanya, LSE Health
• Journey to the centre of transformative social change: using machine learning to understand and influence degrowth adoption
  Dr Dario Krpan, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science
• Development and validation of a representative face stimulus database
  Dr Jens Koed Madsen, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science

This project is designed to engage leading policymakers in health financing in the key messages from a World Bank report on universal health coverage, which included extensive contributions from Professor Alex Voorhoeve. This included a side event at the World Bank’s annual Health Financing Forum in 2024 with a set of lower and middle-income country policymakers in attendance, and an event in May 2025 at the World Health Assembly in Geneva.

Lead applicant: Professor Alex Voorhoeve
Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method

Find out more: 
How can we help achieve universal health coverage? | Coffee break research at LSE (video) 

A previous KEI-funded project supported Dr Thambisetty’s work influencing the development of the UN High Seas Treaty (the Treaty on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ). As an advisor to Cuba, Chair of the G77 and China Group of Developing Countries, Dr Thambisetty was lead author of an internal briefing document setting out textual proposals for Part 2 on marine genetic resources; proposals that resulted in critical elements and wording used in the final Treaty text. This project has established an Ocean Biodiversity Collective to support the ratification and entry into force of the Treaty; consolidate the G77 and China’s perspective on critical issues including monetary and non-monetary sharing; and guard against any erosion of substantive consensus positions. 

Lead applicant: Dr Siva Thambisetty
Department/Centre/Institute: LSE Law

Read more:  
Protecting the high seas 
LSE Academics prepare for COP16 of the Convention on Biological Diversity 
A New Era in Global Biodiversity Finance - The Cali Fund 

The project aim is to form a knowledge exchange group for those working in the field of behavioural public policy (BPP), including LSE (and some select other) academics, and the behavioural policy leads at international agencies, UK Government departments, and private corporations. The specific behavioural-related issues that are of most concern to policy makers are often little known to academics, and policy makers are often unaware of academic arguments and evidence that are relevant to their priorities. The aim is to bridge these gaps, and to consolidate the LSE as a leading academic institution in the field.  

Lead applicant: Professor Adam Oliver
Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Social Policy

The funding supports the development of briefing papers, organisation of events and roundtables, and building relationships with relevant policymakers to influence Labour party policy with LSE research on labour markets, levelling up, investment zones, devolution and other economic policy areas.

Lead applicant: Professor Neil Lee
Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Geography and Environment

The project targets deficiencies and uncertainties around the teaching of empire in the national curriculum and at A level in schools. Professors Leigh Gardner, Tirthankar Roy and Mohamed Saleh in the Department of Economic History offer world leading expertise in the economic history of colonialism and empire in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East. They have partnered with the Historical Association, the UK’s largest history society, to bring their work to a group of selected teachers who engage with this research, develop resources that enhance their teaching of the material in classrooms and cascade this down to their peers and colleagues. The Historical Association also promotes the findings and resources through its own conference, journal, and website, making them accessible to all teachers of history associated with the HA. The project integrates LSE research into the teaching of Empire in the school curriculum, producing deep and broad impact. 

Lead applicant: Professor Sara Horrell
Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Economic History

The project aims to promote ‘social lighting’ and socially oriented urban design in Southeast Asia. This has included a 4-day professional workshop and network-building event in Bangkok with lighting professionals, designed to build capacity in integrating social research and analysis in urban lighting and design. 

Lead applicant: Dr Don Slater
Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Sociology

Find out more: 
How social research and lighting design makes better public spaces | Coffee break research at LSE (video) 

This project is designed to apply LSE Social Innovation Lab’s new methodology of understanding and measuring social impact to the work of an NGO partner in the field of education in India, Gyan Shala, as well as developing it in collaboration with large corporations who invest in social impact projects in South Africa particularly.

Lead applicant: Professor Harry Barkema
Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Management

This project, in partnership with South African NGO The Black Sash, implements interventions to ameliorate indebtedness, building on work that formed the basis of a REF 2021 impact case study. Welfare beneficiaries are targeted by lenders who use state grants as security for high-interest loans that are automatically repaid. Post-Covid, with welfare payments even more widely distributed than previously but with scarce institutionalised advice; with pay points decommissioned and with retailers used, instead, to distribute payments, the need for robust intervention has intensified. It is imperative—as noted in similar settings like Brazil—to combat the ‘collateralization of social policy’ (Lavinas 2018) while keeping open the possibility of borrowing at reasonable rates. Previous collaboration produced a research report; new collaborations with government, other NGOs, and the Stellenbosch University Law Clinic (USLC) will produce a revised handbook for paralegals. 

Lead applicant: Professor Deborah James
Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Anthropology

Read more: 
Tackling reckless lending and indebtedness in South Africa 

The project aims to contribute to the peacebuilding efforts in Colombia through knowledge exchange and impact activities among the conflict-affected communities. Since the start of the KEI project in February 2023, the project team has been engaged in collaborative activities with five conflict-affected priority groups, including female ex-combatants, Indigenous, Afro-Colombian and campesino women and LGBTQ+ collectives mainly in the southwestern Colombian region of Cauca that has been extremely affected by the armed conflict.

Lead applicant: Dr George Kunnath
Department/Centre/Institute: International Inequalities Institute

Read more: 
How do we achieve durable peace in situations of persisting conflicts? Lessons from the Colombian Peace Agreement of 2016 

This project supported the award holder in co-chairing a Behavioural Transformation Workshop in Amsterdam in 2023, bringing together researchers, policymakers and behavioural science consultants, as well as moderating a panel session on ‘‘New Frontiers of AI in Behavioural Science’’. The aim was to raise awareness among non-academic stakeholders of the novel opportunities and challenges of AI applications in the applied behavioural science field and engage in network-building to bring together those interested in the advancement of AI. 

Award holder: Andriy Ivchenko

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Social Policy

This project conducted mapping exercises to improve self-understanding of governance structures within the Greater London Authority and London Councils with the aim of improving local authorities’ capacity for decision-making processes as they work to integrate migrants and displaced people into their borough communities. 

Award holder: Melissa Weihmayer

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Geography and Environment

Read more

How London’s local councils build proactive responses to asylum

How councils can help with asylum policy

This project staged ‘‘Not another protest exhibition’’, held in LSE’s Atrium Gallery in January and February 2024. Created in collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Chuu Wai, the exhibition’s artworks utilised fabric for women’s clothing and ephemera from Myanmar during the height of the Civil Disobedience Movement to show the historic role played by women in the protests. The exhibition leveraged mixed media approaches to cultural production to imagine a more emancipatory and feminist tomorrow.

Award holder: Sara Wong

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of International Relations

This project collaborated with the education and support group Voice of Domestic Workers to advocate for the reinstatement of the pre-2012 version of the Overseas Domestic Worker Visa, which gave workers greater rights. The project staged capacity-building workshops for members of Voice of Domestic Workers and produced a policy brief to raise awareness about the continuing mistreatment and exploitation of migrant domestic workers in the UK to build the foundations for policy change to better protect these workers.

Award holder: Matt Reynolds

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Sociology

The project aims to contribute policy recommendations at G7, G20 and associated events, drawing on research exploring the conceptualisation, measurement and promotion of wellbeing to raise awareness of alternative metrics that can inform policies for sustainable development.  

Award holder: Jakob Dirksen

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Social Policy

This project conducted a transformative futuring exercise with local stakeholders in Glensaugh and Huntly, Scotland, including local residents, energy start-ups, development trusts and community energy projects, to facilitate exchange around the challenges and possibilities associated with green hydrogen production. The workshops provided a knowledge base for future collaboration between different stakeholders and for the creation of rural green hydrogen schemes more broadly. 

Award holder: Johannes Hollenhorst

Department/Centre/Institute: Department of Sociology