The research will generate new knowledge about youth understandings of uncertainty, violence, poverty and rights. It will provide insights into how to support and sustain pathways out of poverty for street connected and marginalised youth. The research is timely as it will inform the implementation of the UN's sustainable development goals, in which inequality is a key theme. The overall aim of the research is to generate new knowledge about how marginalised youth perceive, navigate, negotiate and respond to uncertainty and how this may affect their rights and pathways out of poverty in impoverished fragile and conflict affected communities, which may also be prone to natural disasters. The relationship between poverty and uncertainty will be examined in Ethiopia and Nepal in partnership with CHADET and ActionAid Nepal, organisations that have demonstrated their local expertise in working with the most marginalised children and youth on poverty, rights and participation. The objectives of the research are informed by Bauman's theories about communities and autonomy that that have not previously been applied to conceptualise how marginalised youth experience uncertainty, poverty and their rights in fragile and conflict affected developing country contexts. The objectives will enable the project to produce new knowledge about the way vulnerable and marginalised street connected youth experience poverty as they grow up, and how this is affected by conflict, violence, instability, peer groups and migration. The new insights will have direct impact on the practices of policy organisations that address poverty through initiatives for youth education and rights. Detailed research questions explore how vulnerability, agency, and rights affect young people's daily coping strategies, sense of security, belonging and autonomy and how their dreams and identities change as they grow up in settings from busy urban centres to remote rural settings in Nepal and Ethiopia. The project will advance our understandings of why - in times of conflict and in post-conflict and fragile environmental and social settings, youth reject traditional norms, form new social norms and seek support and leadership in alternative groupings and forms of peer support, such as gangs and extremist groups. Creative innovative methods, such as mapping, rivers of life, photo narrative, network and support diagrams, will help to reveal youth perspectives on the complexities of their lives. Through working with 1,000 youth and 320 adults and 80 key stakeholders, the international research team will analyse how thinking and strategies differ between genders and generations. 250 detailed case studies in each country will be collected to provide stories from young men, women and youth of the third gender, aged 15-24 years, which will also help to understand how marginalised youth experiences of poverty and perceptions of and strategies in the face of uncertainty change depending on intersecting aspects ethnicity, caste, religion, disability, education and socio-economic status. New evidence about poverty, uncertainty and children's living rights will be presented to policy makers and providers of youth services, including government and non-government representatives, in national reference groups in Nepal and Ethiopia. In the conflict affected locations, detailed evidence on local policies and interventions that support youth to deal with uncertainty will include poverty alleviation, peacebuilding and education. Through dialogue with decision-makers about the complex realities for marginalised and street connected youth and what has made a positive difference to their lives, re-conceptualisation of youth policy and programmes will be encouraged and monitored.

Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Over the last two decades, various forms of 'diversity work' with LGBTIQ+ people have become a requirement for professionals and activists working under the framework of 'diversity and inclusion' as a means to tackle the structures of inequalities that discriminate non-heterosexual, trans and intersex individuals. The mainstreaming of diversity in academic, activist and corporate spaces has increased significantly as a result of these efforts. The psy disciplines (psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis) have undergone similar changes. Having been introduced as a response to a long history of pathologisation, diversity arrived to fix and repair past wrongs, enabling research and therapeutic interventions that are respectful of the human rights of LGBTIQ+ people. The latter has led to the development of affirmative approaches to mental health, LGBTIQ+ cultural competence training and a disciplinary field of LGBTIQ+ psychology, with the US and the UK being one of the main 'exporters' of such models, particularly in Latin America. However, overt and subtle forms of pathologisation, regulation and exclusion still exist and are implemented even by those working within a diversity framework. And this, I argue, is expressive of the flaws of diversity work in bringing about structural change at the disciplinary and social policy level. This fellowship aims to make sense of the progress and setbacks brought about by diversity work in the psy disciplines in ways that not only account for its efforts to repair historical wrongs, but also interrogates diversity's political place in producing new forms of sexual and gender regulation that act via practices of normalisation and mechanisms of categorical capture. Different forms of diversity work and knowledge production initiatives that I analysed in my doctoral research reproduce some of these regulative practices, particularly those aimed at trans and gender diverse people, who, for reasons I explore in my work, are subjected to practices of professional gatekeeping that threaten access to gender affirmative care. This project, The Multiple Lives of Sexual and Gender Diversity in the Psy Disciplines, addresses some of these issues by further developing some of the questions that informed my PhD research. In particular, in this fellowship I will seek to explore what a non-pathologising, affirmative and culturally competent approach to mental health means and does for LGBTIQ+ diversity workers. To answer this, I will undertake a secondary analysis of existing data from my doctoral study and run two knowledge exchange workshops with mental health practitioners working with LGBTIQ+ people in Chile and the UK (see Case for support for details). Given the still precarious place of diversity work and the ongoing attacks on gender affirmative care in Chile and elsewhere, attempts to critically explore the political effects of diversity work on the life and wellbeing of LGBTIQ+ people face a crucial dilemma: How can we undertake that critical endeavour without compromising the work that activists, scholars, service users and community representatives have been articulating? This project takes this challenge seriously and suggests a novel path to explore some of the racist and pathologising logics still present in the psy disciplines that need critical attention. The Multiple Lives of Sexual and Gender Diversity advances knowledge about diversity work with LGBTIQ+ people and raises crucial questions for depathologising and liberatory politics. This project stems from and further develops the findings of my PhD thesis, which I will publish as a book and a series of written articles aimed at practitioners, scholars and LGBTIQ+ activists. The fellowship will allow me to produce these materials and intervene in ongoing discussions on LGBTIQ+ mental health, which I hope will positively impact the lives of those who rely on the provision of affirmative care for their wellbeing.

This project will: 1. Create a new innovation curriculum at the creative and digital economy incubator Brighton Fusebox developed out of the Brighton Fuse Project. The curriculum will be directly informed by the main findings of that project which are that arts, humanities and design knowledge and expertise are major drivers in businesses in the Brighton creative and digital cluster. The development of the innovation curriculum will involve a new kind of knowledge exchange research connecting academic approaches to learning with entrepreneurial business strategies aimed at creating value. The work will involve academics observing and engaging in a range of ways in the day to day operations of the Fusebox and will include crowd sourced ideas generation, interviews and workshops with its members. The new curriculum can be applied in other incubator and related contexts but can also inform curriculum developments within arts and humanities education and research. The research represents a practical and applied way of exploring innovation, how it happens, and where academic expertise and insights can be instrumental in creating business value. Its knowledge exchange approach recognizes the importance of the cross-flow of insights from the new creative and digital business sector into the academy to enhance arts and humanities researchers' awareness of the importance and roles of their work in economy and society and different forms of creativity aimed at creating value within them. The informal, flexible and continuous learning enabled by the new economy are strong elements that can feed back into arts and humanities orientations and practices from the entrepreneurial work and culture of the Fusebox. The knowledge exchange approach will seek to mirror the peer to peer emphasis, experiential and playful dimensions of the creative and digital economy as a new environment for production and consumption as well as learning. In this way the new knowledge generated by the project is anticipated to potentially inform theory and practice in the academy as much as in the market place. 2. Produce a commentary on developing effective models for engagement between the FuseBox and Higher Education including a critical analysis of current knowledge exchange approaches and reflections on how AHRC activities (research, hubs, events, etc) can more effectively support successful business activities in the SME creative and digital economy sector. This will enable those operating within and across the academy and business to see more clearly how arts and humanities are supporting and driving the creative and digital economy. 3. Prepare a report on the FuseBox for the AHRC which compliments and enhances the work of the Brighton Fuse project to develop understanding of the fusion of knowledge, skills and capabilities that creative businesses need in a fast changing digital economy and the role of arts and humanities research collaborations in supporting and developing this. Outputs from the project will aim to fuse arts and humanities and innovative business knowledge and skill sets and will generate new or adapted concepts and language reflecting such fusion to feed into current debates about digital literacy relevant to wider focus on innovation not only in Research Councils UK but also key agencies such as the Technology Strategy Board. This focus addresses the transition from an industrial to a creative and digital economy and new understandings of the material world in networked intelligent and big data contexts. Outputs from the project will link to this focus and illustrate how arts and humanities perspectives feed into thinking about the Internet of Everything and the social and cultural transformations it entails.