Research Areas
Over more than a decade of engagement, the University of Birmingham and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have established 141 faculty-to-faculty links in dozens of academic disciplines.
Multiple collaborative projects are supported each year by the BRIDGE Seed Fund, BRIDGE Fellowship, and external funding.
| Academic Year | Discipline or Research Area | Project Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2025/26 | English, Rare Manuscripts | Emblems, Ornaments, and the Early Modern Reading Experience |
| 2025/26 | Engineering | Train the Trainer: Building Sustainable Food Systems and Promoting Microbiome-Friendly Practices in Healthcare |
| 2025/26 | Psychology, Neuroscience | The BRIDGE Brain Network |
| 2025/26 | Gender Studies, History | Women’s Bodies, the State and Resistance: A Transnational History |
| 2025/26 | Public Health | A collaborative network to leap the hurdles of continuity of care in Brazil, England, and the United States |
| 2025/26 | Linguistics | Computational Sociolinguistics and the Impacts of Language Models |
| 2025/26 | Climate | AI Predictability of Extremes on Both Sides of the Atlantic (PEBSA) |
| 2025/26 | Engineering | Re4Rail2.0: AI and digital twin-based automated technology to real-time repair, reuse, recycle, and repurpose railway infrastructure |
| 2025/26 | Political Science | Decline and Threat Credibility |
| 2025/26 | Social Work, Health | A Stakeholder-Informed Approach to Develop a Global Maternal Mental Health Conceptual Framework |
| 2025/26 | Engineering | Surfactant Transport in Wave Breaking: Implications for Jet Droplet Ejection and Air-Sea Exchange |
| 2025/26 | Health | Development of Renewable Biocompatible Wearable Pressure Sensors for Healthcare Applications |
| 2025/26 | Biology, Environmental Sciences | Evolution of Environmental Science Engagement |
| 2025/26 | Engineering | Seeding Innovation in Responsive Biologically Inspired Multiphase Surfaces: A Foundation for Future Center Research |
Academic Year 2024-2025
| Academic Year | Discipline or Research Area | Project Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2024/25 | Social Work | Bridging Development and Diplomacy in the Global South |
| 2024/25 | Sustainable Technology | Beyond the microbead: assessing emerging contaminants (microplastics and PFAS) in leave-on personal care products |
| 2024/25 | Education Policy, Organization & Leadership | A Comparative Study of Online Education Students‚ Becoming and Belonging at UIUC and UoB |
| 2024/25 | Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering | Development of a 3D bioprinted, vascularized organ-on-chip for brain cancer modeling |
| 2024/25 | Education Policy, Organization & Leadership | Minoritized Staff’s Career Trajectories and Leadership Aspirations |
| 2024/25 | Slavic Languages & Literature | Russophone Literary Diversity and Peripheries |
| 2024/25 | Journalism | Investigating Local Solutions to Period Poverty in Sierra Leone |
| 2024/25 | Nuclear, Plasma, & Radiological Engineering | Guided self-directed and collaborative learning in an international sustainability competition for undergraduates |
| 2024/25 | Law | Establishing and Inaugurating Transitional Justice and Human Rights Network |
| 2024/25 | Theatre | The Universal Stage II: Extended experiments in hybrid performance for the 21st Century Theatre |
| 2024/25 | Aerospace Engineering | Workshop Series on Autonomous and Resilient Transportation Systems |
| 2024/25 | Religion | New Directions in Interfaith Education and the Study of Jainism |
Academic Year 2023-2024
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Academic Year 2022-2023
| Academic Year | Discipline or Research Area | Project Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2022/23 | Languages, Cultures, Art History, and Music | Participatory and Collaborative Methods in Music Research |
| 2022/23 | Law | Achieving environmental health and justice through Precision Toxicology |
| 2022/23 | Business School | De-globalization and geopolitics – the impact of economic nationalism and economic security on business diplomacy, and corporate political activity |
| 2022/23 | Social Policy | From Shame to Celebration: A Reframing of the Global Culture of Menstruation |
| 2022/23 | Education | Educating Responsible Believers: Epistemic Norms and Controversial Beliefs in the Classroom |
| 2022/23 | Mechanical Engineering | Excellence in graduate education and research |
| 2022/23 | Chemistry | Greener synthesis of mesopolymers for organic electronics applications |
| 2022/23 | Mathematics | Methods in Extremal Graph Theory |
| 2022/23 | Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences | Exploring good practice and student experience opportunities in research-led sustainability education |
| 2022/23 | Psychology | Are genetic variants associated with social connectedness in UK Biobank participants orthologous to genetic variations associated with social and motor function in honeybees? |
| 2022/23 | Metabolism and Systems Research | Exploring Perinatal and Mental Health Disparities in Global Context |
| 2022/23 | Inflammation and Aging | Combining blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal variability and salivary microRNA biomarkers to enhance the diagnosis of concussion in professional RFU players |
Academic Year 2021-2022
| Academic Year | Discipline or Research Area | Project Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2021/22 | Physics and Astronomy | CSI Gravity: Investigating fundamental physics with hairy black holes and gravitational waves |
| 2021/22 | English Literature | Language Learning and the Pedagogy of Play |
| 2021/22 | History | Bridging the Lacuna of Local Jewish Histories: Jewish Lives in Small/er Communities |
| 2021/22 | Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences | Making invisible plastics visible: Joined-up forces to tackle microplastics from car tyre, road marking and brake wear and tear |
| 2021/22 | Shakespeare | The Universal Stage: Experiments in hybrid performance for the 21st Century Theatre |
| 2021/22 | Economics | Housing market policies and house price expectations |
| 2021/22 | Physics and Astronomy | New frontiers of synthetic quantum matter |
| 2021/22 | Chemical Engineering | BiRmingham / Urbana-Champaign Net-zero Transition |
| 2021/22 | Cancer and Genomic Sciences | Structure Function Analyses of the Ancient Disease Associated Translation Factor DRG1 |
| 2021/22 | Education | Exploring the Collection and Use of 360-degree Classroom Videos for Teacher Education |
| 2021/22 | Modern Languages | How do scientific views change? An adversarial collaboration on language learning |
| 2021/22 | Modern Languages | Race, Migration and Memory |
| 2021/22 | Physics and Astronomy | BRIDGING Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling to the next level |
Academic Year 2019-2020
| Academic Year | Discipline or Research Area | Project Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2019/20 | English | Unpublished America |
| 2019/20 | English, Drama and Creative Studies and English Literature | Language Learning and the Pedagogy of Play |
| 2019/20 | Physics and Astronomy | Strain Engineering of 2D Magnetism |
| 2019/20 | Computer Science | Multimodal image-to-image translation for drug discovery |
| 2019/20 | Engineering | Mechanochemical Properties of Flexible Metal-organic Frameworks |
| 2019/20 | Psychology | A joint investigation of task-based effects on prediction during reading |
| 2019/20 | Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences | A collaborative investigation of licit and illicit approaches to performance enhancement in sport. |
| 2019/20 | Biosciences | Effects of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide on crop productivity and forest diversity |
| 2019/20 | Ornithology and Biosciences | The Urban Oasis? Comparative Tracking of Turdus thrushes in Green Cities in the UK and the USA |
| 2019/20 | Inflammation and Ageing | Developing computational models of age-related inflammatory musculoskeletal diseases: Progression of synovial joint inflammation in patients with osteoarthritis. |
Academic Year 2018-2019
| Academic Year | Discipline or Research Area | Project Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2018/19 | Law | Clinical and curriculum-based approaches to environmental law |
| 2018/19 | English, Drama and Creative Studies | Modernism and Controversy |
| 2018/19 | Law | Religious Freedom and Sexual Orientation Discrimination: Can the Law Enforce Mere Civility? |
| 2018/19 | Business and Economics | Education and wellbeing of children in Sub-Saharan Africa and their employment as young adults |
| 2018/19 | Business | International Workshop On Branding Heritage And Heritage Brands |
| 2018/19 | Business and Economics | The Bonus-Income Donation Norm |
| 2018/19 | Mathematics | Hypergraph Turán problems and Ramsey problems |
| 2018/19 | Chemistry | Programming Hierarchical Self-Assembly of Patchy Colloids into Photonic Crystals |
| 2018/19 | Electronic Electrical and Systems Engineering | Learning Activities appropriate for Industry 4.0: a Birmingham-Illinois partnership in Sensing and Control Across the Ocean |
| 2018/19 | Chemical Engineering | Flow boiling heat transfer behavior of micro-encapsulated phase change materials slurry and its application to battery pack thermal management |
| 2018/19 | BiFoR | Declining nutritional quality of pollen under elevated CO2 impacts on pollinator health |
| 2018/19 | Psychology | Brain oscillations supporting working memory: an interdisciplinary network approach |
| 2018/19 | Psychology | A joint investigation of language change and decline in healthy ageing |
| 2018/19 | Nursing | Intersectionality and integration in child welfare and protection: |
Academic Year 2017-2018
| Academic Year | Discipline or Research Area | Project Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2017/18 | History and Cultures | Comparative Approaches to Black and Jewish Studies in Britain and the U.S. |
| 2017/18 | Health Services Management | Health policy and civil unrest – an analysis of the global archive of news reports. |
| 2017/18 | Economics | Modelling Stochastic Decision Processes in Individual and Interactive Behaviour |
| 2017/18 | Social Policy | Building collaborations to strengthen third sector/non-profit and volunteering research, teaching and training |
| 2017/18 | Education | Understanding the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) families with children with autism: implications for professional development. |
| 2017/18 | Engineering | Downburst dynamics |
| 2017/18 | Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences | Unlocking New Geochemical Toolboxes for Deecting Climate Change |
| 2017/18 | Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences | Variability in the Oxidative Potential of Particulate Matter (PM) across continents |
| 2017/18 | Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences | Microplastics in the Aquatic Environment |
| 2017/18 | Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences | A collaborative pilot optical imaging study to establish measures of cerebral arterial elasticity in young and aged adults in response to acute intake of flavanols |
| 2017/18 | Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences | UK regions and digital Interdependencies |
| 2017/18 | Human Reproductive Science | Do sperm feel their way: Mechanotransduction in mammalian sperm |
| 2017/18 | Cancer and Genomic Sciences | Impact of ethnical background on breast cancer incidence and outcomes in women from USA, UK and India |
Academic Year 2016-2017
| Academic Year | Discipline or Research Area | Project Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2016/17 | Linguistics | Writing Development in Global Higher Education |
| 2016/17 | Regionalism | Brazilian Regionalism in a Global Context |
| 2016/17 | Religious Feminism | With a Head Scarf: The Art of Religious Women’s Feminism |
| 2016/17 | Political Science | Innovations in Legislative Organisation: A study of Legislative Committees and their Impact on Public Policy |
| 2016/17 | Inclusion and Disability | Building Bridges: Addressing Inclusion in Disability Research and Teaching in the UK and US |
| 2016/17 | African Studies | Moulding the Authoritarian Citizen: Tax, State and Society in the Horn of Africa |
| 2016/17 | Mathematics | Interactive Theorem Provers Assessments: Bridging Research and Instruction Practices in Mathematics Formalisation |
| 2016/17 | Chemistry and Engineering | Sensors for Healthcare and Biomedical Sciences |
| 2016/17 | Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences | Collaborative Research on Forest Carbon Cycling under Elevated CO2 |
| 2016/17 | Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences | The UoB-UoI Water Assembly |
| 2016/17 | Carceral Spaces | Conceptualising Carcerality |
| 2016/17 | Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences | Leading the way to a new global consensus on carbon dioxide impacts on crops and forests |
| 2016/17 | Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences | Identifying the human protein turnover signature associated with exercise and inactivity by the use of dynamic proteomics |
| 2016/17 | Psychology | Role of oscillations in attention and memory |
| 2016/17 | Nursing | Application of work from The National Center for Professional & Research Ethics (NCPRE) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to the UK healthcare environment via the three research streams at the University of Birmingham School of Nursing and to the interprofessional/bioethical educational work of the UNESCO Bioethics centre and the University of Oxford |
Academic Year 2015-2016
| Academic Year | Discipline or Research Area | Project Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 | History | Cross-cultural Histories of the Book in the Global Middle Ages |
| 2015/16 | Behavioral Economics | Incentives, Performance and Pro-social Behaviour |
| 2015/16 | Social Policy | Comparitibe Illegalities: Undocumented Migrants in the US and Europe |
| 2015/16 | Nuclear Physics | Education, Training, and Research Collaboration in Nuclear Science and Engineering |
| 2015/16 | Rail | Dynamic scratch resistance of micro- and nano-engineered concrete for sustainable and environmental-friendly applications in railway and other civil construction |
| 2015/16 | Nuclear Physics | Doing cold smarter: clean cold for rural communities. From report to field trials |
| 2015/16 | Chemical Engineering | Towards a Global Network for Dop-in Biofuels |
| 2015/16 | Biosciences | The biology of suspended animation |
| 2015/16 | Psychology | An electrodermal investigation of the effects of the subjective experience of control on emotion-cognition interactions |
| 2015/16 | Neurobiology | Biomarkers of Traumatic Brain Injury |
| 2015/16 | Cardiovascular | Preparation for an application to the Leducq Foundation Transatlantic Network of Excellence Program to investigate the role of platelet activation in thromboinflammation |
Academic Year 2014-2025
| Academic Year | Discipline or Research Area | Project Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2014/15 | Cultural Heritage | Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site: Meanings, Values, Practices, Policy and Economics of the UNESCO Designation |
| 2014/15 | Education and Social Justice | Exploring International Perspectives on Educational Pathways: How Does Policy Affect Equity in relation to Opportunities for Progression and Social Mobility? |
| 2014/15 | Mathematics | Building bridges in Mathematics |
| 2014/15 | Chemical Engineering | Valorisation and Upgrading of Bio Oil: A Renewable Transport Fuel |
| 2014/15 | Civil Engineering | Improving damping and dynamic resistance in concrete through micro- and nano-engineering for sustainable and environmental-friendly applications in railway and other civil construction |
| 2014/15 | Physics and Astronomy | Education, Training, and Research Collaboration in Nuclear Science and Engineering |
| 2014/15 | Chemical Engineering | Controlling Spatial Organization of Microvascular Networks for Enhanced Bone Tissue Regeneration |
| 2014/15 | Behavioral Science | Cerebral markers of future disease risk in exaggerated responders to psychological stress |
| 2014/15 | Psychology and Neuroscience | Collaboration for the Implementation of Multi-Modal Imaging Investigation of Human Brain Function |
| 2014/15 | Biosciences | Bridging the Divide: advancing structural interpreation of flexible protein-DNA complexes using xMD-FF |
| 2014/15 | Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences | Persistent Groundwater Pollution Legacies & The Groundwater-Energy Nexus |
| 2014/15 | Neurobiology | Biomarkers of Traumatic Brain Injury |
| 2014/15 | History | New Directions in Modern British Studies |
| 2014/15 | Law | The Law and Norms of Musical Borrowing |
| 2014/15 | English | Literature and Science: A Transatlantic Exchange |
| 2014/15 | Education | Who is the ‘heritage’ native speaker? Contrasting perspectives from applied linguistics |
| 2014/15 | Chemistry | New Catalysts for Fuel Cells |
| 2014/15 | Mechanical Engineering | Micro & Nanotechnology for medical diagnostics |
| 2014/15 | Chemistry | Leading Cutting-Edge Research in Energy Materials through Innovation, Cooperation and Diversity |
| 2014/15 | Civil and Environmental Engineering | Development and Delivery of an International Masters programme and CPD provision in Railway Systems and Risk Management |
| 2014/15 | Electrical Engineering | High and Low Technological opportunities in cultural heritage |
| 2014/15 | Civil and Environmental Engineering | Workshop on International Approaches to Capacity and Safety of Shared Freight and Passenger Rail Lines |
| 2014/15 | Biological Physcology | Physical activity and sedentary behaviour in people with multiple sclerosis |
| 2014/15 | Psychology | The impact of ApoE4 polymorphism on the brain and cognitive health response to exercise |
| 2014/15 | Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences | Impacts of nitrogen oxide emissions from military aviation on atmospheric composition and associated climate forcings |
| 2014/15 | Environmental Genomics | Regulatory constraints of developmental gene modules |
| 2014/15 | Psychology | The impact of cross-modal borrowing on English literacy in deaf signers of ASL and BSL |