Welcome

The research undertaken at the Centre for Material Social Futures (the MSF) has been cutting edge across a number of fields. It has affected a more sustainable approach to computing for example, it has developed big picture views and methods for understanding the complexities of energy futures including nuclear, and it has identified the complex social and material factors moulding energy storage and reuse. Its research on the environment, on microplastics and in social policy, is turning out to be methodologically and empirically innovative. For Lancaster, the MSF has become a role model for future trans-disciplinary research endeavours, while its success is being modelled at other universities especially those seeking to make new bridges between the material and social sciences. In terms of research and professional careers, the MSF has provided an exemplar of post-disciplinarity research training, allowing its cohort of PhDs to embark on careers which will be fully engaged with some of the world’s most crucial material social problems.

Some twenty-four PhDs have been undertaken (or are still underway) within the MSF, fifteen of which were funded by the Leverhulme. In prior annual reports I have provided examples of the kinds of research that they have been undertaking. For this, the final report, I will summarise the activities of each of the Leverhulme funded researchers or Scholars as I will call them, presenting each in terms of four research themes that include others in the centre. The thematic consistencies between and across the researchers are more detailed and subtle than can be presented but this thematic structuring but is sufficient to sketch the research contexts in question and to allow me to remark on the scholar’s contribution to their particular research area. I use this opportunity to also point toward relevant publications for each, while a full list is to be found in the appendix. I share some of the Leverhulme Scholars’ own words that describe the benefits that derived from participating in the MSF research programme and training and detail where they have gone post-MSF.