University of Liverpool researchers have been awarded prestigious fellowships by the Leverhulme Trust.
Two researchers have been awarded Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships to carry out research in the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Population Health.
Awarded to Dr Laura Bozicevic, Department of Primary Care and Mental Health and Dr Charlotte Entwistle, who will join the Department of Psychology, the three-year Fellowships fund researchers to undertake a significant piece of research and build towards an academic career.
Professor Claire Eyers, Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Impact, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences said: “These Fellowships are extremely competitive, so to be awarded two is testament to the research excellence and hard work of both Laura and Charlotte, as well as the Institute of Population Health’s commitment to supporting early career researchers.”
Dr Bozicevic’s Fellowship will investigate the effect of socio-cultural factors on school readiness and academic outcomes in pre-schoolers and school-age children from disadvantaged and minority families living in the UK. Reducing educational inequality for children and young people remains a major challenge for UK public policy; this project will build on the Institute’s world-leading research to address fundamental health inequalities and to improve health and wellbeing operating at the community and population level.
Meanwhile, Dr Entwistle’s Fellowship will investigate the relationship between narrative identity (how we tell stories about ourselves) and personality functioning (the interplay of traits, emotions, and behaviours, influencing how individuals interact with others and navigate life). Through this Fellowship, Dr Entwistle plans to revolutionise the study of narrative identity, within the realm of personality functioning and more broadly, using a novel approach that combines traditional narrative analysis approaches with cutting-edge computational linguistic analysis of life stories, which resonates with the Institute’s cross-disciplinarity and expertise in mixed methods research.
Dr Xu Dai, a structural fire engineering expert at the University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship.
Dr Dai’s research focuses on extreme fire-induced structural collapses.
The overall aim of his new Fellowship is to improve building design to reduce the risk of structural failure in the event of a fire.
He will explore “travelling fires”, which refer to fires that spread progressively across a whole floor of a building or a large compartment. The aim is to better characterise this type of fire and evaluate the corresponding critical failure of steel-concrete composite floor structures at the system level.
Dr Dai said: “I am delighted to receive this prestigious award which will allow me to fully focus on my research for one year.
“The ultimate goal of my Fellowship is to mitigate losses arising from fire-induced structural failure worldwide by developing theoretical methods for performance-based design, via coupling structural engineering and fire engineering using advanced modelling and experimental techniques.”
Dr Dai is one of seven recipients awarded a RAEng/Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, which support engineering research with benefits for society and economy.
Professor Anne Trefethen FREng, Chair of the RAEng/Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowships panel said: “This year’s awardees amply demonstrate just how wide-ranging and potentially impactful UK engineering research is. I am pleased that with the continued support of the Leverhulme Trust we are able to help more talented individuals and whose research projects I hope will deliver substantial benefits to society here and elsewhere in the world.”