April 27, 2021, by aczjb1
Research Spotlight: Responding to the Crisis
Here at Nottingham University Business School, we pride ourselves on addressing global challenges in our research, tackling issues faced by local communities and marginalised groups across the world.
Over the past year, there has been no greater global challenge than the Covid-19 pandemic – and as well as presenting many challenges, the crisis has led to an enormous uplift in research activity.
We have seen that Covid-19 has spurred on a huge creative force of energy in new work assessing the impacts on our sector. Business and Management is at the forefront of the changes we have all had to make to our lives in response to the health crisis.
Professor Tracey Warren’s UKRI-funded project, “Carrying the Work Burden of Covid-19: Working class women in the UK”, is a key example of this. Tracey’s work shows that working class women are carrying the burden of the extra physical and emotional labour being generated by the pandemic.
This project is delivering a significant contribution to the understanding of, and response to, the pandemic. With the Women’s Budget Group, it is disseminating findings and urgent policy solutions to employers, unions, government, key charities and lobby groups. Addressing these findings is crucial if working class women are to continue to carry the additional strain of increased work and home demands during the pandemic.
“The pandemic has created job loss, work instability, financial hardship and great insecurity”, said Professor Warren. “There has been time squeeze and work intensification for some, a desperate search for new jobs for others, alongside more unpaid care with school and nursery closures. If they are unable to manage the existing and additional pressures placed upon them, workplaces, childcare and care for the elderly will all be severely affected.”
Meanwhile at the N/LAB, a centre of excellence in international analytics, Dr James Goulding is leading a team of researchers from across the UK on the rapid-response “CIVIC Project: Predicting Covid-19 impact on vulnerable individuals and communities via health, deprivation, and loyalty-card data”.
Awarded nearly £300k funding from UKRI, the CIVIC Project is developing models to predict incidences of both untested Covid cases and risk of breakouts for “influenza-like viruses”, working at neighbourhood levels. Using novel datasets, such as purchasing behaviours and mobility (in collaboration with Boots, NHS and ONS), the programme will help identify some of the most vulnerable communities impacted, such as those in food poverty.
Professor Meryem Duygun’s recent application to the University’s ESRC IAA NPIF/ABC Postdoctoral Engagement Fellowship scheme has also been successful. This grant of £21,000 extends her recent UKRI Covid-19 response funding and helps support the placement of a postdoctoral student for six months at Experian. The grant will help start research collaboration on a project looking at The Impact of COVID on local economies and the risk exposures on UK SMEs.
And at the end of last year, Dr Aditya Jain won the BSI Standards Maker award for his work on two new standards, which included Safe working during the COVID-19 pandemic – general guidelines for organisations.
Discover more about our world class research at Nottingham University Business School here.
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