On the 25th September 2024 we – the Bristol Poverty Institute (BPI) – hosted our Seedcorn Fund Showcase and brought together a cross-section of the University of Bristol’s research community from all faculties and beyond. The event began with an introduction from Joe Jezewski, the Development Associate for the BPI, who detailed what the BPI do and how the Seedcorn Fund is a key initiative of the BPI’s goal of achieving SDG 1: to end poverty in all its forms everywhere. Joe explained the details of this academic year’s Seedcorn Fund (2024-25) highlighting the key features and eligibility requirements and explained that the fund is now open for new applications (until the 10th April 2025).
The event then moved into the showcase part of the afternoon with Dr. Ed Atkins presenting first on his project entitled ‘Developing a Net-Zero Vulnerability Index for the UK’, which was funded by the BPI Seedcorn Fund in the 2023-24 academic year. Ed, the principal investigator (PI) on this interdisciplinary project, explained that those affected by the transition to net zero in terms of employment would be people currently working in the fossil fuels sector and related positions, as well those working in high emission industries, for example, some manufacturing and building construction businesses. Therefore, the project focused on a way of developing a vulnerability index and ranking system to identify local authorities most at risk of net zero’s economic consequences as jobs transition between now and 2050. The index showed that local authorities including East Riding of Yorkshire, Wakefield, Sandwell and Northumberland, amongst others, were particularly vulnerable and that many of the old industrial areas, still suffering from past de-industrialisation, are still vulnerable. Ed is currently working with civil servants in the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Business and Trade to influence policy making on a just transition to net zero. He is also planning to implement a ‘heat map’ version of the vulnerability index on the web.
The second project funded by the BPI Seedcorn Fund in the 2023-24 academic year, entitled ‘From Pen to Print: Tracing the Evolution of Poverty Narratives in The Times Over Centuries’, then presented their findings. Dr. Jin Zheng, co-investigator on the project alongside the PI, Dr. Ran Tao, delivered the presentation. The project had impressively analysed The Times newspaper articles from 1875 to 2012 – 18,521 articles in total – having first used Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to convert the PDF files to editable and readable text. The project team was then able to chart the frequency of certain poverty-relevant terms used within the newspaper articles using ‘topic modelling analysis’ and machine learning. Among the eight different search terms, they found that the term “Workhouse Conditions” was mainly discussed in the 19th century, whereas the term “Unemployment” became prominent during the 20th century. Having also looked at ‘determinants’, the project found that there was an increase in the number of articles containing the term “unemployment” during recession periods. The term “Government Policies” did not vary in frequency (based on analysis between 1918 and 2001) depending on which party was in power – i.e. Labour or Conservative. The next step for the project will be to potentially use AI to fix OCR issues and increase the number of readable articles that can be used in the project. They will also look further into what poverty terms and determinants would be useful to analyse in the future.
Following the presentations, there was a lively Q&A exploring a range of issues including the role of creative industries in areas of deprivation, the potential implications of a new government on devolution, particularly around industrial strategy, and how different forms of media have discussed poverty through time and how this intersected with different historical and pollical factors and the rise of mass media. We also welcomed some questions about our current round of Seedcorn funding, and were pleased to see how many people in the room – from different parts of the University – were interested in applying for funding.
We are really looking forward to seeing how these two projects continue to develop as well as seeing what project ideas will be generated for this year’s round of funding! If you’re interested to apply for BPI Seedcorn Funding then please refer to our funding details page for more information and the call specification. The slides from the project presentations from this event will also be available soon via our event resources page.