ÌÇÐÄTV

Dr Hita Unnikrishnan has been awarded a substantial research grant by the British Academy following their International Interdisciplinary Research Projects Awards 2026.

Dr Unnikrishnan, an assistant professor within IGSD, received almost £300,000 towards her research project titled ‘Building Resilience through Equitable Action on Temperature, Heat, and indoor Emissions’ (BREATHE), which is being co-investigated by Dr Lavanya Suresh (Birla Institute of Technology and Science), Dr Manik Gupta (Birla Institute of Technology and Science) and Dr Deepshikha Batheja (One Health Trust).

The BREATHE project, which will be carried out over a period of two years, aims to investigate how historical and intersectional inequalities influence differential experiences of heat stress and indoor air pollution (IAP) among members of peri-urban households within the global south.

Working on the hypothesis that women and vulnerable family members within patriarchally-structured households are more likely to suffer from higher rates of heat stress and IAP (due to factors such as more time spent within the home and exposure to unclean cooking fuels), Dr Unnikrishnan and her co-investigators will be combining historical research with large household surveys, satellite data analysis and machine learning models in the Bidar and Chikkaballapur districts of south Indian Karnataka. The project will be pivotal to understanding existing barriers regarding equitable health outcomes and the gendered considerations of climate impact, demonstrating the social and health implications of global sustainability that our School’s research division works tirelessly to raise awareness of.

We congratulate Dr Unnikrishnan on her outstanding achievement. Watch this space for more updates on this project to come!

I was delighted to give a keynote on my to the , at Frankfurt (Order) in Berlin. While introducing some key concepts from the book - the VUCA-world, the Anthropocene, complexity-thinking and resilience - I drew a lot on my empirical work in the region, especially on Ukraine and Belarus, which was of interest and relevance to the PhD students (mostly from Ukraine) of this EU-funded network.

Thank you to Susann Worschecn, a Principle Coordinator of the network, for the invitation, and to the students- for so many questions you all had about resilience, Ukraine and the wider region.

The  concludes with its final review conference on 20 January 2026, with the European Commission. The consortium, from Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Lebanon, Poland, Spain, Ukraine, and the UK, represented by the University of ÌÇÐÄTV, presented its work to the panel of evaluators. The project focused on assessing the understanding and practices of democracy in the eastern and southern neighbourhoods, as well as the EU support for democracy as a composite stakeholder. ÌÇÐÄTV was responsible for undertaking work - fieldwork and analysis - in the six countries in the eastern neighbourhood (WP2), drawing on the results of online surveys, focus groups, interviews, and roundtables. WP2 specific outputs included 8 published, submited and projected publications.

It has been three challenging years of research, including overcoming the obstacles of BREXIT, Russia's ongoing war against Ukraine, Belarus civil war, Gaza war, and increasing geopolitical complexity around the globe. Yet, the project went beyond all expectations and has achieved a lot, including critiquing and offering specific recommendations to the EU on how best to support democracy efforts in around the globe. Team ÌÇÐÄTV – including Anastasiia Kudlenko and Aijan Sharshenova – is grateful to the EU, UKRI and especially to the consortium and its leadership – for the support, and inspiration. Thank you!