Five innovative research projects focusing on inequalities across the world have been awarded funding by Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity (AFSEE) as part of the third round of the Atlantic Equity Challenge (AEQ) research grant.
Focusing on sites across Ghana, Hungary, India, Pakistan, Trinidad & Tobago,the United Kingdom, as well as various European countries , the projects all met the AEQ brief of bringing researchers and practitioners together to undertake innovative, solutions-oriented, and collaborative research and thinking directed at tackling social and economic inequalities. The projects explore topics across a wide range of themes and contexts related to inequalities, including combatting modern slavery in rural Pakistan, the social mobility of racialised women in India and Hungary, strategies to counter anti-egalitarian backlash in Europe, enhancing participatory democracy, and advancing reparative pathways for debt and climate justice.
LSE researchers Dr Miqdad Asaria (LSE Health), Professor Frank Cowell (Department of Economics), Dr Mobarak Hossain (Department of Social Policy), Dr Maël Lavenaire (International Inequalities Institute) and Dr. Sandra Núñez (Department of Management), will form the principal investigator teams for the five projects with AFSEE Senior Fellows Nicola Browne (2018-19 cohort), Judit Ignacz (2024-25 cohort ), Sasha Jattansingh (2024-25 cohort ), Lucia Makamure (2024-25 cohort ), Katy Rubin (2023-24 cohort ), Saba Saeed (2023-24 cohort ), and Vardini Sukumar (2024-25 cohort ). Alongside the Senior Fellows who will serve as Co-PIs, there are also a number of AFSEE Senior Fellows who will be involved in the various project teams (see below).
Bridging research and practice to address inequalities
The selected projects exemplify AFSEE’s mission to champion work that bridges research and practice. The AEQ grants offer a unique opportunity for collaborative research that can generate valuable insights into alternatives and solutions that reduce inequality alongside the important work involved in understanding its causes and consequences. Working in tandem with the International Inequalities Institute and the London School of Economics and Political Science’s research community, the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme is proud to be supporting innovative research collaborations on inequalities.
The AEQ projects will commence in autumn 2026 and run for up to 24 months. Each project will receive up to £100,000 in funding from the AFSEE Programme.
The AEQ is an important initiative of the AFSEE programme which seeks to bring together research, education, and practice. It enables our Fellows to build important research collaborations with LSE researchers to conduct rigorous and innovative research that has the potential to address some of the challenges facing the world today, from debt, climate justice, to modern slavery and the causes and consequences of political polarisation. The aims of the Atlantic Equity Challenge initiative are consistent and closely aligned with LSE’s Shape the World strategy, which is aimed at developing and disseminating solutions for the betterment of society.Professor Armine Ishkanian, Executive Director of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity
The funded projects are:
Advancing Reparative Pathways for Debt and Climate Justice in a Transatlantic Perspective Across Africa and the Caribbean: the Case of Cocoa Producers in Ghana and Trinidad & Tobago
Invisible Women as Architects of Reform: Institutional Belonging in Education among Mobile and Racialised Women in India and Hungary
Modern Slavery in Pakistan: How Workers and Their Families Live in and Strive Against Debt-Bondage
The Tipping Point: Embedding Participatory Systems to Redesign Inequitable Public Policy (RIPP)
Understanding and Countering Anti-Egalitarian Backlash in Europe
