The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Birmingham are thrilled to announce the recipients of the Birmingham-Illinois Partnership for Discovery, Engagement, and Education (BRIDGE) Seed Fund Grant for the 2024-2025 Academic Year.
Twelve projects will receive funding to pursue joint research on a variety of topics. The recipients are:
- Professor Flávia Andrade (professor in the Illinois School of Social Work at Illinois and acting director of the Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies) will collaborate with Professor Asaf Siniver (professor of International Security, Birmingham Department of Political Science and International Studies) on a project called “Bridging Development and Diplomacy in the Global South.”
- Professor Sophie Comer-Warner (Natural Resources & Environmental Sciences, Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences) will collaborate with Professor Iseult Lynch (chemist and Professor of Environmental Nanoscience at the Birmingham School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences) on a project titled: "Beyond the microbead: assessing emerging contaminants (microplastics and PFAS) in leave-on personal care products."
- Professor Jonathan Ebel (Department of Religion, Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) will collaborate with Professor Wolfgang Vondey (Professor of Christian Theology and Pentecostal Studies, Birmingham Department of Theology and Religion) on a project titled: "New Directions in Interfaith Education and the Study of Jainism."
- Professor Hyun Sook Kang (Global Studies in Education, Illinois College of Education) will collaborate with Professor Kamran Khan (Associate Professor in Language, Social Justice and Education, Birmingham School of Education) on a project titled: "A Comparative Study of Online Education Students, Becoming and Belonging at UIUC and UoB."
- Professor Charles Ledford (Journalism Department, Illinois College of Media) will collaborate with Professor Sophie King-Hill (Associate Professor, Birmingham Health Services Management Centre) on a project titled: "UIUC/UoB Collaborators Expand Scope of Project Investigating Local Solutions to Period Poverty in Sierra Leone."
- Professor Jie Jessica Li (Bureau of Educational Research, Illinois College of Education) will collaborate with Professor Meng Tian (Associate Professor in Educational Leadership, Illinois School of Education) on a project titled: "Minoritized Staff, Career Trajectories and Leadership Aspirations."
- Professor Leon Liebenberg (Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering, Illinois Grainger College of Engineering) will collaborate with Professor Julia Myatt (Professor in Collaborative Education, Birmingham School of Biosciences) on a project titled: "Guided self-directed and collaborative learning in an international sustainability competition for undergraduates."
- Professor Aaron Muñoz (Theatre Department, Illinois College of Fine and Applied Arts) will collaborate with Professor Michael Dobson (Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Shakespeare Institute) on a project titled: "The Universal Stage II: Extended Experiments in Hybrid Performance for the 21st Century Theatre."
- Professor Colleen Murphy (Illinois College of Law) will collaborate with Professor Natasa Mavronicola (Professor of Human Rights Law, Birmingham Law School) on a project entitled: "Establishing and Inaugurating Transitional Justice and Human Rights Network."
- Professor Melkior Ornik (Department of Aerospace Engineering, Illinois Grainger College of Engineering) will collaborate with Professor Quan Zhou (Assistant Professor in Automotive Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering) on a project titled: "Workshop Series on Autonomous and Resilient Transportation Systems."
- Professor Sara Pedron Haba (Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Illinois Grainger College of Engineering) will collaborate with Professor Vinton Cheng (Associate Clinical Professor, Institute of Cancer of Genomic Sciences) on a project titled: "Development of a 3D bioprinted, vascularized organ-on-chip for brain cancer modeling."
- Professor Valeria Sobol (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) will collaborate with Professor Nataliya Rulyova (Associate Professor in Russian, Birmingham Department of Modern Languages) on a project titled: "Russophone Literary Diversity and Peripheries."
The University of Birmingham and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign formed BRIDGE in 2014, and it has since blossomed into a profound transatlantic alliance with more than 115 faculty members collaborating across various disciplines from both institutions. The BRIDGE Seed Fund supports collaborative projects between the two universities, with a focus on developing faculty networks, building cognate research areas, expanding educational exchange opportunities, and strengthening strategic aspirations for institutional engagement.
“We are delighted to see an increase in the number of applicants, as well as the diversity of applicants and the number of disciplines across STEM, Social Sciences, and Humanities,” said Sammer Jones, director for global relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign “ We remain committed to aligning BRIDGE activities with our university’s Vision 2030 Global Strategy, which emphasizes leveraging collaborations with partners in the Global South while advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”
The BRIDGE Alliance recently celebrated its tenth anniversary with both universities committing an additional $400,000 in funding to support mutually beneficial collaborations with partners in the Global South.
“It is inspiring to witness the growth of joint publications, seminars, workshops, joint lectures, and research collaborations between the two universities,” said Linsday Avery, at the University of Birmingham. “We look forward to seeing what the newest cohort of BRIDGE Seed Fund recipients will accomplish.”
Congratulations to this year's recipients!
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Explore all recipient biographies:
Illinois Faculty
Flavia Andrade is a professor at the School of Social Work and Acting Director of the Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies. Professor Andrade earned her bachelor's degree in Economics and her master's degree in Demography from the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. She completed her master's in Population Health and Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Professor Andrade is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America. She has published over 100 articles and book chapters examining older adults' health in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly Brazil. Her work has contributed to understanding how demographic, epidemiological, and nutritional changes and social disparities influence older adults' health, well-being, and quality of life.
Sophie Comer-Warner is a biogeochemist working across aquatic landscapes, linking a continuum of ecosystems from streams and rivers to coastal wetlands and estuaries. The primary motivation is to understand the major drivers of carbon and nitrogen cycling focusing on associated greenhouse gas emissions from these systems as they relate to and continue to be affected by global changes in land use and climate. The carbon and nitrogen cycles are also linked to the plastic cycle and therefore, they are also working on micro- and nanoplastics, particularly tyre wear particles, as emerging contaminants in freshwater and coastal systems. This work focuses on their fate and transport, as well as their interaction with nutrient cycling and greenhouse gas emissions. This knowledge may be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution and to promote sustainable development.
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Jonathan Ebel has taught in the Department of Religion at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for the past eighteen years and is currently serving as head of the department. He earned his Ph.D. from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago in 2004 and is the author of three books, most recently, From Dust They Came: Government Camps and the Religion of Reform in New Deal California (NYU 2023). He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2017 and served as president of the American Society of Church History in 2023.
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Hyun-Sook Kang is Associate Professor of Global Studies in Education in the Department of Education Policy, Organization & Leadership in the College of Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Kang's research focuses on language and cultural practice and learning in relation to the internationalization of education and global mobility. She is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Language, Identity & Education (Taylor & Francis).
Charles "Stretch" Ledford is the recipient of the 2020 Illinois Student Government Teaching Excellence Award and named the 2014 Associated Press Media Editors Innovator of the Year for College Students. Stretch has worked as a journalist telling stories through audio, photographs, and video in more than 55 countries. His career began as a staff photojournalist for The State (Columbia, SC), The Fayetteville (NC) Observer, The Durham (NC) Morning Herald, The St. Petersburg (FL) Times (now the Tampa Bay Times), and The Commission, the journal of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board. Since joining the Illinois faculty in 2011, Ledford's work has been featured online and/or broadcast by major news organizations around the world, including NPR’s Morning Edition, NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams, the Today Show, Time, the Huffington Post, The Weather Channel, the BBC, The Atlantic, Esquire, the Wall Street Journal, the Globe and Mail (Toronto), the Guardian (London), the Nippon Television Network (Japan), Gawker, Vice and Forbes. Galleries and museums in Colorado, North Carolina, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, and Virginia have displayed Ledford's photographs. His work has been recognized with awards from the National Press Photographers Association, the Online News Association, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the New York Art Directors Club, the International Photography Awards, and Communication Arts Magazine's Photography Annual.
Jessica Li is an accomplished professional in Human Resource Development, currently serving as the Associate Dean for Research, Director of the Bureau of Educational Research, and Professor of Human Resource Development (HRD) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has authored over 100 publications and has made significant contributions by serving in various leadership roles for several professional organizations. Currently, she is a member of the executive committee for the Discovery Partners Institute and the leadership team of the Generative AI Center of Expertise at the University of Illinois. Jessica plays an important role in shaping the field of HRD. Her past roles include serving on the board of directors for the Academy of Human Resource Development, being a senior research fellow for The Conference Board, and serving as the editor-in-chief of the Human Resource Development International Journal. Jessica's expertise extends beyond academia, as she brings valuable practical experience from her earlier roles as an employee learning and development executive at prominent companies such as Motorola, Raytheon, and Nokia.
Leon Liebenberg has been engaged in engineering teaching, research, and community engagement for the past 30 years. Leon is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Before coming to Illinois in 2017, he was a higher education consultant in Lausanne, Switzerland for three years. Prior to that, he was a full professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Pretoria and at the North-West University, South Africa. Leon is passionate about multidisciplinary research, particularly in the fields of engineering education, energy engineering, and biomedical engineering. His university research has focused on the development of industrial energy-efficient technologies and cancer therapies using energy restriction methods, as well as developing novel pedagogies of engagement. His first love is however for teaching. At Illinois, he founded the strategic instructional innovations program called ENGINE (Engagement in Engineering Education); he collaborates with 20 faculty and graduates from various disciplines where they explore the relationship between pedagogies of engagement and cognition and emotion, to better understand how we may engage students more fully in their learning, reflection, and testing of ideas. In 2021, Leon co-founded and coordinated the inaugural Sustainability Competition for Undergraduate Students, which drew 193 entries from across campus. The competition attracted 165 entrants in Fall 2022, including entrants from Zhejiang University, the University of Pretoria, and from Yale University. The competition now enjoys the support of the Student Sustainability Committee and the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs. In 2023, the competition became a fully-fledged international competition with 240 participants from 10 global universities.
Aaron Muñoz is an actor, director, playwright, and an assistant professor of acting in the Theatre Department. His interest in digital theatre originated during the pandemic as a response to the lack of live performance opportunities for theatre makers. Muñoz will be continuing work with Professor John Boesche from a 2022-23 BRIDGE initiation grant on digital/hybrid performance and their collaboration with the renowned Shakespeare Institute in Stratford upon Avon. In addition to acting roles on screen (Stranger Things, The Walking Dead, Chicago Fire) and on stage (Actors Theatre of Louisville, Alabama Shakespeare Festival), Muñoz’s plays have been seen at Merrimack Repertory Theatre and Nashville Story Garden. His recent work includes directing The White Chip at Florida Studio Theatre and workshopping his new play, Enter, Will Kemp at the Connecticut Theatre Exchange (CTX).
Colleen Murphy is the Roger and Stephany Joslin Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy & Political Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she also serves as Director of the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program at the Illinois Global Institute. Prior to joining the Illinois faculty, she was an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. Dr. Murphy has been a Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Princeton University Center for Human Values and a Visiting Professor at the 4.TU Centre for Ethics in the Netherlands. She is the author of The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2017), which received the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award; A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation (Cambridge University Press, 2010); as well as more than 50 articles and book chapters. She has also co-edited three volumes. Professor Murphy is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Journal of Moral Philosophy, and Science and Engineering Ethics. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Law and Philosophy and Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure. Professor Murphy is a past member of the American Philosophical Association’s (APA) Committee on the Status of Women and the APA Committee on Philosophy and Law. Professor Murphy holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame.
Melkior Ornik is an assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, also affiliated with the Coordinated Science Laboratory as well as the Discovery Partners Institute in Chicago. His research focuses on developing theory and algorithms for control, learning, and task planning in autonomous systems that operate in novel or changing environments, as well as in scenarios where only limited knowledge of the system is available. He is a senior member of IEEE and AIAA, his recent work has been extensively funded by NASA grants and Department of Defense programs, and he has been awarded the 2023 Air Force Young Investigator Program grant.
Sara Pedron-Haba is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and a Health Innovation Professor at Carle Illinois College of Medicine. Her research focuses on the design and implementation of clinically relevant platforms to accelerate the discovery of targeted therapies that alter critical tumor-microenvironment interactions. Professor Pedron-Haba is committed to creating initiatives that achieve equity and broad participation of women in all areas of science, technology, and engineering. She is currently a Board Member of the Association of Women in Science (AWIS) – Chicago and a member of the Women in Cancer Research Council of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR).
Valeria Sobol is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her primary research interests include Russian literature and culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; nineteenth-century Ukrainian Literature; empire and the Gothic; and literature and science. She is the author of Haunted Empire: Gothic and the Russian Imperial Uncanny (2020); Febris Erotica: Lovesickness in the Russian Literary Imagination (2009); and a co-editor (with Mark Steinberg) of the volume Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe (2011). Professor Sobol is the recipient of the Prize for the Best Article in the field of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature, and culture (2018-19) from the American Association for Ukrainian Studies.
Birmingham Faculty
Asaf Siniver is a Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham. He specializes in conflict resolution, international mediation, diplomacy, Foreign Policy Analysis, contemporary US foreign policy, and the politics, diplomacy, and history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He has published extensively in these areas, including six books and dozens of articles and edited chapters. His forthcoming single-authored monograph, The International Arbitration of Territorial Disputes (2024, Oxford University Press), was funded by a 2-year Leverhulme Research Fellowship #2020/426 (2020-22). His current research projects examine the role of legal methods of conflict resolution (adjudication & arbitration) in the settlement of intrastate conflicts. He is the Editor of the Journal of Global Security Studies and Chair of the Diplomatic Studies Section of the International Studies Association. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).
Iseult Lynch is an Associate Editor for Environmental Science: Nano, and Deputy Director for the Facility for Environmental Nanomaterials Analysis and Characterisation (FENAC) at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on the environmental interactions of nanoparticles and nanostructured surfaces with biological entities from macromolecules to organisms. She has a very broad overview of all aspects of nanomaterials safety assessment and the data requirements, having served as Chair of the EU Nanosafety Cluster Working Group (NSC WG) on databases for two years (and as co-chair of the Hazed WG prior to that), as well as being theme editor for the Materials and classification section of the NSC Vision2020 research roadmap (under review for publication in June 2013). Prior to the University of Birmingham, she was Strategic Research Manager at the Centre for BioNano Interactions at University College Dublin, where she was instrumental in the development and implementation of numerous large EU-funded projects.
Wolfgang Vondey is a Professor of Christian Theology and Pentecostal Studies and Director, Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies and a classically trained systematic theologian with a Ph.D. in the field of systematic theology and ethics. Professor Vondey teaches and researches in the area of Contemporary Christianity and Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies with a concentration on the theology of those movements. This focus is integrated into my larger concerns for pneumatology, ecclesiology, ecumenical theology, and the intersection of theology and science. Professor Vondey teaches in the Master of Arts program in Evangelical and Charismatic Studies and direct the Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies with teaching and supervision in the Department of Theology and Religion.
Kamran Khan is currently the director of the MOSAIC research group on multilingualism and an associate professor of language, social justice, and education. He has been a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow and worked on ESRC (Economic, Social and Research Council), European Commission, and British Academy projects. He has worked in Denmark, Spain, and Japan previously. He has also previously been an EFL and ESOL teacher.
Sophie King-Hill is an Associate Professor at the Health Services Management Centre. She specializes in sexual behaviors and assessment in children and young people, sexual health, sibling sexual abuse, misogyny, relationships & sex education, and the importance of youth voice. Much of her work is cross-sector, cross-disciplinary, and centered around participatory and co-design approaches with young people. Sophie also has an interest in policy implementation, transfer and success frameworks, and evaluation strategies. Previously she worked extensively in the third sector in the field of education and sexual health with many diverse groups such as teenage parents and young people with social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties.
Meng Tian joined the Education Leadership Academy, Department of Teacher Education in 2021. Her teaching and research interests lie in distributed leadership, social justice leadership, leaders’ and teachers’ professional development, education leadership policy-making, and comparative education. Currently, she teaches in the PGDip Educational Leadership Programme and MA Education Programme (Leadership pathway) and supervises PhD theses and Master dissertations. Her latest research, on Cultivating Global Citizenship, aims to transform research-based global citizenship teacher CPD training into tangible teacher competencies while nurturing a heightened sense of global responsibility among youth. As of May 2024, Meng Tian serves as the Director of Global Engagement for the College of Social Science. Her responsibilities include leading and strategizing for university's reputation and ranking, international student recruitment and experience, international research collaboration, as well as staff and student mobility. On top of her teaching and research work at the University of Birmingham, she also holds appointments as the co-convenor for the Network 26 Educational Leadership at the European Educational Research Association (EERA) and Associate Editor for the Sage journal Educational Management, Administration & Leadership.
Julia Myatt is the Academic Director for Sustainability Education at the University of Birmingham. As part of the Senior Education Team, Julia coordinates and promotes the central place of subject-specific and interdisciplinary education in sustainability and climate awareness across the University’s teaching and learning strategy. Julia is also part of the Birmingham Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action (BISCA). Julia is also based within the School of Biosciences, where her research background in behavioral ecology and morphology continues to inform her teaching across animal biology, behavior, and adaptations to global environmental change. Julia is the Education Secretary and a Council member for the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB).
Michael Dobson is the director of the Shakespeare Institute and Professor of Shakespeare Studies. Like his own Falstaff, Shakespeare is not only witty in himself but is the cause that wit is in others. My career as a teacher of and writer about Shakespeare’s plays and poems has been devoted not just to examining these extraordinary writings in their sixteenth- and seventeenth-century contexts, but to exploring how they have stimulated and enabled the creativity of other people, individually and collectively, across time – whether actors (both professional and amateur), scholars, directors, philosophers, composers, critics, sculptors, poets, or novelists. As a result, I enjoy working as a consultant to theatre directors and actors as well as publishing scholarly essays and books, and although the central focus of my work has been on the interpretation of Shakespeare in the theatre down the centuries since his death, and on the history of our continuing love affair with Elizabeth and the Elizabethans more generally, I take an enthusiastic and informed interest in most things done in Shakespeare’s name in different media around the world.
Natasa Mavronicola joined Birmingham Law School as a Senior Lecturer in September 2016 and has been Professor of Human Rights Law since 2022. She was previously a Lecturer in Law at Queen’s University Belfast (2013-2016). Professor Mavronicola is chiefly interested in the theory and interpretation of human rights. Her research has focused on pursuing dynamic coherence in the interpretation of human rights. With this overarching agenda, she has probed various (often inter-related) aspects of human rights law: the concept of ‘absolute rights’; the delineation of negative and positive obligations under certain fundamental and well-elaborated rights, such as the right to life and the right not to be subjected to torture or related ill-treatment; various intersections between human rights and criminal justice, notably duties to mobilize the criminal law in supranational human rights doctrine; and the relationship between human dignity and human rights. She has published on these topics in a number of journals, including the Human Rights Law Review and the Modern Law Review, in edited collections, and in a recent monograph: Torture, Inhumanity and Degradation under Article 3 of the ECHR: Absolute Rights and Absolute Wrongs (Hart Publishing 2021) - recipient of the Society of Legal Scholars’ Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship.
Quan Zhou is an Assistant Professor in Automotive Engineering at the University of Birmingham and leads the research on Connected and Autonomous Systems for Electrified Vehicles (CASE-V). He obtained a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Birmingham, UK, in 2019. He is the sole recipient of the Ratcliffe Prize in 2019 which is awarded by the University of Birmingham for the best postgraduate research in Science. His work has received an award from the Innovate UK ICURe program. PhD position applications are welcome. Dr Zhou aspires to harness the emerging power of AI to reshape the design and control of vehicles, helping to attain a more sustainable society. His research interests include fuzzy inferences, evolutionary computation, deep and reinforcement learning, and their applications in automotive engineering. With a track record of more than 70 research papers published in international journals (e.g., IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Applied Energy) and conference proceedings and 9 patent inventions, Dr Zhou has gained recognition from industry and academia. He has close collaboration with several world-leading research institutes, e.g., EU Joint Research Centre, Nanyang Technological University, Tsinghua, and RTWH Aachen.
Vinton Cheng is an Associate Clinical Professor and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology with a clinical focus on the holistic management of adult patients with primary and metastatic brain tumors, including through the delivery of systemic therapies. Dr. Cheng's research interests are in developing systemic therapy trials for brain tumor patients and studying the progression of cancer in the brain. He also has a strong background in pre-clinical models of brain tumors, having developed orthotopic and advanced brain metastasis syngeneic/xenograft models. He is particularly interested in interdisciplinary research and innovation.
Nataliya Rulyova is an Associate Professor in Russian. Professor Rulyova's research interests spread across Russophone literature, translation studies, post-Soviet media culture, and genre studies. Professor Rulyova's latest monograph is focused on collaborative self-translation drawing on the bilingual work of the Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky (see the monograph publication Joseph Brodsky and Collaborative Translation). Currently, Professor Rulyova's am working on a project entitled Contemporary Russophone Literature: Diversity and Decoloniality, which examines the works by minoritized Russophone authors. In cooperation with the Pushkin House (London), Professor Rulyova's launched a series of conversations with Russophone authors hosted on the Pushkin House YouTube channel. The first interview was held with the award-winning Tatar author Guzel Yakhina on 20 May 2023. On 20 June 2023, Professor Rulyova's interviewed Alisa Ganieva, an award-winning Avar writer from Dagestan, who is also a political activist and a campaigner against Russia’s war in Ukraine. On 24 October 2024, Professor Rulyova's had a conversation with the internationally acclaimed Uzbek author Hamid Ismailov.
