Nuffield Foundation

This project will explore how racial equity practices in UK-listed firms influence tangible outcomes like pay equity and progression, alongside intangible experiences such as inclusion and belonging. The FTSE 350 cover most UK-listed market capitalisation and helps shape governance and pay norms across high-wage sectors, making its DEI commitments and disclosures important for labour market equity.

This project will explore how actors within the administrative justice system imagine potential AI use cases in tribunals over the next decade. Tribunals are an essential part of the administrative justice system, resolving over 300,000 appeals each year.

This project will continue Nuffield’s support of PolicyEngine’s open-source tax-benefit microsimulation tool. PolicyEngine builds microsimulation tools with the aim of helping everyone in the UK – regardless of policy expertise – understand how tax and benefit policy affects their country, their community, and their household.

This project will explore how pupils’ sense of school belonging in England relates to attendance, exclusions, and academic attainment. The proportion of pupils in England who report that they feel a genuine sense of belonging at school has been falling since the COVID-19 pandemic, attracting substantial policy attention. However, evidence linking pupils’ sense of belonging to ‘hard’ outcomes – such as attendance, exclusions and academic progress – remains limited.

The US-Iran conflict may seem geographically distant, but its economic and social consequences are increasingly being felt much closer to home. Recent developments offer grounds for cautious optimism. A ceasefire framework has been announced, and oil prices have fallen from the highs reached during the conflict.

Executive summary The Nuffield Foundation’s Grown up? Journeys to adulthood is a multi-year research programme exploring what it means to become an adult in the UK today. Hopkins Van Mil was commissioned to deliver a youth engagement and research component, which included working with a Youth Insights Group (YIG) to inform and shape and a wider set of Deep dive workshops.

That question is currently at the centre of a national debate in Switzerland, where voters have just rejected a proposal to cap the country’s population at 10 million people. Supporters argue that rapid population growth is putting pressure on housing, public services and the environment.

Looking back over my first year at the Nuffield Foundation – set out within the pages of this report – I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved so far. Having published an ambitious new strategy in 2025, we’re now firmly engaged in putting it into practice. We are doing this through collaboration – it has been thought provoking and inspiring to work with, and learn from, such a diverse range of organisations, experts and practitioners.

This project will explore pupils’ knowledge, attitudes, and experiences of religion and belief-related harassment in England’s secondary schools. Global events have fuelled rising antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred. This can be seen in Home Office data, which showed a 25% increase in religiously motivated hate crimes in 2023-24, and another 3% increase in 2024-2025.

Researchers, academics, think tanks and policy institutes can apply for rapid-response funding to examine how the 2026 conflict and disruption to vital shipping routes have impacted and will continue to affect people and businesses in the UK. Up to £300,000 in total is available for up to eight projects, and the deadline for applications is 10 July 2026.