British taxpayers have footed the bill for almost £30 million in overseas research projects exploring topics including gay pornography, Syrian folk songs and Maori cultural heritage. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has green-lit dozens of grants for schemes with little or no obvious benefit to the UK public — despite a mandate to deliver value to the British economy.
Among the projects backed since 2022 is an £848,000 grant to Birmingham City University to examine how gay male erotica and pornography circulated in post-war Europe. Durham University was awarded £600,000 to help Palestinians from the Shia village of Qadas access archaeological records. The University of Oxford received £358,000 to protect the endangered Enggano language, spoken by just 1,500 people in Indonesia.
Meanwhile, the University of Warwick was given nearly £800,000 to highlight “invisible women in Italian cinema,” and Edinburgh University £123,000 to record the harvesting songs of displaced Syrian refugees in the Middle East.
In total, UKRI — which hands out more than £9 billion in public money annually — has spent nearly £30 million on what critics describe as fringe projects.
Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers will be livid when they see how ridiculous some of these research projects have become.
“UKRI have a proven track record of wasting taxpayers’ cash on research projects that are no more than virtue-signalling nonsense that don’t stand to benefit the people paying for them.
“Ministers need to remember why UKRI was created and return to investing in research that will make a difference to hard-working Brits.”
Roehampton and Stellenbosch universities jointly received £2.8 million to examine how music might support the mental health of expectant mothers in Africa.
Roehampton also secured £805,000 to stage a performance of Galatea — a 16th-century play — described as centring on “female, trans, queer, disabled and migrants” and “featuring almost no adult cisgender men’.
Other examples include:
- £323,000 to help Ethiopian agro-pastoralists make films
- £313,000 to support reproductive justice for Brazilian tribes
- £314,000 for “restoring traditional justice” in Colombia
- £240,000 to examine housing rights in Lagos and Sao Paulo
The Arts and Humanities Research Council —which is part of UKRI — awarded most of the funding, although some grants came from the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
A damning report by the National Audit Office last month warned UKRI lacks direction, measurable goals and proper ministerial oversight.
It added that the body “could not provide a reliable picture of whether, across the organisation, error and fraud are under control.”
Defending the grants, a UKRI spokesman said: “International research collaboration is vital to help us tackle global challenges in a complex and interconnected world, improving security and prosperity in the UK and internationally.
“Several of the projects highlighted were funded through Official Development Assistance, where the main benefit is required to be in the developing country involved.
“Projects are prioritised for funding through independent expert peer review, as set out in the Higher Education and Research Act.
“UKRI supports a diverse portfolio of investments including curiosity-driven research and strategic initiatives, which drives the creation and exploitation of new knowledge, and develops skilled and talented people for a wide range of jobs improving lives and livelihoods across the UK.
“On average, every £1 of public R&D investment generates at least £7 of net benefit to the UK through the development of new and better goods, services and processes.”