Chair's note: moving forwards amidst the British International Research Institutes (BIRI) of the British Academy

Abstract This third Chair's note on the society's activities outlines the wider context of The Society for Libyan Studies within the British Academy's British International Research Institutes (BIRI), and recent developments within this collaboration. The BIRI comprises seven units that are part-funded by the British Academy and that are spread across Southern Europe, Africa and the Middle East. This note outlines the BIRI briefly, and also describes the recent developments that have seen the BIRI begin to explore how they might coordinate their work and their futures more coherently. The BIRI context is key to SLS's future and this note therefore outlines these recent developments. إن الملاحظة الثالثة للرئيس هذه، حول أنشطة الجمعية، تتناول السياق الأوسع لجمعية الدراسات الليبية داخل معاهد البحوث الدولية البريطانية (BIRI) التابعة للأكاديمية البريطانية، والتطورات الأخيرة لهذا التعاون . تضم معاهد BIRI سبع وحدات تمول بتمويل جزئي من الأكاديمية البريطانية و تنتشر في جميع أنحاء أوروبا الجنوبية وأفريقيا و الشرق الأوسط. تتناول هذه الملاحظة معاهدBIRI باختصار، وتصف أيضاً التطورات الأخيرة التي شهدت بدء معاهد BIRI في استكشاف كيفية تنسيق عملها ومستقبلها بشكل أكبر. يعد سياق معاهد BIRI مفتاحاً لمستقبل جمعية الدراسات الليبية، و بالتالي تتناول هذه الملاحظة التطورات الأخيرة بهذا الشأن .

2 constituted as charities), but all have a key income stream from the British Academy to support research in the humanities and social sciences that addresses their specialist regions. Most of the BIRI support academic staff who undertake research themselves, and all have competitive funding programmes that enable the research of other scholars. Many BIRI have premises that can accommodate their grant awardees and visiting researchers. The majority also offer research facilities including specialist libraries, collections and archives. Some provide equipment and laboratories, and all offer local advice and introductions. Each BIRI publishes a longstanding scholarly journal (and some publish two). All host public outreach and events programmes in the UK and overseas. As such, and taken together, they constitute a unique element of Britain's overseas research infrastructure.
The seven core BIRI are listed in order of their foundation. They are: -The British School at Athens (BSA) was founded in 1886 and has a remit that stretches across Greece and the Ancient Greek World around the Eastern Mediterranean.
-The British School at Rome (BSR) originated in 1901 and developed a scope that covered Italy, the Classical Roman Empire, and the Mediterranean.  British economic interests, also shaped their development. In our twenty-first century, therefore, the BIRI represent a longstanding and entrenched British research engagement with these world regions and there is plentiful evidence of the contributions to wider research and understanding that these units have generated.
The SLS, for example, has a long history of funding field research in Libya that has radically transformed how we understand prehistoric and ancient North Africa. We also support research on the modern period, including recent work on trans-Mediterranean migration via Libya, and the illegal trade in antiquities looted from Libyan conflict zones. Some of our current activities and funded-research therefore stretch beyond research debates and inform contemporary political agendas and current affairs. British Academy funding supports all of this research.

Future contexts for the Society for Libyan studies?
When I became Chair of the society in late 2016 our future looked unsettled due to debates within the British Academy that questioned the value of the BIRI. There was discussion about reducing BA support significantly, and our main BA grant has been trimmed each year subsequently as we have been prompted to develop more robust, independent funding. By contrast, more recently the BIRI have attracted increasingly positive noises from the British Academy. There is now talk of the BIRI constituting part of the UK's overseas research infrastructure and enabling British influence abroad through the use of 'soft power' and 'science diplomacy'. Others argue that the BIRI offer strategic advantages in a potential post-Brexit world and a future where the UK may have to rethink its international relations and the channels through which it nurtures these. Notwithstanding the political turmoil the UK is experiencing in Autumn 2019, the BA's support for BIRI and their collective future looks brighter than it did in 2016. In turn, the BIRI have responded to this fastchanging landscape by developing closer relations amongst our institutes.
Emerging BIRI cooperation is fuelled in part by the belief that we will address this challenging context more successfully if we work together to exploit our collective potential. This potential, and its growing recognition by external parties, has become 5 more apparent as various recent opportunities have come our way. The BIRI have been invited to bid collectively for Independent Research Organisation (IRO) status.
This would allow us to bid for government funded research grants in our own right (which we cannot do at present). We have also been invited to work with a Doctoral Training Partnership (the networks of universities that organise and deliver government-funded PhD training provision in various regions around the UK). These opportunities would embed the BIRI's research within the wider circuits of contemporary research funding and provision; they would allow us to operate as contemporary research organisations. Consequently, we have started meeting to organise how we might present a more coherent, unified face to these overtures from potential funders, user-groups and organisations. We plan to produce a BIRI manifesto to this end. From the largest to the smallest BIRI, we realise that cooperation is the way to address future opportunities and to demonstrate to the BA (and to BEIS behind the BA) that we offer a clear return for their investment.
Such is the emerging context for the BIRI and for the SLS. As the smallest of the BIRI we are stronger alongside, and working with, our sibling institutions. Of course there is no guarantee that the particular opportunities that are emerging now will stretch into the future indefinitely; as recently as 2016, as noted, the picture was far gloomier. Yet if we fail to engage we will remain small and fragile, with no full time staff and reliant on volunteers to undertake our key roles voluntarily. If we do chase the opportunity to grow amidst the BIRI, the future of SLS may develop in interesting new ways.