The aim of this paper is to show that classical geometric invariant theory (GIT) has an effective analogue for linear actions of a non-reductive algebraic group $H$ with graded unipotent radical on a projective scheme $X$. Here the linear action of $H$ is required to extend to a semi-direct product $hat{H} = H rtimes mathbb{G}_m$ with a multiplicative one-parameter group which acts on the Lie algebra of the unipotent radical $U$ of $H$ with all weights strictly positive, and which centralises a Levi subgroup $R cong H/U$ of $H$. We show that $X$ has an $H$-invariant open subscheme (the hat-stable locus) which has a geometric quotient by the $H$-action. This geometric quotient has a projective completion which is a categorical quotient (indeed, a good quotient) by $hat{H}$ of an open subscheme of a blow-up of the product of $X$ with the affine line; with additional blow-ups a projective completion which is itself a geometric quotient can be obtained. Furthermore the hat-stable locus of $X$ and the corresponding open subsets of the blow-ups of the product of $X$ with the affine line can be described effectively using Hilbert-Mumford-like criteria combined with the explicit blow-up constructions. Applications include the construction of moduli spaces of sheaves and Higgs bundles of fixed Harder--Narasimhan type over a fixed nonsingular projective scheme, and of moduli spaces of unstable projective curves of fixed singularity. More recently, cohomology theory for reductive GIT quotients were extended by the first and fourth author to the non-reductive situation studied in this paper, and this was used to prove the Green--Griffiths--Lang and Kobayashi hyperbolicity conjectures for generic projective hypersurfaces with polynomial bounds on their degree.
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