The university is collaborating in a partnership project to provide a £9.4m funding boost to UK’s innovation growth.
Source: University to play key role to boost South East business
Author: Lizzie
If the banks were too big to fail, why isn’t the British steel industry?
Alex Simpson, University of Brighton
The financial crisis of 2008 taught us that markets fail. But the current plight of the steel plant in Port Talbot, Wales, shows how not all markets fail equally.
Eight years ago the UK treasury pumped £850 billion into a failing banking industry. Teetering on the brink of collapse, the Treasury stepped in through a succession of loans, share purchases and liability guarantees, using 89% of its assets to prop up the industry. The historic step led to the government owning a majority stake in Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the world’s biggest banks, and more than 40% of the combined Lloyds TSB and HBOS banks. Continue reading “If the banks were too big to fail, why isn’t the British steel industry?”
House of Commons visit and meeting Caroline Lucas MP
Some of the politics team at SASS including Aidan McGarry, Fran Burke and Chris Wyatt with second year politics students studying Political Movements on a tour of the Houses of Parliament, where we had a meeting with Caroline Lucas MP (Brighton Pavilion). Students asked Caroline about the prices of rent for students in Brighton and what could be done in terms of support from maintenance loans.
Dunblane massacre 20 years on: how Britain rewrote its gun laws – and the challenge it faces now
Peter Squires, University of Brighton
Thomas Hamilton walked into Dunblane Primary School, near Stirling, Scotland on March 13 1996, armed with four legally-owned handguns and over 700 rounds of ammunition. In three to four terrible minutes, he fired 105 shots killing 16 children and their teacher, and wounding 15 more children. His last shot killed himself.
In the 20 years since Dunblane, a great deal has been learned about preventing gun violence. Only the United States, where mass shootings now number in the hundreds, seems reluctant to embrace those lessons, prompting president Barack Obama to wonder why the US could not do more on gun control. Continue reading “Dunblane massacre 20 years on: how Britain rewrote its gun laws – and the challenge it faces now”
The university will continue to support higher education in Hastings
The university today confirmed that it will continue to support the delivery of higher education in Hastings.
Source: The university will continue to support higher education in Hastings
Leaders of the future
International students received high praise from the university for being awarded government scholarships.
Source: Leaders of the future
The Big Short is a perverse Robin Hood parable – in which King John wins
Alex Simpson, University of Brighton
At heart, The Big Short – which just won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars – is a parable. Much like Robin Hood’s comment on the greed of King John, it warns of the dangers that come from taking from the poor for personal gain and power. It is a simple story designed to illustrate a moral lesson. And when the moral lesson in hand is calling out the financial establishment, you’d think we should be pleased the film is scoring so many accolades.
But this particular story has some issues. While the film attacks the moral architecture of Wall Street’s financial services industry, in doing so it continues to uphold the “virtue” and “sanctity” of the financial market. The outcome is another dramatisation of the events surrounding the financial crisis that leaves a sour taste and a questionable moral lesson. Continue reading “The Big Short is a perverse Robin Hood parable – in which King John wins”
How to build better prisons
Yvonne Jewkes, University of Brighton
The “new for old” prison reform programme would close old city-centre jails in British cities, such as the iconic HMPs Pentonville, Wandsworth and Strangeways. Speculation about what will replace these notorious Victorian “houses of correction” has been rife.
These and more recent prisons also slated for closure, such as HMP Holloway, occupy valuable city centre sites. Some will be bulldozed or redeveloped as housing – or even, as with the former HMP Oxford, as a boutique hotel with rooms designed around the former cells, exercise yards and punishment blocks. Continue reading “How to build better prisons”
New Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise)
Professor Tara Dean has been appointed as the new Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise).
Explainer: why the Supreme Court ruled against joint enterprise
Peter Squires, University of Brighton
Hundreds of convictions may need to be re-examined after a landmark Supreme Court judgement found that a man found guilty of murder under the controversial “joint enterprise” principle should have his murder conviction quashed.
The man, Ameen Jogee, was convicted after the jury in his original trial believed him guilty of encouraging the killer, Mohammed Hirsi, who actually struck the fatal blow – even though Jogee was outside the building when the murder occurred. Continue reading “Explainer: why the Supreme Court ruled against joint enterprise”
The world’s largest underground skate park
A disused Victorian swimming bath complex has been turned into the world’s largest underground skate park – with help from the University of Brighton.
Top award for disability campaigner
Award-winning actor, presenter and campaigner Adam Pearson has received the university’s Alumnus Award for 2016.
Fairness and the City: A better politics. Annual Lecture for the University of Brighton’s Festival of Social Science
Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor at the University of Oxford will be delivering the University of Brighton Annual Social Science Forum Lecture.
Thursday 19th May 2016
5.30-7.00pm
Of the richest 25 countries in the world the UK has become one of the most unequal and is on course to win the ‘global race’ to become the most economically unequal of all by 2030. In all of Western Europe, apart from in post-crisis Ireland, no other country taxes and spends as little on its society as the UK does. Once all taxes are considered it is clear that the most well off 1% of society pay tax at a lower rate than the poorest tenth, whilst simultaneously complaining about how much they contribute and how little they think they get back. Danny Dorling is a leading thinker on the geography of inequality and a member of the London Fairness Commission. His recent lecture addressed these glaring disparities; considering how we arrived at this situation and what we could do about changing it.
www.dannydorling.org
@dannydorling
Huxley Lecture Theatre, Room 300, Huxley Building, University of Brighton, Lewes Road, Brighton. BN2 4AT
For more information contact Julie Green: J.Green2@brighton.ac.uk
A political movement is rising from the mud in Calais
Raphael Schlembach, University of Brighton
Since the official refugee reception centre in the French town of Calais closed in 2002, undocumented migrants hoping to cross the Channel to Britain have found shelter in a number of squatted migrant camps, locally known as “the jungles”.
Consisting largely of tents and self-built shacks, the two largest in Calais and Dunkirk now have some 8,000 residents between them. Many are refugees fleeing conflict in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan and surviving in extremely poor living conditions. Continue reading “A political movement is rising from the mud in Calais”
Hats off to our graduates
Two days of awards ceremonies are planned for the Brighton Dome as more than 1,750 students graduate from the University of Brighton.
Source: Hats off to our graduates
£500,000 boost for University of Brighton researchers
The university is one of 40 universities sharing in new £167m funding to support doctoral training over two years.
Source: £500,000 boost for University of Brighton researchers
Four key economic trends shaping society
Philip Haynes, University of Brighton
The year is off to a turbulent start; both in the UK, and around the world. January saw oil prices plummeting, while Chinese growth slowed, spooking investors (but surprising none). But amid the turmoil and confusion of global stock markets, there are a few economic trends which look set to hold sway throughout 2016.
Here’s a wrap up of some of the key developments which will shape our society in the months to come. Continue reading “Four key economic trends shaping society”
Tapping the sun’s rays
The University of Brighton has installed 663 new solar panels that will reduce its carbon emissions by more than 82 tonnes.
Source: Tapping the sun’s rays
Our response to the government’s green paper ‘Fulfilling our Potential: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice’
The government’s Department for Business, Innovation & Skills published a green paper in November last year, consulting on its proposals “to change the higher education landscape.”
Their proposals are to:
- introduce a Teaching Excellence Framework that will deliver better value for money for students, employers and taxpayers
- increase access and success in higher education participation for those from disadvantaged and under-represented groups
- create a new single gateway for entry and create a create common system for all providers
- establish a new Office for Students to promote the student interest and ensure value for money, and to reduce the regulatory burden on the sector.
The consultation also considers the implications of the proposals on the research landscape.
You can read the original consultation documents on the GOV.UK website.
You can download our response to the green paper (pdf) here.
Time to Panic? Producing Dis-ease in Epidemic Proportions
SOCIAL SCIENCE FORUM
Wednesday 13th January 2016 by China Mills
Room E424, Checkland Building, Falmer Campus
The World Health Organisation tells us that mental disorders constitute a global epidemic, a huge worldwide burden of disease, and an obstacle to individual, national and economic development. Here the logic of epidemiology is applied to mental disorders, which although not infectious are said to spread. This enmeshes us within a discourse of crisis, where acting with urgency (fast and cheaply) becomes framed as the only ethical response, especially in countries of the global South. This paper will explore how crisis discourse creates a space where the global disease (anxiety, insecurity, stress) endemic to the reality of global capitalism (insecure or dangerous work, unemployment, retrenched or non-existent welfare, poverty and inequality etc) is (re)configured as individual disease – mental disorder – projected globally through epidemiological tools. Rather than seeing mental disorder as an obstacle to economic development, this paper will explore how the production of distress is an integral component to economic development (in its neoliberal forms). The framing of this disease as mental disorder (situated in the brain and not in the economic body) not only obscures socio-economic sources of distress but, furthermore, creates global markets out of epidemics, from the very disorders it constructs as burdens.
Obama’s bold move against guns proves the politics of firearms really is changing
Peter Squires, University of Brighton
It’s common in the US to refer to a second-term president in his final year as a “lame duck”, his time limited, his momentum gone, and his political capital ebbing away to whoever’s next in line for the White House. But, not for the first time, Barack Obama has surprised and confounded his critics.
Deeply frustrated by the failure of his package of “sensible gun controls” to secure enough votes in the Senate back in April 2013, he has now announced a series of executive control measures as a way of delivering on key gun control commitments, re-energising the debate and doing so in a way that may favour the Democratic cause in a presidential election year. Continue reading “Obama’s bold move against guns proves the politics of firearms really is changing”
Social Science Forum
The 2015-16 Timetable is now available!
Please contact J.Green2@brighton.ac.uk with any queries.