The University of Essex has been excelling in both education and research for more than fifty years. Essex is gold rated in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF 2017), top 15 in England for student satisfaction (NSS 2017, overall student satisfaction, mainstream universities), and top 25 for research quality in The Times and the Sunday Times Good University Guide.
Founded to be daring and different, the University continues to challenge convention and conduct pioneering research which informs policy and changes lives. We are an international community for original thinkers.
In 2013 we were awarded the only Regius Professorship for political science by HM The Queen. Research informs our teaching, providing a transformational living and learning experience which equips our students with the skills, knowledge and curiosity to build successful careers and lead fulfilling lives. With more than 13,000 students from 140 countries, Essex graduates develop a genuine world view.
It is a commonplace for children to be taller than their parents, but four generations ago this wasn’t the case. A recent study of soldiers around the age of 20 who enlisted in the army during World War…
“In capitalist countries, the bank robs you.” Rightly or wrongly, this phrase – a reversal of an internet meme – sums up many Europeans’ reactions to the bank bailouts and austerity of the last few years…
In the industrial era, economic growth has become equated with human progress, with a fundamental assumption that material growth and consumption inevitably leads to improvements in our well-being. Over…
Business secretary Vince Cable has announced his intention to create a public register of UK company ownership in a bid to tackle tax evasion and money laundering by shady corporate bodies. But don’t believe…
What should we do with producers who routinely deliver faulty goods and services? Producers of cars, food, medicines, aeroplanes and even financial products are forced to compensate injured parties, recall…
Sanjay Lanka, University of Essex; Flávia Naves, Federal University of Lavras, and Yuna Fontoura, Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública e de Empresas (FGV/EBAPE)
The global food system contributes to climate change through industrial farming practices, the increasing use of fertiliser to fight dropping yields and the transport of food around the world. But the…
Change at the British coastline is a reality we have always lived with. A thousand years ago, King Canute showed his courtiers how absurd it was to seek to command the waves. Later, others built sea walls…
Several train operators are bidding for a contract to run the main train line between London and Edinburgh, but the only company that has made a success of the line will be excluded. Why? For the past…
In the UK, the wild food trend has re-acquainted people with the various edible plants to be found in the countryside. But around the world wild foods are relied on by a billion people as a key part of…
Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, is in court for breaching a police order on public assemblies and wilful obstruction of a highway – she was taking part in an anti-fracking demonstration…
Chancellor George Osborne has unveiled his fourth budget. The blueprint for recovery includes wholesale changes to pensions and savings, attempts to boost business investment, new relief for the costs…
In times of austerity, one of few things that seems to be booming is the trade in wheelbarrows. At least, company directors at major corporations will need them to collect vast amounts of remuneration…
Two weeks of campaigning to raise awareness of Fairtrade products have come to a close. But coffee farmers around the world face an ongoing crisis that the Fairtrade Foundation has done little to mitigate…
In these insecure times people are easily persuaded to buy insurance for flights, cars, credit cards, loans, plumbing and almost anything else. But often customers find they haven’t got what they paid…
We rarely ask ourselves why we should remember the Holocaust. We simply assume that we should. However, if we only go through the motions uttering phrases such as “we remember” and “never again”, remembering…
There is nothing more likely to raise the hackles of any self-respecting rationalist than to be confronted with the latest celebrity story about the miraculous healing power of homeopathy or some other…
Resource-intensive agriculture, despite its productivity, nevertheless has failed to feed the world’s current population, never mind the nine billion people expected by 2050. This system that currently…
At this time of year it is difficult to ignore the image of Santa Claus or, as we still often call him in the UK, Father Christmas. His face is on billboards, magazine covers and TV adverts, looking to…
Iceland has sent four former directors of its bank Kaupthing to prison for fraud. But the chances of similar legal action happening in the UK are low, where fraud investigators have a poor record. The…
The government’s announcement that it is to sell off its stake in Eurostar is another sign of its convoluted thinking towards railway policy. The operator of international train services from London through…