That’s why Masood Entrepreneurship Centre (MEC) created ‘Key 5’—a new flexible, interactive learning experience designed to equip students with essential entrepreneurial skills for any career path, whether you're interested in starting your own business or excelling within an organisation.

Key 5 delivers valuable, real-world skills in an interactive and flexible format. Even if you don’t yet know the career you want, you’ll gain skills you can use right now - from acing your next interview to leading group projects like a boss. 

What is ‘Key 5’?

Key 5 is an innovative microlearning suite - five bite-sized modules you can finish in just 10-15 minutes each:

• Effective and Powerful Communication: Learn how to express ideas clearly and persuasively.
• Networking: Discover how to build connections that can open doors to new opportunities.
• Market Awareness: Understand the environment you’re operating in and how to respond to it.
• Opportunity Recognition: Develop the ability to spot potential and act on it.
• Building Confidence: Strengthen your ability to lead, present, and excel in group settings.

What Makes It Fun?

What sets Key 5 apart is its scenario-based learning design. You'll engage in dynamic, interactive challenges - negotiating with aliens, slaying dragons, and inventing world-changing products in a futuristic multiverse – all while boosting your skills.

Learn in Your Own Time, No Pressure

You can do it all on your own schedule, wherever you are. Do you have 15 minutes between lectures? Perhaps you’re waiting for the bus? You can access Key 5 anywhere, anytime, on any device. And it’s risk-free – no need to worry about assessments or grades, learn without pressure.

Who Should Try It?

Whether you are new to entrepreneurship or a seasoned pro, Key 5 will help you sharpen your skills, but we expect first- and second-year undergraduates will benefit most.

See what it's like! Find out more about Key 5 with our short video:

Ready to Start? 

Are you ready to start your journey? Jump into Key 5 and start building the skills that will make you stand out in any career.

Let us know what you think! Leaving feedback at the end of each module helps us know what works for you so we can design future learning experiences.

Find out more about the Masood Entrepreneurship Centre (MEC) .

As and a habitable climate teeters, it’s understandable to feel despair.

Some of the world’s top climate scientists at the prospect of reaching 3°C by 2100. This hellish scenario, well in excess of the 1.5°C countries agreed to aim for when they signed the 2015 , would indeed spell disaster for much of life on Earth.

As a lecturer in sustainability, I often hear my anxious students bemoan the impossibility of building a way out of ecological collapse. However, the greatest danger is fatalism, and assuming, as claimed, that “there is no alternative”.

There is a vast ocean of possibility for transforming the planet. Increasingly, cities are in the vanguard of forging more sustainable worlds.

Car-free futures

Since the , the car has afforded a sense of freedom while infringing on the freedoms of .

Cars, particularly , are a major source of air pollution and . Motorways and have transformed Earth’s terrain and monopolised public space. For those of us in industrialised societies, it is difficult to .

Global sales of electric vehicles are projected to . Yet even these supposed solutions to an unsustainable transport sector require a lot of space and materials to make and maintain.

With cities set to host nearly by 2050, space and livability are key concerns. As such, and are beginning to reclaim their streets.

Between 2019 and 2022, the number of low-emissions zones, areas that regulate the most polluting vehicles in order to improve air quality and help to protect public health, in European cities. Research suggests that policies to such as congestion charges and raised parking fees can further discourage their use. However, providing viable and accessible alternatives is also crucial: as such, many cities are also widening walkways, building bike lanes and making public transport cheaper and easier to access.

An estimated 80,000 cars used to pass daily through the centre of , a city in north-west Spain. Mayor Miguel Anxo Fernandez Lores instituted a ban on cars in 1999 and removed on-street parking spaces. The city has since drastically reduced air pollution and hasn’t had a vehicular death in over a decade.

Living cities

Cement and concrete are to make major infrastructure such as roads, bridges, buildings and dams. The cement industry accounts for up to . Moreover, the open-pit quarrying of limestone, a key ingredient in cement, involves removing topsoil and vegetation which and increases flooding risks.

A burgeoning “” movement originated in in 2008 and has removed concrete and asphalt from cities including , and several cities , replacing it with plants and soil.

Depaving is an example of the wider movement which aims to restore natural habitats and expand green spaces in cities for social and ecological wellbeing.

Multispecies coexistence

A new by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) has documented in the abundance of monitored wildlife populations globally since 1970. Despite such unfathomable losses, many cities are being transformed into .

Prized for their fur, beavers were hunted to extinction in the UK by the 16th century. Their create homes for other species such as birds and invertebrates and help prevent flooding. Eurasian beavers have been since their reintroduction in the 1920s and 1960s, respectively.

In 2022, beavers were designated a in England. , London saw its first baby beaver in over 400 years.

Melbourne has launched a project to create in the city by 2028, with at least 20 local plant species for each square metre. An 8-kilometre long is also being created to allow wildlife to travel between 200 interconnected gardens and further help local pollinators flourish.

Living alongside larger predators brings unique challenges. However, as with any functional relationship, respect is key for coexistence. Los Angeles and Mumbai are two major cities that are mountain lions and leopards. Local officials have launched public education initiatives urging people to, for instance, maintain a safe distance from the animals and not walk alone outside at night. In cases where wildlife conflicts occur, such as who have lost livestock, non-lethal methods such as wolf-proof fences and guard dogs have been found to be than culls.

Environmental justice now

Cities, particularly in wealthy countries, are only a small part of the story.

At just over 500 years old, the modern capitalist system, imposed globally through , is a relatively recent development. Despite its influence, the visionary author Ursula K. Le Guin that “any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings”.

numbering 476 million across 90 countries represent thousands of distinct cultures that persist as living proof of the enduring possibilities of radically different ways of living.

tracks 4,189 worldwide. From keeping illegal miners at bay, to countless local communities and resisting the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure. Over the last few years, these place-based struggles have either stopped, stalled or forced the suspension of at least .

These examples demonstrate hope in action, and suggest that the radical changes required to avert climate and ecological breakdown are often a simple question of will and collective resolve.

Reality, like the future, is never fixed. Whether the world is depends on actions taken today. The terrain ahead will be full of challenges. But, glimmers of a better world are already here.

, Lecturer in Sustainability,
This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

The Scholarship is aimed at first-year undergraduate students nominated by participating universities for the Scheme, and seeks to address the disproportionate under-representation of Black men from less socially mobile backgrounds in large commercial law firms and other careers in the City of London.

It is provided by global law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, and was launched in 2013 with support from Doreen Lawrence, Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, OBE.

Benefits include a 15-month development programme, mentorship, commercial familiarisation though work-shadowing and £5,000 towards study-related costs. For those who wish it, there is an alternative pathway to an interview for a trainee associate programme at the firm.

Annette Byron, Freshfields’ Partner for Social Mobility, commented: “I am delighted to welcome the new cohort to the twelfth year of the Freshfields Stephen Lawrence Scholarship Scheme. This year, we had the honour of considering 78 outstanding candidates, all showing exceptional potential. We look forward to support our 12 new scholars as they begin their professional paths and continue to contribute to the enduring impact of the Scheme."

Arthur, who is looking forward to starting the development programme, said: “Being selected for the Freshfields Stephen Lawrence Scholarship is an honour. I’m excited to learn and grow alongside such a talented group of scholars, and I hope this experience will not only advance my own ambitions but also inspire others to pursue their goals.”

"I also want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the outstanding efforts of all our candidates who participated in the assessment centres in London," Emma added. “Each of them demonstrated exceptional skill and professionalism, representing both themselves and the University with great distinction throughout the process.”

This - made possible by the collaboration of experts including Dr Joanna Taylor from Swagֱ�� and the work of thousands of volunteers - highlights Davy's immense contributions to science, and even reveals that two common chemical elements could have had different names.

The platform, funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council, allows the public to explore Davy's notebooks and gain insight into his groundbreaking discoveries, such as the isolation of potassium and sodium – which his notes reveal were almost labelled "potarchium" and "sodarchium."

In addition to scientific insights, the platform includes fascinating details of Davy’s experiments with nitrous oxide, including his personal experience as the first person to inhale the gas and recognise its pain-relieving properties. The notebooks also reveal Davy's frustrations over the lack of recognition for his inventions, such as his miner’s safety lamp which saved tens of thousands of lives.

Led by Professor Sharon Ruston of Lancaster University, the project is the result of a major international effort involving , the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, University College London, and .

The platform, which launches officially on Saturday 19 October, was made possible through the work of 3,841 volunteers who transcribed more than 13,000 pages of Davy’s notes, creating a valuable resource for researchers and the general public alike. The collection is now publicly available on Lancaster University Library’s digital platform.

Dr Taylor’s expertise in understanding how Davy’s scientific work intertwined with his personal reflections on nature and poetry was pivotal in interpreting the notebooks in a way that reveals Davy’s deep intellectual engagement with the world around him.

“The publication of these notebooks, images of the pages, their transcription and explicatory notes is a beginning rather than the end of a project,” said Professor Ruston. “Now everyone can read what Davy wrote 200 years ago and, I hope, will make full use of this new resource.”

Simon Johnson - who studied Economics at Swagֱ�� in the 1980s, and is now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - won the prize alongside Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson in recognition of their work to analyse how institutions and the rule of law shape national prosperity.

Professor Johnson was born in Sheffield, and completed his undergraduate studies at Oxford University, before doing a master's degree at Swagֱ�� and a doctorate at MIT.

His career has included prominent roles at the Washington-based Peterson Institute and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where he served as chief economist from 2007 to 2008 during the global financial crisis. He eventually returned to MIT as a professor, focusing on global economic inequality and policy.

Through their research, Professor Johnson and his colleagues have shaped global debates by demonstrating that democracies, which hold to the rule of law and provide individual rights, have spurred greater economic activity over the last 500 years. Their insights - derived from studying colonialism’s enduring effects on global development - have broad implications for economic strategies today.

Professor Johnson’s academic achievements have established him as a leading voice on global economic policy, which has now been further cemented by this honour. He becomes the 26^th Nobel laureate associated with Swagֱ��, either as staff or alumni.

“It is a surprise and a delight to win the Nobel Prize in Economics,” said Professor Johnson. “Getting my master’s degree at Swagֱ�� helped launch my professional career – and I will always be grateful to my teachers and fellow students in those years. Their guidance and inspiration (and many late-night conversations) helped push me down the road towards careful empirical work, bringing history to bear, and understanding the importance of building institutions that support inclusive prosperity.”

“This year’s laureates have pioneered new approaches, both empirical and theoretical, that have significantly advanced our understanding of global inequality,” said Nobel committee member Jakob Svensson. “Reducing the huge differences in income between countries is one of our times’ greatest challenges, and their insights show that democracies are - on average - better for promoting growth in the long run.”

The ‘Zero Carbon Without a Net’ initiative is part of the University’s Environmental Sustainability strategy which was launched last July, and subsequently won the 2023 . Now, the University is being honoured for its dedication to sustainability on an international scale.

The awards featured 95 finalists from 28 countries, with the University coming first in the ‘’ category, which focuses on assessing the steps that institutions are taking - or are planning to take - to reach their sustainability targets.

Recognising the innovative and pioneering initiatives in sustainability, the celebrate the projects undertaken by further and higher education institutions who are striving for a sustainable future.

The University’s initiative focuses on decarbonising its operations to secure a zero-carbon future by 2038. Progress already made includes:

• The landmark deal signed in May 2024 that will see up to 65% of the University’s electricity demand supplied through a brand-new renewables project.
• Completion of the first phase of building decarbonisation projects including the newly refurbished building which now has the infrastructure to support zero emissions.
• A further £25m pledged to decarbonise the University, taking the zero-carbon budget to £175m.

The Green Gown Award judges commented: “Swagֱ��’s “Zero Carbon Without a Net” initiative is candid and ambitious. The approach of clearly assessing reality in relation to ambitions is very important and ensures that the approach taken is sincere, going beyond intentions to focus on transformation. Its scientific approach, detailed planning. And substantial internal funding demonstrates a deep institutional commitment to sustainability.”

Swagֱ��’s Environmental Sustainability strategy builds on the University’s core goals of Teaching and Learning, Research and Discovery and Social Responsibility and stresses the need to embed sustainable practises into all University plans, policies and processes.

The strategy also highlights six priority operational areas, all linking back to the United Nations Sustainability Goals: Construction and Refurbishment; Risk and Climate Resilience; Responsible Procurement; Resource Management; Valuing Nature; Travel and Transport. 

“We are incredibly delighted to be recognised internationally for our decarbonisation plans, which are firmly grounded in science, with our zero-carbon target set in collaboration with experts from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research” said Julia Durkan, Swagֱ��’s Head of Environmental Sustainability. “This award not only acknowledges our ambitious plans but also celebrates the collective efforts of our colleagues who have made this initiative a reality.  We’re proud to be part of the international effort to tackle climate change, and we know achieving these goals requires continuous, urgent action and global collaboration.”

Launched on 11 October 2024 in Swagֱ��, academics from partner institutions gathered in person and online to mark the beginning of this collaborative effort at an inaugural meeting. Academics from the member institutions joined a panel discussion on sustainability and climate change – one of the key focus areas of the Alliance.

GHA members include: Swagֱ��, Ashoka University in India, Mahidol University in Thailand, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia, The University of Melbourne in Australia, University of Nairobi in Kenya and University of Toronto in Canada.

The mission of the GHA is to raise the social and political impact of the humanities and social sciences through an emphasis on a programme of research and teaching that takes up global issues, incorporates diverse global perspectives and brings scholars and students together for critical conversations.

Underpinning the Alliance is a core value that by combining complementary and distinctive strengths, it can better address key global challenges and showcase the difference humanities, social sciences and the liberal arts makes to the world.

Professor Angelia Wilson, Faculty of Humanities Associate Dean for Internationalisation at Swagֱ��, commented: “The Global Humanities Alliance brings together academics and higher education institutions from around the world to celebrate and to enrich the important contribution made by humanities and social science research to understanding and navigating the challenges we face in our local communities and in wider society. The member institutions are firmly committed to working together to ensure our students are fit to be engaged, value-driven, and knowledgeable citizens of the world.”

The GHA brings together thousands of humanities and social scientists from around the globe. Alliance collaborations will centre initially around four core themes: public humanities, sustainability and climate change, decolonising knowledge and digital transformations.

The GHA is working towards a range of joint research initiatives and enhanced staff mobility between Alliance member institutions through a programme of visiting fellowships.

And for students, the GHA expands opportunities for an international learning experience with Global Classrooms. Offering virtual guest lectures and international discussion boards, students will get a more diverse learning experience and options to learn from their peers around the world.

Professor Fiona Devine, Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, said: “The Global Humanities Alliance will greatly enhance the staff and student experience, not just here at Swagֱ�� but for all our partner institutions across the globe. Working with our partners in the Alliance will facilitate the co-production of knowledge, new ways of innovating teaching, and research collaboration to tackle global challenges.”

Published this week by , the volume investigates the lives and public work of Henry and Emily Simon, and Ernest and Shena Simon, a family shaped by their German ancestry and Swagֱ��’s mercantile class.

The book is written by , Senior Lecture in Geography, , Doctoral Researcher in History, Dr Diana Leitch MBE, former Deputy University Librarian of the John Rylands Library, , Professor of Intellectual History, and , Professor Emerita in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures.

Although many in Swagֱ�� are familiar with the Simon name – through the University’s Simon Building, Simonsway in Wythenshawe and the Swagֱ�� College’s Shena Simon Campus – the family themselves are often overlooked in favour of other prolific local individuals. This volume aims to boost their profile by illuminating their deep contributions to public life, both locally and nationally. 

The book aims to study the family collectively, by highlighting the marriages of Henry and Emily and of Ernest and Shena as strong partnerships in which the women played important roles not just as mothers and housewives but also as philanthropists, activists and public figures.

Dr Diana Leitch said: “Emily Simon was one of the first women to be awarded an OBE in 1920, shortly before she died aged 60, for her tireless work at the Red Cross Hospital she ran in her home in very tragic personal circumstances. It was a tribute to her courage and resilience through the First World War.”

The first section of the volume, ‘Cosmopolitan Swagֱ�� and the Simons’, focuses on the four Simons as individuals; the four biographical chapters are framed by a study of Swagֱ��’s German community. The second part, ‘The Simons’ contribution to society’, emphasises the family as a unit and spotlights their economic, social and political endeavours in Swagֱ��. 

In a later chapter, ‘Burghers and citizens: The Simons and the University of Swagֱ��’ Professor Stuart Jones and Dr Professor Chris Godden examine the relationship between the University and the Simon family. Ernest and Shena were at the heart of the University for many decades, and the family have a long connection with the institution and its precursors. 

In 1898, as a leading benefactor, Henry Simon was asked to lay the foundation stone for the new Physics Laboratories for Owens College, later integrated in 1903 into Swagֱ��. It was in these same laboratories that Ernest Rutherford, Hans Geiger and their colleagues first split the atom. 

Ernest Simon’s substantial personal investment in social science research - notably through the Simon fellowship scheme - was conceived as a contribution to the cause of citizenship education, to which he devoted much of his public work from the 1930s onwards.

Professor Stuart Jones comments: “As a senior lay officer at the University for a quarter of a century, as a leading benefactor, and as a practically-minded thinker, Ernest Simon did more than anyone in his time to sustain a vision of what it meant to be a civic university: a university for the city.”

The family greatly enriched Swagֱ��’s cultural and civic institutions, worked to improve the lives of its citizens and helped to spearhead profound national reforms in healthcare, women’s rights, housing, civic planning and education. 

• Read the full text of The Simons of Swagֱ�� .

Mining has a very bad reputation. It is often assumed to be one of the worse land uses – destroying and polluting the environment and creating barren, moon-like landscapes. Where mining occurs in areas of high biodiversity, it is considered a serious threat.

But in the eastern rainforests of Madagascar, over 10,000 people mining for sapphires didn’t cause more damage to the forest than farmers clearing land for agriculture, which remains the most important driver of deforestation in this area.

focuses on quantifying the effects of sapphire mining on the forests of Madagascar. My discoveries challenge some of the preconceptions about the impacts of small-scale mining. I show that, despite being attention-grabbing, some forms of mining can be surprisingly low-impact and less damaging than other land uses.

In October 2016, a valuable deposit of sapphires was discovered by people searching for gold within the protected rainforests of the Ankeniheny-Zahamena corridor in eastern Madagascar. These rainforests are really important for biodiversity as they are home to many unique species , including lemurs such as the indri and black and white ruffed lemur. Word of the sapphire discovery quickly spread. Within weeks from across the island were illegally mining in the Bemainty valley deep within the forest.

Miners used shovels to dig pits between 1m and 3m deep in the valley floor to extract river sediments. They used handmade sieves and water from the stream to sieve the sediment and search for gems. The work was hard, living conditions in the hastily constructed settlements were poor, and the rewards were uncertain.

Unlucky miners left the site poorer than they arrived. Some struck it rich, while others made enough money to survive and perhaps save a little extra to invest in education, land or businesses. This type of mining, termed artisanal and small-scale mining, is not unique to Madagascar. It is widespread, supporting an estimated people around the world.

The mining rush at Bemainty attracted international media attention due to fears over its environmental impacts, with it was causing substantial deforestation and threatening endangered lemur populations. This caused amongst conservationists.

aimed to evaluate the deforestation claims. To properly assess the impact of something, an essential step is to estimate what would have happened without it: the counterfactual. To roughly calculate how much deforestation would have happened at Bemainty without mining, my colleagues and I used the average area of deforestation within a set of control forest areas, chosen to be as similar as possible to Bemainty but crucially, without mining. We then compared deforestation at Bemainty to this counterfactual.

We found that mining at Bemainty did not cause more deforestation than we estimate would have happened anyway from other causes. In this area, the biggest driver of deforestation is shifting agriculture, where people cut and burn patches of forest on slopes to grow rice for a few years in a rotational cycle. We showed that more than 10,000 people mining in the area did not cause more deforestation than several hundred people clearing forest for farming. The impacts of the artisanal gem rush need to be considered within this broader context.

Limited negative effects of mining on deforestation at Bemainty could be for several reasons. First, the sapphires were found within river sediments, confining mining to the valley floor.

Second, much of this area had been cleared for farming decades before when the first settlers arrived. Third, the miners did not use heavy machinery, and sapphire mining does not use toxic chemicals (like the ).

The variability of small-scale mining

More broadly, these results highlight that the environmental impacts of artisanal mining are very variable. They depend on the scale, methods, machinery and chemicals used, and the environmental impact of alternative land uses that people might be doing otherwise, like farming or cutting down trees to make charcoal. Although in some places artisanal and small-scale mining is causing major environmental problems, where mining is small-scale and doesn’t use heavy machinery or chemicals, environmental effects may be similarly limited.

However, in many countries this variability is not considered in policies towards artisanal mining. Policies tend to or otherwise stopping artisanal mining, but often have . I believe that these one-size-fits-all policies are strongly influenced by negative preconceptions about mining and the worst case scenarios, and not necessarily specific evidence, which is lacking for many countries.

Treating all mining as the same needs to stop. Artisanal mining provides income for millions of poor people around the world who, despite the challenges, decide it is their best – and perhaps only – option. Given its importance, policymakers need to rethink their preconceptions. Where mining has a low environmental impact, more open-minded, flexible policies are needed to regulate it in a way which balances the needs of poor communities with biodiversity conservation.

, Postdoctoral Researcher in Sustainable Land Use,
This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of the English language and its many forms around the world.

Emerging Englishes: China English in Academic Writing can be purchased at the following link:  

In the Legal Advice Centre our students - supervised by University staff and volunteer lawyers - offer free advice to the general public. Student Alicia Smith was able to meet the Attorney General as part of the visit. “It was a surreal experience, and I felt very fortunate to be able to discuss my views with the Attorney General,” she said. 

“It was a real honour for the Attorney General to attend the Justice Hub and take an interest in the pro bono activities our students are involved with,” said Phil Drake, Director of the Justice Hub. “The Attorney General particularly engaged with our students to understand their perspective and experiences, which I know has galvanised and inspired them to continue with their passion for access to justice.”

“It was a pleasure to host the Attorney General at the Justice Hub,” said Claire McGourlay, Academic Director of the Swagֱ�� Innocence Project. “Two of our students Roan Goulden and Alicia Smith talked through the work that they do to help the most disadvantaged in our society. We invited the Attorney General to give a lecture in the future, so watch this space.”

To mark World Alzheimer’s Day, Saturday 21 September, Professor Douglas Field is announcing the release of a new book, Walking in the dark: James Baldwin, my father and me, a moving literary exploration of the disease.

Douglas Field was introduced to Baldwin's essays and novels by his father, who witnessed the writer's debate with William F. Buckley Jr. at Cambridge University in 1965. Professor Field rediscovered Baldwin’s works when his father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and turning to Baldwin for answers about his father’s condition inspired Field to write his book.  

Set for publication by in November 2024, Walking in the dark blends biography with memoir. By interweaving his personal experiences with Baldwin’s iconic works, Field demonstrates the power of literature to inspire and illuminate new understandings of both our personal experiences, and the universal mysteries of everyday life.

Douglas Field is a writer, academic and Professor of American Literature. He has published two books on James Baldwin, the most recent of which is All Those Strangers: The Art and Lives of James Baldwin (2015). His work has been published in Beat Scene, The Big Issue, the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement, where he has been a regular contributor for twenty years. He is a founding editor of James Baldwin Review.

Led by , World Alzheimer’s Day takes place on 21 September, during World Alzheimer’s Month. The 2024 campaign and World Alzheimer Report, which will be launched on 20 September, will centre on challenging why people still wrongly believe that dementia is a part of normal ageing.

Leading up to 21 September, Alzheimer’s organisations and individuals affected by the condition share stories to raise awareness and address the stigma that exists around Alzheimer’s and dementia. Public awareness campaigns, like World Alzheimer's Day, are of great importance for changing perceptions and increasing existing public knowledge around Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

This year’s campaign will centre around the tagline: ‘Time to act on dementia, Time to act on Alzheimer’s’, focusing on changing attitudes towards the condition, while highlighting the positive steps being undertaken by organisations and governments globally to develop a more dementia friendly society.

Professor Douglas Field is holding a free public book launch for Walking in the dark, taking place at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and hosted by Professor David Olusoga OBE. 

• Details of the book launch are available .
• For more information about Walking in the dark, visit Swagֱ�� University Press .
• Find out more about World Alzheimer’s day .

The researchers are now developing a new framework that will help architects assess their design choices more thoroughly. They plan to test this framework by working with architects to see how it can improve their decision-making in future.

The Commission says it looks forward to the strategic direction and innovative approaches that Professor Wong will bring to the role, building on its existing work and expanding its impact.

Everyone who attends the launch event will have the opportunity to buy a physical copy of the anthology, which will also be made available in Blackwell’s Swagֱ�� bookshop and online as a PDF.

To learn more, visit .

Cathy Bolton and Sarah-Jane Roberts, Co-Directors of Swagֱ�� Literature Festival said: “Over the last 200 years, Swagֱ�� has shown itself to be one of the most innovative and groundbreaking universities in the UK and we are delighted to have the Centre for New Writing and Creative Swagֱ�� as our Higher Education Partner once again. New perspectives and reimagining are at the heart of this year’s Swagֱ�� Literature Festival. Caroline Lucas asks us to reimagine a greener, more inclusive England. George Monbiot encourages us to reimagine the end of neoliberalism. Thomas Heatherwick invites us to reimagine our cities without soulless, boring buildings. David Peace reimagines the grief, heartbreak and resurrection of Swagֱ�� United after the 1958 Munich air disaster. We also welcome a multitude of brilliant novelists, poets and artists to the city, and invite you to join us to revisit familiar narratives from a place of freshness, curiosity and hope.”

Find out more about Swagֱ�� Literature Festival and view the full programme by visiting .

He will record his experiences during all four events using a GoPro camera, and plans to compile a video towards the end of the summer. 

To support Jonathan in his series of challenges, visit .

The UK’s new Labour government has made a bold decision. The new minister for local government, Angela Rayner, has announced that the government would for a new coal mine near Whitehaven in Cumbria, which had been approved two years ago by the then Conservative government.

Rayner’s intervention follows a recent making it harder for new sites of fossil fuel extraction to be approved. Pointing to the implications of the court’s decision, she argued that there had been an “error in law” when Michael Gove, the minister at the time, had given the coal mine the go ahead in 2022.

The mine’s developers still want to go ahead, and a legal challenge by environmental campaigners is being , with a ruling expected later this summer. But, with its decision to withdraw its defence, the government has confirmed that it understands the need to decisively turn away from new fossil fuel extraction. This is good news.

But to rise to the challenge, the government must do much more. It must now show it understands what it means to decisively put the UK on a path towards clean energy while still recognising the importance of economic and social justice.

One of Keir Starmer’s pledges prior to becoming prime minister was to reform planning. He used eye-catching language, promising to the existing planning system to take out (those who say: “not in my back yard”) ostensibly standing in the way of progress.

In Cumbria, the nimbys have a point

But there is an unfortunate irony in how Starmer’s position relates to the Cumbria mine. In Cumbria the ostensible were environmental campaigners pointing out that the mine would add into the atmosphere a year if it got the go ahead. They rightly argued that this would be indefensible in the middle of a climate crisis caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Without their intervention, the mine might already be in operation.

The planning system doesn’t need destroying, as Starmer’s language would suggest. As one of us (Gareth Fearn) , the challenge centres instead on revitalising planning as a public service, such that a new lease of life can be breathed into it.

In recent years, the UK’s planning system has been hollowed out due to austerity. Funding for local government fell by and planning departments shrunk as their work was to private-sector consultants. Meanwhile, the amount of work these departments have been expected to do has, if anything, increased.

This is an untenable situation. To achieve a rapid, just transition the planning system needs to be properly supported so that it can proactively steer the net zero transition, and communities can have a real say on development in their areas.

The alternative is that local areas are left at the mercy of speculative developers who will invest in what is most profitable, rather than what most effectively meets public needs. In a context where green industry often offers less return on capital than or high-end real estate, a deregulatory approach risks forcing local areas to choose between high-carbon speculative development or no development at all, as had happened in Cumbria.

Green policies, resources and community power

We want to see Labour take three steps to get the country on the right path. First, the new government must draw a much clearer connection between decarbonisation and planning policy when it this summer. This would remove ambiguities about new fossil fuel extraction and would mean putting in place strong policies for new, green industries like the government has already done with .

Second, Labour desperately needs to provide more resources to local government so councils and regional mayors can use in house planning expertise, rather than relying on expensive, private-sector consultants. This is at odds with chancellor Rachel Reeves’ approach, which seems to covertly embrace and is reliant on the finance and preferences of the assembled to deliver infrastructure with little public control or ownership.

Third, and most importantly, communities need to be empowered to make genuine choices between alternatives. This is especially important for areas like Cumbria, with its long history of coal mining, or Aberdeen with its offshore oil, where green alternatives are as not as culturally embedded as carbon-intensive industries.

Coal in Cumbria has more than economic value. As one of us (Pancho Lewis) argued in , coal is folded into the area’s history and continues to signal a desirable future for many people. This isn’t because people aren’t concerned about climate change. They are. It’s because coal is a familiar industry which delivered “proper”, reliable jobs in the past and, in the context of proposals for a new mine, promised to continue to do so in the years ahead.

The government must respond by working hand in glove with communities to shape a net zero future that is meaningful to them. This is about delivering reliable jobs that people need and rolling out industry which can provide continuity with the past. Doing this requires forward planning and creative thinking, so that the net zero transition .

The new Labour government’s decision to oppose the mine is good news. But for the energy transition to be successful there need to be opportunities in new industries around the country. This requires a public planning system which is back on its feet and for the public to have meaningful stakes in new projects from local to national government. Labour must rise to the moment.

, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, and , Researcher, Lancaster Environment Centre,

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Other appointments include:

• AI and Digital – Dr Varuna De Silva, Loughborough University (New position)
• Arts and Humanities – Dr Helen McCabe, University of Nottingham (New position)
• Business, Economics and Trade – Dr Jane Parry, University of Southampton (New position)
• Climate and Environment – Dr Andrew Russell, Queen Mary University London
• Health – David Strain, Dr University of Exeter (New position)
• International Affairs and National Security – Dr Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli, King's College London
• Transport – Dr Louise Reardon, University of Birmingham (New position)

For those interested in learning more about Ruth’s research, you can visit her , or alternatively read about her work with colleagues at Essex on the role of Commissioners for the Victims' Commissioner: 

, and ,

Desert regions in and the have been well studied by archaeologists as the and as routes of along “”. The archaeology of southern Africa’s west coast desert belt has not received the same attention.

The Namib Sand Sea, part of the Namib Desert, is on the west coast of Namibia. It is a hyperarid landscape of towering dunes, occupying about 34,000km² between the towns of Lüderitz in the south and Walvis Bay in the north. However, there are clues that this environment was not always so dry and inhospitable, suggesting that there is more to be learnt about ancient human life here.

We are part of an interdisciplinary research team of physical geographers, archaeologists and geospatial scientists, interested in the long-term history of deserts and human-environmental interactions.

Our provides a timeframe for the presence of a small freshwater lake that once existed in the Namib Sand Sea. This lake was fed by an ancient river and is surrounded by a rich record of stone tools from the (made between about 300,000 years ago and 20,000 years ago), indicating that people ventured into this landscape and used this occasional water source.

Dating the former lake site, Narabeb, makes it clearer when ancient humans would have been able to live here. It draws attention to the Namib Sand Sea as a place archaeologists should study to learn more about far-reaching and deep human connections across southern Africa.

An ancient lake and shifting sand dunes

Today, Narabeb is a landscape dominated by long sand dunes that tower more than 100 metres high over the former lake site. There is no standing water here and the landscape receives little to no rain most years. However, that’s probably not what our ancient ancestors would have seen here. Away from the lake, they might have seen a relatively flat plain, seasonally covered by grasses, beside a river.

The clue is in sediments at the site: mud layers that were laid down by water. To find out how long ago the lake was at Narabeb, we needed to date these layers.

We used a technique called – basically, making sand glow to tell the time. Sand grains release a trapped signal that builds up when sand is buried underground, and is reset when sand is exposed to sunlight. Using this technique, we can date when different layers were last on the surface before they got buried. We dated the sand beneath and above layers of mud that were deposited by water. Our results show that the lake was present at Narabeb at some point between 231,000 ± 20,000 and 223,000 ± 19,000 years ago and again about 135,000 ± 11,000 years ago.

Another clue is the shape of the landscape east of Narabeb. It is dune free, reminding us that ancient humans were not the only things migrating in the Namib Sand Sea. Have the dunes been on the move? For how long? And how quickly?

Drilling to the centre of these dunes to work that out remains logistically impossible. Instead, we used .

The modelling suggests that it would have taken around 210,000 years to accumulate the amount of sand around Narabeb (those 110m high dunes). This number is remarkably close to the oldest age for the lake. This suggests that the dunes may only just have been starting to form and that a river was supplying the lake with fresh water, supporting animals and attracting people. The sediments at Narabeb also clearly tell us that a river once flowed where there are now dunes.

The winds have pushed dunes from the south and west to north and east, creating barriers for the river and hindering movement of people and animals along the water course.

Ancient human presence

At we have found tools from an earlier species of the Homo genus. This is part of a growing body of evidence, adding to research in the Kalahari desert in the centre of southern Africa, that suggests to the story of human evolution and technological innovation than has been supposed.

The artefacts from Narabeb fit into the Middle Stone Age type of stone tool technology. Narabeb is a particularly rich site for stone tools, suggesting people made tools here for a long time and perhaps visited the site over many generations.

This research illustrates the need for a comprehensive study of areas that have not been on the map of the major routes of human and animal migration. These might reveal exciting records of diffusion, innovation and adaptation to marginal and changing environments.

Our results also make us think about the dynamic nature of environmental conditions in one of Earth’s oldest desert regions. It has long been thought that the Namib has been consistently very and not a place capable of containing “green corridors” at the times of interest for archaeologists. Now we can challenge that idea.

Future steps

Recent funding from the will allow us to extend our fieldwork, documenting archaeological sites and dating these “green corridors” across more of this landscape. along the ancient river course has revealed an expansive artefact-littered landscape. We also need to know more about where ancient populations found the materials they used to make stone tools.

This will allow us to piece together a network of archaeological sites and show where human migration might have been possible in this part of southern Africa. Up to now, it’s been a gap in the archaeological map.

More work is also needed to understand the shifts in climate that allowed the rivers to flow into the Namib. This Southern Hemisphere, west coast desert has a very different setting to north Africa and Arabia, which have for understanding their periodic “green corridors”. Ongoing work with the wider scientific community, including climate modellers, may create a clearer picture of the Namib’s “green corridors”.

, Reader in Physical Geography, and , Professor of Archaeology,

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

“We’ve been working to restore the moorlands of the Peak District and South Pennines for the last 21 years,” said Tom Spencer, Senior Research and Monitoring Officer at Moors for the Future Partnership. “This restoration work is based on scientific evidence and the research with Swagֱ�� and the University of Newcastle shows the natural flood management benefits of planting sphagnum and the opportunities for upscaling to extend these benefits, especially considering the increased risk of extreme weather events.”

"This study is exciting because it shows that small changes over large areas really can stack up to make a big difference,” said Newcastle University’s Dave Milledge, who also worked on the study. “It also demonstrates that it is possible to make changes that are good for carbon storage, for ecosystems and for people downstream, as well as showing that changes in the hills can make a difference further downstream. But we need to remember that different places and different interventions will behave differently - not all peatland restoration will deliver flood risk benefit, nor should it be expected to."

“These findings are very promising in terms of the potential flood risk reductions that can be achieved by using upstream Natural Flood Management interventions in the peatland headwaters of the catchment,” said David Brown from the Environment Agency. “Utilising detailed plot-scale observations and upscaling using the modelling approach has demonstrated what could be possible - the trick now is to continue with the upland restoration.”

• Developing and publishing criteria to support the decision about when the ABPEs will replace the MYEs, in consultation with key stakeholders such as the Welsh Government; 
• Strengthening the governance structure and decision-making responsibilities for the production and development of the ABPE, and managing any risks associated with funding, capability and prioritisation; 
• Publishing a plan for addressing the recommendations and suggestions in .  
• Understanding and quantifying the quality and uncertainty of the data inputs to the DPM, especially the Statistical Population Dataset (SPD) and the migration data, and implementing regular assumption checking and validation; 
• Publishing more information on the quality and methodology of the ABPEs, including the strengths and limitations of the data sources, the coverage of special population groups, and the impact of data and methods changes over time; 
• Improving its quality assurance process; 
• Implementing and publishing a revisions policy for the ABPEs, based on user feedback and analysis of the scale and frequency of revisions; 
• Creating and implementing technical and expert user groups to provide independent and external challenge and assurance on the methods used in the DPM; 
• Developing and implementing a user engagement strategy specific to the ABPEs, to understand and meet user needs, communicate plans and updates, and manage user expectations; 
• Being open to scrutiny from key stakeholders and users and responding appropriately to their feedback and queries; and 
• Improving and tailoring the communication of the methods and quality of the ABPEs, considering the differing technical expertise of population statistics users. 

These recommendations build on the positive progress ONS has made in publishing a suite of information related to these statistics today. Taking the actions outlined in the recommendations will ensure that users have more confidence in the new method, and therefore the ABPEs themselves. 

“We welcome the work of the Office for Statistics Regulation which, along with input from our users, helps inform our development of these important statistics," said Mary Gregory, Interim Director of Population Statistics for ONS. “We welcome the work of the Office for Statistics Regulation which, along with input from our users, helps inform our development of these important statistics. Today, we’ve provided an update on our progress towards admin-based population estimates (ABPEs). We’ve sharing these new data to help users understand the new approach, share their feedback with us, and take time to consider what it means for them before we move to the ABPEs as our official estimates of the population.

"Although these ABPEs are at a research and development stage, our intention is for them to become our official measure of the population in 2025, dependent on meeting the acceptance criteria we will publish later this year. We will take into account the feedback we receive following engagement, and will only transition to the new approach once we are confident they are of the high standards that our users need. We will be working closely with the Office for Statistics Regulation as we seek accreditation of the ABPEs, and our long-term international migration estimates.”

Professor Arkadiusz Wiśniowski said: "The OSR’s report evaluates the progress the Office for National Statistics made with developing new population estimates that are based on administrative data sources. Population estimates are crucial for making decisions about our lives, such as funding of the A&Es, number of GPs per areas, new schools or infrastructures. They also underlie most of the economic, health and other indicators, including those used to measure progress towards Sustainable Development Goals. The new admin-based population estimates are meant to replace the current estimates that suffer from various issues, as well as potentially replace future censuses.

"My role was to assess a sophisticated statistical model (Dynamic Population Model) that is developed by the ONS and how it is used to produce those population estimates. I was happy to be involved because, firstly, the development of such models is my main area of research and, secondly, I believe the ONS’ work is ground-breaking and highly innovative globally. I think it is essential that all assumptions made in the DPM are appropriately described and tested, which will ensure that the population estimates are of highest possible quality. This, in turn, will ensure user trust and confidence in population statistics.”

Recent scholarship asserts that ITs can prevent deforestation and other ecologically destructive practices. However, as lead author Dr Bowy den Braber explains: “Carefully weighing up the benefits and drawbacks of different land use options can help policymakers maximise progress towards both conservation and development goals.”

Co-author Dr Marina Schmoeller, who recently completed her PhD at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said: “We highlight the importance of indigenous territories for protecting biodiversity, which is timely considering the ongoing debates in the Brazilian Supreme Court that could potentially limit Indigenous people’s claim for lands not only in the Amazon, but in the whole of the country."

Dr Karl Evans, University of Sheffield, remarked that: “Protected areas and Indigenous Territories are highly effective at reducing deforestation in the Amazon. Protecting forests does more to support local people’s livelihoods and well-being than opening them up to large agri-business and mining, while also addressing the climate and biodiversity emergencies.”

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“We strongly endorse Professor Courtney’s nomination on the basis of his academic standing within the community and his unwavering commitment to the development of professional colleagues, early career researchers and students within our field,” said Dr Paul Armstrong, on behalf of the Critical Educational Leadership and Policy research group. “His influence on our group - and through this, the wider field of educational leadership, management and administration - cannot be overstated.”

“I unreservedly endorse Professor Courtney for this award - his steadfast dedication, active involvement and exemplary contributions have significantly enriched the BELMAS community, making him an outstanding candidate for this prestigious honour,” said Dr Ruth McGinity from University College London. “He has been a dedicated member of BELMAS for many years, and has made a profound and sustained commitment to the society's mission to enhance knowledge and scholarship in the field of Educational Leadership, Management and Administration and to create a space for research and practice to meet.”

“Professor Courtney is an exemplary colleague, an inspiration to many of us, and a go-to source for knowledge, support and wise advice - I recommend him without reservation for the BELMAS Distinguished Service Award,” said Professor Steven Jones from Swagֱ��. “As well as being an excellent mentor to his students, his experience and insight is often in demand from junior colleagues, and his feedback is sought for all kinds of scholarly writing. Unlike some eminent professors, he is approachable and thoughtful, providing guidance that is robust but always fair.”

“Steven deserves this award due to his commitment and passion for BELMAS and educational leadership – he is a true leader in every sense,” said Dr Victoria Showunmi from University College London. “His contribution to social justice and leadership is something that also must be celebrated - being a high-profile male leader who is from the LGBTQ+ community makes him a great role model for others entering the field.”

Professor Claire McGourlay, founder of the Swagֱ�� Innocence Project, added: “I’m really looking forward to the release of our next episodes, we have talked to so many inspiring people - listening to the conversations reminds me why I do this work. Have a listen - it will be the best thing you do today!” 

Listen to the Innocence Podcast at . 

It’s not controversial to say that contemporary affluent societies do a rather poor job of taking the interests of younger generations into account. This is not only because children can’t vote and the elderly tend to numbers. It’s also because many societies have ageing populations, making them demographically stacked against the youngest.

In Italy, for example, . While the numbers aren’t quite that high in the UK, the phenomenon is still – with pensioners .

The neglect of children and young people in UK politics is evident. . and understaffed, and young people are saddled with high university fees. They also face a difficult and cannot look forward to a decent, safe pension. It’s also much harder for them to , compared with previous generations.

And that’s all without even considering issues related to the climate crisis or how dramatically shrank children’s lives and social circles. What is clear is that children are directly affected by political decisions and policies. But they don’t have a say in elections.

In some places, the voting age for some elections has already been lowered to 16. Research shows that young people are more likely to if they start at 16. Labour now proposes this for .

Many want the voting age to be lowered further, or . But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right.

Proxy voting is when a person delegates their voting rights to another person to vote on their behalf. It is . It could work roughly in the same way with children and their parents or caregivers. Instead of delegation, we would use our registers of who is a child’s primary carer, authorising parents or legal guardians to vote on their behalf, if they are not yet old enough to vote themselves.

Giving children’s interests a voice

The idea of proxy voting for children has been and discussed by politicians for decades, but hasn’t been tried yet.

For some, the idea may be concerning, with fears that primary carers will use the votes in their own interests rather than the children’s. Of course their interests are not exactly identical. But they largely overlap on the policies that matter most – from high quality childcare and schooling to generally improving the life prospects for the young.

For example, if prospects are bad, the young remain economically .

And even if a few carers use proxy votes badly, this is still better than not having children’s interests represented at all. Furthermore, we could restrict the number of possible extra votes per primary carer, so that people with more children did not have more votes.

Perhaps some would still feel that carers getting to exercise more votes somehow shows that society values families more than the childless. But this is a misunderstanding of proxy voting. It is needed simply to give children’s interests appropriate weight in our politics, given our demographics.

According to philosophers, there are two main reasons for giving people . The first is simply that the vote is a mark of respect for people as free and equal moral agents capable of forming and expressing their own and the common good of their society.

The second relates to the good consequences of voting: giving people the vote avoids many and raises the chances that nobody’s important interests will be overlooked.

Having proxy voting in place would likely make it easier to teach children about politics more effectively from an earlier age, and help them to become active citizens. But the main argument for it is simply that it gives weight to their interests in the electoral process. With millions more potential votes to be gained, we can expect that political parties would compete for these votes by committing to policies that are fairer towards the young.

When faced with the disproportionate political influence of the elderly, some philosophers have toyed with the idea of at least (as the Romans ). But many people think this would be a terrible idea: it would be a form of exclusion from politics. Adding proxy votes for children does not exclude anybody.

In lieu of a proxy voting system, if you’re a parent, this election is a good opportunity to start about the democratic process, the issues you are concerned about and why you vote. You may even want to take them to the ballot box with you. that talking to young people about politics can help them trust in their own ability to effect change.

, Senior Lecturer in Political Theory
This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

“More research is needed to examine both how sporting events impact people’s understanding of and engagement with political issues. Ultimately, we need to be figuring out how to channel the power of sport in productive ways.”

Following his retirement as the inspirational Chief Executive of Swagֱ�� City Council, the University was fortunate to have Sir Howard join it in 2017, as an Honorary Professor of Politics. He became a part-time advisor to the University and was also Chair of the Swagֱ�� Academic Health Science Centre.  

President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell said:   "Having known Howard for many years, I recognised what a remarkable individual he was. I often sought his advice and wise counsel, and I am proud to have had him as a friend."  

Sir Howard worked for Swagֱ�� City Council for over 45 years, serving as Chief Executive since 1998 where he performed a central role in the regeneration and economic growth of the city. Prior to this role, he led Swagֱ�� Millennium Ltd where he oversaw the transformation of the city centre following the IRA bombing in 1996. 

Sir Howard's legacy shaped Swagֱ�� as the city we know, and he will forever be a part of Swagֱ��'s history. He will be deeply missed by his family, friends, and the city he passionately served. 

Read more on the .

Mauritians will head to the polls and politicians are considering the economic direction of the island country.

For the last two decades, the country’s economic growth has depended heavily on its offshore sector – the provision of financial services by banks to foreign firms.

As an isolated country located in the south-western Indian Ocean, Mauritius has linked itself to global financial sectors by easing the flow of capital into and out of its economy. It has signed double taxation avoidance agreements with other countries, and its capital gains taxes are attractively low.

Through double taxation avoidance agreements, foreign entities can establish funds in locations outside their home countries, to take advantage of lower taxes.

But recent initiatives have dimmed prospects for the offshore sector. For instance, the OECD’s (the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) significantly limits the incentives available under double taxation avoidance agreements.

As a political economist, I take an interdisciplinary approach to studying development challenges in today’s connected world. My work examines how countries with relatively little economic power manage domestic and external forces to achieve economic transformation.

Tax haven strategies have allowed countries such as Mauritius to gain huge amounts of foreign exchange. But in a recent I argue that these strategies may not have the same appeal in years to come. This leaves Mauritius at a crossroads once again.

The Mauritian government has previously found ways to diversify its economy during times of crisis. First, from sugar to industry. Then to tourism. Later to the offshore sector. Now there is talk of investing in the , but there are few signs that a clear strategy has been defined. With offshore revenues threatened, the Mauritian economy may soon struggle to identify new sources of foreign exchange.

Diversified economy

Mauritius is Africa’s most democratic developmental state – held up as a . It transformed itself from a country with a per capita income of US$260 in the 1960s to one with a per capita income of more than $10,000 in 2021.

At independence in 1968, observers had little hope for the Mauritian economy. Nobel Prize winner James Meade a tragic future for the island nation. He cited sugar dependence, population density and diverse ethnic composition as its weak points.

Yet Mauritius has defied pessimistic predictions and conventional economic theory. It has become among the most African economies.

In the 1970s, economic development was largely focused on industrialisation to reduce dependence on imports. While there was minimal growth in exports, manufacturing employment grew from 5% to 20% of the labour force over the decade. But as sugar prices fell in the late 1970s, the Mauritian economy plunged into crisis.

In the early 1980s, Mauritius adopted reforms, adhering to conditions set by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The government decided to go further than simply liberalising its financial sectors and reducing capital controls. Against the advice of multilateral donors and foreign governments, Mauritian politicians decided to build an offshore financial centre.

In the late 1990s and 2000s, Mauritius was widely celebrated for rapid economic growth and diversity. This came from special economic zones (promoting textiles and apparel growth), tourism and the offshore sector.

For decades, African countries have sent government officials on to learn from Mauritian success.

But like most late developing countries (or former colonies), Mauritius is still heavily reliant on imports. Its offshore sector has provided vast amounts of foreign exchange to buy imports. If offshore sector revenues dry up, Mauritius might have to apply to the International Monetary Fund for loans.

Mauritius as a tax haven

In my paper, I describe the evolution of Mauritius as a tax haven. It started with strategic state involvement. The Mauritian government amended its banking legislation to offer lower taxation and exemption from exchange control.

Its tax treaty with India soon became the most significant avenue for the development of Mauritius’ offshore businesses. An increasing number of Indian funds moved their businesses to Mauritius to take advantage of tax benefits.

Similarly, Mauritian entities have been the leading investors in India since 2000. Mauritius-based funds have this century. But things are changing. There are signs that funds are now selecting Singapore (as well as other competitors to Mauritius) as the preferred destination for investments.

India’s response to the OECD’s convention to implement tax related measures has gone further than many other countries. The Indian government agreed to remove the capital gains exemption that entities held in Mauritius had enjoyed over the years. By 2018, Singapore had overtaken Mauritius as the leading investor into India.

In March 2024, India and Mauritius amended their double taxation avoidance agreement to comply with the OECD’s measures. Among the changes, firms do not qualify for tax incentives if the principal purpose of their transaction is simply to avoid tax.

What next for Mauritius?

The new amendments to the double taxation agreement are likely to constrain the growth of Mauritius’ offshore sector. The financial sector has not transformed beyond providing basic services like fund administration. This is unlike other more diversified financial sectors like Singapore, which specialises in capital markets, foreign exchange, commodity trading and corporate banking, aside from fund administration.

With foreign firms recently buying some of Mauritius’ biggest offshore management companies, there are signs that Mauritian banking will be relegated to simply doing basic work for larger financial centres. It is likely that overall revenues and foreign exchange from the sector will reduce.

Focusing resources on a new pillar for Mauritian growth is more urgent than ever.

In the last few years, Mauritian have been characterised by questions over Prime Minister ’s authoritarian turn, as well as accusations of corruption, nepotism and cronyism. The nation will have to reach a new political and economic consensus to avoid future economic difficulties.

, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Governance and Development, Global Development Institute

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Visitors to Arthur’s Stone will be able to join exclusive guided tours between 3 – 25 July that explain the history of the site and share updates on the progress of excavations. Led by a team of English Heritage volunteers, the tours will bring the findings from this remarkable project to life. Tours will take place three times a day and is essential to secure a place.

Ginny Slade, Volunteer Manager at English Heritage, comments: “Over 2,000 people came to our tours and local lectures on the project in 2023 which was incredible – particularly for those lucky enough to see a new discovery being unearthed in front of them. Given that we may not see archaeological excavations on this scale carried at Arthur’s Stone again for some years, we’d recommend coming to have a look if you’ve visited the site before or want to experience its magic for the first time.”

For more information, visit .

“A ban would cause young people to find alternatives to existing social media platforms that may be harder for parents, educators, researchers and legislators to study and monitor,” said Dr Eiko Fried, Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology at Leiden University. “Rather than imposing restrictions, efforts should be directed towards educating young people, their guardians and educators on navigating the digital landscape safely, and on regulations which ensure that social media companies design age-appropriate features and algorithms.”

With polls predicting huge losses for the Conservatives and huge gains for Labour, the election campaign so far has focused on the battle between the two biggest parties in Westminster. But the parliamentary dynamics are exceptionally fluid this year. Here’s a summary of where every party in Westminster currently stands – and where they are hoping to be after July 4.

Conservatives: 346 seats and everything to lose

Sunak’s Conservatives held 346 seats when he called the election. They started with 365 after the 2019 election but have lost since then. Several other former Conservative MPs have defected to other parties and others have been suspended.

A hefty chunk of the party’s current MPs , leaving newly selected candidates to fight what is likely to be an incredibly difficult campaign for the party.

The Conservatives are almost guaranteed to be sitting on the opposition benches in the next parliament, with one recent poll suggesting they could fall to just 66 seats – their . This could put them in dangerous territory. It would be a humiliation for Sunak if the party performed so poorly that it fell into third place behind the Liberal Democrats.

Against this backdrop, winning 150 seats or more would be a pretty decent showing.

Labour: 205 seats and hoping for 400

The Labour Party won in the 2019 general election under its former leader Jeremy Corbyn. This has increased slightly since then, through a combination of defecting Conservative MPs and byelections. Labour with 205 seats.

The party’s in Blackpool last month, where Chris Webb won 58% of the vote, was the sixth time Labour won a byelection with a swing of more than 20% since 2019. This bodes well for election day, where Starmer will be keen to try to win a comfortable majority and, if recent polling is correct, in the House of Commons.

Scottish National Party: 43 MPs and worried

The SNP have had some spectacular performances in recent general elections, bringing 56 MPs to the House of Commons in 2015, 35 in 2017 and 48 in 2019. But the party has struggled somewhat in the current parliament. It has lost three MPs to defections and the suspensions of Patrick Grady following sexual assault allegations and Margaret Ferrier for COVID rule-breaking shattered the SNP’s previously clean image in Westminster.

The SNP therefore heads into this election with 43 MPs. The party is battling two fronts, with the Alba party threatening to split the nationalist vote and Labour looking to win as many of Scotland’s 57 seats as possible.

Labour won Ferrier’s old seat in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection with a and polling suggests they will from the SNP on July 4.

Liberal Democrats: 15 seats and wanting third place

The Liberal Democrats won 11 seats in the 2019 general election and this has since risen to 15 through four successful byelections. The party performed very strongly in recent local elections, gaining more councillors than Sunak’s Conservatives. Party Leader Ed Davey had a lot of fun over the first week of the campaign and won the party a lot of in the process.

Seats like , where the Liberal Democrats lost out to the Conservatives by just a few hundred votes in 2019, will surely turn yellow. With the SNP predicted to lose many of its Scottish seats, the Lib Dems will be hoping that they can reclaim their position as the official third party at Westminster.

Democratic Unionist Party: seven seats and struggling after scandal

The DUP won eight seats in 2019 but technically lost one when Jeffrey Donaldson resigned . His seat in Lagan Valley has not yet been filled and will be hotly contested, particularly as Donaldson himself is not standing. DUP leader Gavin Robinson will have a tough battle in East Belfast against Alliance party leader Naomi Long.

Sinn Féin: standing aside in key seats

Sinn Féin won seven seats in 2019. However, in line with its abstentionist policy, the party’s elected representatives never took their seats in the House of Commons. The party has already confirmed that it in four of Northern Ireland’s 18 constituencies and will encourage its supporters to vote against Sunak’s Conservatives in those seats. This should work in the Alliance Party’s favour. One of Sinn Féin’s existing MPs – Michelle Gildernew – will also not be standing.

Plaid Cymru: hoping for gains on a new electoral map

Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru won four seats in 2019. They fell to just three MPs in 2020 when Jonathan Edwards . Edwards, who has sat as an independent MP for most of the last parliament, has stood down, as has Hywel Williams, a hard working Plaid MP who has been in the Commons for over 20 years.

Plaid will be hoping to retain Williams’ Arfon seat, alongside those of the party’s Westminster leader Liz Saville-Roberts and Ben Lake, both of whom won with comfortable majorities in 2019 with Conservative candidates in second place.

Boundary changes mean that most constituencies in Wales have changed, but the party will be hoping to win back Edwards’s seat in the new Caerfyrddin constituency and perhaps to add Ynys Môn, held by Conservative MP Virginia Crosbie in 2019 with a relatively slender majority of just under 2000.

Alba: fighting its first election

Former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond’s pro-independence Alba party only formed in 2021, so this is its first ever general election campaign. It did however have two MPs in the last parliament, thanks to defections.

The addition of Alba to Scottish ballot papers threatens to split the nationalist vote and will make the election even more challenging for the SNP.

Social Democratic and Labour Party: aiming to hold two seats

Northern Ireland’s SDLP returned two MPs in 2019 and will hope to retain them. The party has been inconsistent in recent elections, and even lost all its seats in 2017.

The nature of Northern Irish politics and electoral pacts between unionist and nationalist parties makes it difficult to predict what will happen here. The SDLP has, however, committed itself to fielding candidates in . Its leader Colum Eastwood won his Foyle seat at the last election, as did .

Alliance: hoping to take a key DUP seat

The centrist Alliance party, also specific to Northern Ireland, has never had more than one MP in the House of Commons. The party’s deputy leader Stephen Farry won the North Down seat for the party in 2019, though the DUP came a close second. Party leader Naomi Long will be trying to unseat the DUP Leader Gavin Robinson for the third time, having lost by 1,819 votes in 2019. She previously held the seat between 2010 and 2015.

The party has had growing success in the Northern Ireland Assembly, where it became the third largest party in 2022. Translating this into more Westminster seats will be tricky, but returning two MPs would be a good result.

Greens: targeting Bristol and Brighton

The Green Party’s one and only MP, Caroline Lucas, from parliament last year. She was the party’s first ever elected MP, holding her Brighton Pavilion constituency since 2010. The Greens are desperately hoping that former party co-leader Siân Berry can hold Lucas’s old seat.

The Greens are also eying up Bristol Central, where the party’s current co-leader Carla Denyer is standing against Labour’s sitting MP Thangam Debbonaire in what could be a real neck-and-neck fight. The party is already the largest party on Bristol Council. On a national level, it will be hoping to perform even better than the 2019 election, when it received a pretty respectable 860,000 votes. With last month, the Green party could hit 1 million votes this time.

Reform UK: causing trouble for the Tories

Reform UK had one sitting MP in the last Parliament, following from the Conservatives. Defections like this are how most small or new parties end up with House of Commons seats. Anderson won his seat with a 5,000 majority in 2019 and has a high profile thanks to his regular controversial contributions. But retaining his seat under a new party label will be very tricky.

Reform UK is fielding candidates across England, Scotland and Wales. It could take a substantial number of votes from the Conservatives, but the electoral system will probably mean that these votes are not concentrated enough to win more than the odd seat.

Workers Party of Great Britain: taking aim at Labour

This relatively new political party held just one seat in the last parliament, thanks to George Galloway’s Rochdale byelection success in February. Galloway will campaign to hold this seat and the party is hoping to woo Labour voters with its claims that Starmer is from Sunak. With a of candidates for such a new party, it could prove something of an annoyance.

, Senior Lecturer in Politics,
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“Laura’s life - and her selfless dedication to improving the lives of others - were an inspiration to the many staff and students who knew her,” said Professor Claire Alexander, Head of Swagֱ��’s School of Social Sciences. “We are proud to be part of continuing Laura’s legacy through this new scholarship, and we thank Laura’s family for partnering with us in this new venture in Laura’s name.” 

The scholarship was introduced at an event on campus where Laura’s Mum Nicola also launched the publication of ‘, her heartbreaking and inspiring account of helping her daughter to make the most of her remaining time while dealing with her own pain along with that of husband Mark and younger daughter Gracie. 

To find out more about Laura’s legacy and her family’s ongoing work, visit . 

As well as making a big difference in their local communities and beyond, international students bring a £41 billion annual contribution to the UK, meaning on average, each of the 650 parliamentary constituencies in the UK is £58 million better off – equivalent to approximately £560 per citizen. In the North West alone, international students contribute £3.04bn to the regional economy.

Jamie Arrowsmith, Director of UUKi said: “It’s never felt more important to acknowledge the important contributions that international students make to their university and local communities, and to the UK more broadly. It’s not just about the economic side of it – international students give back through cultural exchange, volunteering, and so much more. We’re proud to be sharing their stories through the latest phase of the #WeAreInternational campaign.” 

A graduate (BSc (Hons) Management Sciences 1977) and former Chancellor of Swagֱ��, Sir Terry is one of the UK’s most respected and influential business leaders, best known for his leadership of Tesco PLC.  

He received a knighthood for services to food retailing in 2002, an Honorary Doctorate of Science from UMIST in 2002 and an Honorary LLD from Swagֱ�� in 2008. 

The gift will support the establishment of the Sir Terry Leahy Chair in Urban and Regional Economics. Part of (AMBS), the new position will oversee detailed research into regional productivity inequalities. 

The first appointment to the Chair will be award-winning economist Professor Philip McCann – a specialist in the analysis of regional economic inequalities and the identification of new pathways to change the trajectory of the UK economy. 

The Professor’s new role will see him lead projects which will build the University’s profile as a leading voice on the economics of place prosperity and social mobility. 

Professor Philip McCann, Sir Terry Leahy Chair in Urban and Regional Economics at Alliance Swagֱ�� Business School and member of , headquartered at AMBS, said: “The UK has some of the largest regional productivity inequalities of any developed country in the world, and these have an acute impact on prosperity, social mobility, quality of life and life expectancy across the country. 

“Tackling these disparities will be key to unlocking the country’s growth potential. Doing so will require thorough, extensive research into the key drivers of regional productivity inequalities and what can be done to solve them, and through Sir Terry’s generosity, we look forward to building on the progress we have already made on these issues in The Productivity Institute at The University Swagֱ��.” 

Sir Terry Leahy said: "I am delighted to have the opportunity to support Philip McCann in his important research at Swagֱ��. Philip has a worldwide reputation as an academic in urban and regional economics. His work has much to contribute to the growth prospects of the UK economy by unlocking the growth potential of the regions." 

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, President of Swagֱ��, said: “The UK’s regional productivity gap is well publicised, and we believe that both academia and business have a key role to play in working with policymakers to find and implement the solutions required to solve these disparities. 

“Donations such as Sir Terry’s are integral in granting leading experts the time, resources and stability required to tackle our society’s biggest issues. We thank him for his generosity and look forward to continuing to develop our long-standing relationship in our bicentenary year and in the years to come.”  

, and ,

Gypsy and Traveller are among the . There is a of government failures in meeting these groups’ housing needs.

The of sites has resulted in a homelessness problem. Those who do secure pitches on council-managed sites often have to contend with living near potential hazards.

For our recent , we mapped local authority-managed Gypsy and Traveller sites in Great Britain. Of those sites, 39% were within 50 metres of one or more major pollutants and 54% were within 100 metres.

The effect on residents is significant. As one of our interviewees, Sarah (all names have been changed), put it: “You can’t breathe here. A lot of people have asthma. Lots of babies in the community have poor health. A lot of them have skin rashes. Nobody ever lived past about 50 here. Whatever is coming out is killing people. Lots of people are dying of chest, COPD and cancer.”

Worsening conditions

Between 2021 and 2022, we mapped 291 Gypsy and Traveller sites across Great Britain, noting their proximity to environmental hazards. These included motorways, A-roads, railway lines, industrial estates and sewage works.

To do so, we used the Caravan Count 2020, which lists all authorised local authority managed sites in England and Wales and a freedom of information request to the Scottish government, which gave us the names and addresses of all the authorised public sites in Scotland.

The study included in-depth case studies, site visits and interviews with 13 site residents (including repeat interviews with five site residents on two sites).

Local newspapers that reported on the highly contested historical and current planning processes were also analysed. Freedom of information requests were sent to local authorities to obtain planning meeting documents and 11 interviews were conducted with representatives of local and national organisations that work with Gypsy and Traveller communities.

When new Gypsy and Traveller sites are proposed by local authorities near existing residential areas, objections come from three main groups: residents, local politicians and local media outlets.

These objections often result in new sites being pushed further to the margins of towns and cities, in places that other communities would not be expected to live.

As a result, sites are often in isolated areas, quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks. They are nestled in among the infrastructure that services the needs of the local settled communities, from major roads to recycling centres.

One of the sites we visited has been in use since the 1970s, despite the fact that, already then, it was located near a waste transfer station. The intervening five decades have only seen conditions on the site worsen.

A chicken slaughterhouse nearby now burns carcasses regularly. The household waste recycling centre has expanded to allow for recycling and incineration of solid waste from commerce and industry.

Lorries and other vehicles now come in and out in large numbers, just metres away from some of the pitches. Residents experience constant noise and vibrations. Mary, who lives on the site, says the sound of the skips being deposited from 5am every morning is like a bomb going off: “It drops so hard it shakes the chalet.”

The air is always heavy with dust. Residents have to keep their windows closed – even in the summer – to keep out the flies. As Jane, who is the fourth generation of her family to live on the site, puts it: “We are living in an industrial area. It’s the air quality, the sand, the dust, the recycling tip is just behind us. The noise is a big problem. There is an incinerator near the slaughterhouse and that’s really bad. And the smell…” 

Environmental racism

to the World Health Organization, housing is one of the major factors determining health. The physical conditions of a home – including mould, asbestos, cold, damp and noise – are obvious risk factors. So too, are wider environmental factors, from overcrowding and isolation from services to the relative lack of access to green spaces.

The people we spoke with, including site residents and organisational representatives, highlight the harmful health effects of living on many Gypsy and Traveller sites. This chimes with the government’s own , which have found these sites to be unsafe.

Research on health inequalities in the UK bears this out. People from Gypsy and Irish Traveller backgrounds the poorest health and a life expectancy of between ten and 25 years less than the general population. They also have of long-term illness and conditions that limit everyday life and activities.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 has further constrained Gypsy and Traveller communities by criminalising roadside stopping and forcing people on to transit sites. These are designed for short stays and are often in than permanent sites.

This poses a plain threat to , from travelling in the summer months to fairs and attending religious gatherings.

Thousands of people rely on these local authority-managed sites, located dangerously near the kind of environmental pollutants that are with poor health and premature deaths. The term “environmental racism” is used to refer to how people from minority and low-income communities are to environmental harm.

Yvonne MacNamara is the chief executive of the non-profit advocacy organisation, Traveller Movement. She highlights that the inequalities these communities face are systemic. Local authorities, she says, treat Traveller communities “like second-class citizens”.

To one resident’s mind, attitudes within local government to Gypsy and Traveller social housing are clearly . As she put it: “They wouldn’t expect anyone but a Traveller to live here.”

, Professor of Sociology, and , Royal Literary Fund Fellow, . This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .