Centre for Coastal Communities - February 2025 newsletter

Director's message

Welcome to the latest edition of the Centre for Coastal Communities newsletter. The past six months has been a busy time for coastal research at the University of Essex. Notably, there have been a number of grant successes over a wide variety of departments (see Grant Successes below). We also have been working hard to bring together people working on coastal research across the University of Essex and England. So far, this academic year, we have hosted three fantastic seminars from five speakers.

A short summary of each seminar is below in the ‘Seminar wrap-up’ section. Our next hybrid seminar is coming up in March, where Jessica Twyman will be talking about the Glimmer project.

We have also brought our research out to the community. I have given a number of presentations to local and national organisations, including the Essex Health & Well-being Board, the British Society for Population Studies, the European Centre for Environment & Human Health, the Tendring Community Safety Partnership and Health & Wellbeing Board, the Rotary Club of Colchester and the Health Equity Conference. A few highlights are included in the ‘Conference Spotlight’ section below. And last, but not least, we highlight two on-going coastal research projects below in the ‘Research Spotlight’ section’: (1) the Coastal Gap in Equality for Stroke Care Management (CoastGEM), led by Prof Reza Majdzadeh, and (2) The Right to Health of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities in the East of England.

Emily Murray - Director, Centre for Coastal Communities

Welcome, Ben Gould

We are excited to announce that Ben Gould is the recipient of the Centre of Coastal Communities PhD Scholarship. He has started the PhD in January 2025, having just finished his position as Research Fellow in the Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing at the University of Essex.

Prior to this role he spent 9 years as a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Brighton. Ben started his professional career as a secondary school teacher of Physical Education in Hastings, East Sussex where his interests in the impact of deprivation in coastal communities and education led him to leading the school in Personal, Social, Economic and Health education and completing an MA in Psychosocial Studies at UEL. His PhD study aims to explore the impact that job insecurity amongst adults in coastal community households has upon the mental health reporting of young people in those households’ using data from Understanding Society. Please give a warm welcome to Ben.

Coastal grant success

In the Department of Government, Professor Gina Yannitell Reinhardt is leading the multi-University ARISE Initiative, a 5-year UKRI funded project that aims to develop resilience within the UK’s coastal seas and communities.

In the Library and Cultural services, Jessica Twyman has received Arts Council funding to work with community groups in Clacton as a part of the Glimmer project.

As a part of the Beach of Dreams project, The Essex Book Festival has partnered with Kinetika and Out There Arts to explore how the unique coastal identities of Harwich and Orford Ness ‘shape the dreams of the people who call them home.’

And last, but not least, Elelia Ferro from the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies is leading the Historic England-funded ‘Tower @ 20’ project, where ‘the story of Jaywick Tower will be brought to life through intergenerational storytelling, art and spoken word workshops and performances, sharing stories of the past and capturing stories for the future.’

Seminar wrap-up

• In November 2024, we launched the inaugural CCC seminar with a double act from Prof Ewen Speed and Prof Gina Yannitell Reinhardt. Prof Speed shared his experiences of conducting research with marginalised communities and the challenge of how to be truly inclusive when conducting research in the community. Following, Prof Gina Yannitell Reinhardt introduced the ARISE Initiative, sharing the objectives and plans for the research project going forward.
• In December 2024, we hosted an online seminar with Prof Avril Keating and Dr Sam Whewall. They shared new qualitative findings from their ESRC-funded project on the impact of coastal towns on young people’s life chances across the life course. For the seminar, they compared youth mobility narratives in two different types of coastal town in England: a seaside town (Great Yarmouth) and an industry-focused town (Barrow-in-Furness).
• In January 2025, Dr Paul Mee from the University of Lincoln International Institute for Rural Health gave a great seminar on exploring ‘health in rural and coastal Communities: Harnessing Data Science and Geospatial Research in Lincolnshire, Essex, and Beyond.’ A take-away from the talk being that coastal areas of Essex share a lot of similarities in spatial patterns of ill-health and deprivation.
• Future seminars: Jessica Twyman, 12 March from 2-3pm. "Glimmer - Community Arts and Education in Clacton and Tendring".

Conference spotlight

• On the 8 October 2024, Dr Emily T Murray led a workshop at the Health Equity Network (HEN) conference in Birmingham, UK. She presented an overview of the ‘Big Challenge of Coastal Health Inequalities’ to attendees and then participants worked together to proposed solutions.
• On the 8 November 2024, Prof Gina Yannitell Reinhardt and Dr Emily T Murray attended the launch of the COAST-R+ network in Hull, UK. The Coast-R Network+ ‘brings together academics, UK marine, coastal and government agencies, industry partners, local authorities, the voluntary sector and communities most affected by coastal change.’ Prof Gina Yannitell Reinhardt’s ARISE project is one of the four research projects affiliated with COAST-R+.
• On the 27 November 2024, Dr Tony Sampson, from the Essex Business School, presented at the Key Cities Network annual conference in Bradford, UK. He presented work he has done as part of the Cultural Engine Research Group (CERG), on “emotional geography” approach to developing community spaces. This work examines how the places people live in can evoke, shape, or suppress their emotional experiences. In turn, these emotional relations influence how places are understood, used, and transformed. 

Research Spotlights

CoastGEM

What does it take to transition from full or partial body paralysis to walking independently in local woods after having a stroke? From managing the frustration of feeling ‘wrong in your body’ to the joy of fully recovering and being able to hug your closest ones again? Perhaps your loved one had a stroke while visiting you in Colchester, and the ambulance arrived within minutes. Or maybe you are in Ipswich, where a Mobile Stroke Unit was on hand to provide immediate care. But what about those who experience a stroke alone or those living in remote areas without immediate access to specialised stroke units? Do they have the same opportunities for recovery and the chance to embrace their families again?

The University of Essex has partnered with East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT) to start this critical conversation through the CoastGEM research project. This collaboration brings together policymakers, academics, stroke care professionals, community leaders, care workers, stroke survivors, and their families.

The goal of this study is to identify and understand the gaps and barriers local communities face in delivering the best possible care for stroke patients and explore the ways to address these challenges together. It is an open, evidence-based dialogue that provides an opportunity to examine strategies for reducing health disparities and improving stroke prevention, management, and recovery, particularly for underserved populations. What resources do local hospitals and clinicians lack in order to provide high-quality care? What kind of support is missing for families to help their loved ones recover after a stroke?

CoastGEM is dedicated to ensuring all residents have the best chance at recovery and a return to an independent life, surrounded by the people they love.

The Right to Health of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities in the East of England: A submission to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (December 2024)

This report identifies a series of concerns about the level of enjoyment of the right to the highest attainable standard of health among Gypsy, Roma and Travelling communities in the East of England. It is based on qualitative evidence in the form of testimonies gathered in 37 peer-to-peer interviews conducted by the four partner organisations – COMPAS, GATE Essex, Oblique Arts, and One Voice 4 Travellers – between June and August 2023. The evidence was gathered as part of the project “Building a community of practice to identify strengths, barriers and prioritise solutions to the right of access to healthcare for Travelling Communities” (NIHR204053), funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, between February 2023 and August 2024.

The qualitative evidence compiled in this document are the unreserved confirmation that the concerns persist in relation to stigma, prejudice, discrimination, lack of informational accessibility and lack of cultural acceptability of healthcare for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. This is reflected in the lack of cultural awareness in availability of suitable health professionals, lack of non-English language provision, problems of trust due to lack of cultural competence, lack of understanding of issues around literacy, and ongoing social exclusion, particularly digital exclusion.

Authors: Dr Koldo Casla, Sally Burrows and Prof Ewen Speed, University of Essex. • COMPAS (Peterborough). • GATE (Gypsies and Travellers Essex). • Oblique Arts (Cambridge). • One Voice 4 Travellers (East Anglia).

Upcoming coastal events

• Taking A Bow. A new Art Exchange installation by artist Bryan Giuseppi Rodriguez Cambana (from the coastal Callao, Peru) 11.02.2025 - 22.03.2025. Art Exchange, admission free. Taking a bow / Haciendo una reverencia - Art Exchange.
• Beach of Dreams UK-wide coastal arts festival: ‘Collecting Dreams, Shifting Futures, Historic England’. Essex Book Festival & Out There Arts. Great Yarmouth 24-31st May 2025.

Please email coastal@essex.ac.uk if you have any queries.