Highlights of 2024

In 2024, we attracted a record amount of research funding and our researchers had an international impact across a whole range of fields.

It’s impossible to cover all the incredible work of our researchers. You can get an idea on our news pages and you can look at new research papers in our Research Repository. Here are just a few of our highlights.

Science and Health

• In March, researchers in the School of Sport Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences found sprinting “like a jet plane taking off” will help to produce the Premier League strikers of tomorrow. The study of Tottenham Hotspur’s academy showed that just a few words can instantly boost sprinting speed by 3 per cent over 20 metres. It would normally take weeks of targeted training to achieve such a large increase.
• In May, we opened a unique £3m plant lab which puts Essex researchers on the frontline in the fight against climate change and will help create crops for “tomorrow’s atmosphere today”. The new flagship facility allows scientists to adapt plants for a hotter drier planet as food security is increasingly threatened. It boasts a cutting-edge commercially standard vertical farm, an indoor field that replicates real environments anywhere in the globe, and suites that imitate a warming world – with researchers able to raise CO2 concentration and temperature levels at will.
• In July, researchers in the School of Life Sciences discovered that North Sea oil and gas extraction can cause pollution to spike by more than 10,000% within half a kilometre around off-shore sites. The University of Essex, Natural History Museum and Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) research uncovered the impact on Britain’s seabed life - with the number of species plummeting nearly 30% near platforms.
• In August, the world’s first Minecraft-powered psychology lab opened at Essex. Students and scientists can now learn, research, and build experiments in the block-based multiplayer sandbox. With a global player base of 166million, Minecraft is the world’s most popular videogame and offers researchers a unique opportunity to study human behaviour in a virtual world. It is hoped the lab will help students enter the booming computer game industry worth £269billion globally, which employs more than 47,000 people in the UK.

See more news from the Faculty of Science and Health

Department of Psychology

School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering

School of Health and Social Care

School of Life Sciences

School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science

School of Sport Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences

Social Sciences

• In January, two University of Essex experts were invited to join an academic advisory group focused on the possibility of a digital pound. Professor Sheri Markose from the Department of Economics and Dr Marta Arroyabe from Essex Business School joined the Central Bank Digital Currency Academic Advisory Group to help the Bank of England and HM Treasury exploring the idea of launching a digital pound – an electronic version of cash which would be accessible through digital wallets.
• In June, a multi-million-pound project led by Professor Gina Yannitell Reinhardt from the Department of Government was announced to take on the complex challenges facing our diverse UK coastal areas. ARISE – Advancing Resilience and Innovation for a Sustainable Environment – is funded by UKRI and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and focuses on the Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Kent coasts. This area includes communities from England’s highest and lowest levels of deprivation. This coastal region also has more inequalities in health, wellbeing, life expectancy, earnings and education compared to nearby inland communities.
• In July, sociolinguist Professor Enam Al-Wer was appointed to the Expert Committee of UNESCO’s World Atlas of Languages – which documents and captures our rich diversity of languages. The World Atlas of Languages is an interactive and dynamic online tool that documents different aspects and features of language status in countries and languages around the world.
• In August, researchers at Essex helped highlight how husbands still have more control over investment decisions than their wives, despite signs they are riskier investors, according to new research. This new study, led by a team from the Department of Economics at Essex, LSE and the University of Cambridge, was the first to look at the gender gap in household decision-making in relation to investment portfolios in stocks and shares across multiple countries. It highlights that this power imbalance could expose wives to unwanted financial risks.
• In October, evidence from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex on the impact of universal free school meals on children’s obesity levels was cited in the new findings of the House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee. The Committee’s report Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system, demands that the Government should develop a comprehensive, integrated long-term new stragey to fix our food system, underpinned by a new legistative framework. The research funded by the Nuffield Foundation found that the introduction of universal free school meals has reduced children’s obesity levels.
• In November, Dr Giacomo Vagni from the Department of Sociology and Criminology worked with the Fawcett Society on a new report which highlighted the growing Gender Pay Gap and explored the causes and potential solutions. The full report 'Equal Pay Day 2024: Time to close the gender pay gap' was written by Dr Vagni and Lizzie Ville, Senior Policy and Research Officer at the Fawcett Society.

See more news from the Faculty of Social Sciences

Essex Business School

Department of Economics

Department of Government

Department of Language and Linguistics

Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies

Department of Sociology and Criminology

Arts and Humanities

• In July, media law expert Dr Alexandros Antoniou from Essex Law School revealed how social media influencers are relying on gender stereotypes, bogus claims and deceptive editing to monetise their content and increase their following. Influencers using these questionable tactics, which would otherwise be impermissible under UK marketing rules, are seemingly able to hide in plain sight thanks to the existing focus on ad labelling within the influencer industry. The research unearthed some of the dark arts being used by rogue influencers and proposed solutions to the growing problem.
• In July, expert analysis by Professor Wayne Martin from the School of Philosophical, Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies informed a landmark judgement at the Court of Appeal which will help secure the rights of patients who disagree with their doctors. The judgement in the posthumous case of Sudiksha Thirumalesh overturned a long-standing legal precedent stating that if someone does not accept their medical diagnosis or prognosis, they lack the ability to make decisions about their care. Professor Martin provided Sudiksha’s legal team with expert analysis of the legal and ethical issues relating to the precedent, known as the MM Dicta.
• In October, research by Dr Tara McAllister-Viel from East 15 Acting School revealed teenage girls from Essex feel pressured to change the way they talk because of negative stereotypes about the county and its accent research. She used spoken word poetry to explore what a group of teenage girls from Southend-on-Sea thought about how they were perceived. The research was used to create an audio exhibition at Clifftown Theatre in the city to celebrate the rich diversity of voices, accents and languages in Essex.
• In November, Dr Matt Lodder from the School of Philosophical, Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies helped reveal the lost story of the “linchpin” of the 20th century tattoo industry - Hans Rudolf (Rudi) Inhelder and his groundbreaking Tattoo Club of America. His latest book, Tattoos: The Untold History of Modern Art, uncovers the foundations of the modern-day tattoo industry and reveals the critical role of the underground gay scene.

See more news from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities

Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies

East 15 Acting School

Edge Hotel School

Essex Law School

School of Philosophical, Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies