Research

Survey success

Members of the public are to be asked their views on a range of foreign policies as diverse as the deployment of troops to Afghanistan, giving aid to developing nations and restrictions on immigration and asylum as part of a first of its kind cross-national study of foreign policy attitudes.

Dr Thomas Scotto, a Lecturer in the Department of Government, will set up and carry out the survey after receiving more than £350,000 in funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). He plans to ask members of the public in six different countries what they think about foreign policy and believes that findings from the research will be of use not just to academics but to political analysts and politicians alike.

Dr Thomas Scotto

The cross-national internet-based survey will ask people in six different countries what they think about a range of policies and how those policies affect the support they give to political parties and the way they vote.  Dr Scotto said: ‘This is a very exciting and innovative project that will help us better understand the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy and whether the public can effectively check the foreign policy decisions of their leaders.’

Dr Scotto was one of just 22 researchers out of 340 applicants to receive funding from the ESRC in a First Grants competition and he is the first researcher at the University of Essex ever to be successful in winning a grant in this competition.

Grant funds communications project

Researchers from the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering have been awarded £640,000 to develop the next generation of optoelectronic components for broadband services.

Professors Naci Balkan and Mike Adams will be working with colleagues at the University of Bristol to improve bandwidth communications for services to the home and office environments. They will work on novel optical amplifiers which it is thought could offer significant advantages over the conventional devices currently in use.

Professor Balkan explained: ‘Optical fibre communications are used for transmission of voice, data and video throughout the world. As the demand for broadband services continues to increase, network operators face increased challenges to deliver higher bandwidths.

‘Cost-effective, well-managed metropolitan networks are required that have sufficient capacity and flexibility to respond to future demand and it is essential to develop cheap, reliable components with good performance. There is a particularly pressing need for optical components that can offer the required functionality at low cost with high bandwidth.’

He added: ‘Components based on the dilute nitride semiconductors are predicted to offer significant advantages over devices using more conventional phosphide-based semiconductors.’

The project, due to be completed in April 2012, is being funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Bookshelf
Richard III’s ‘Beloved Cousyn’: John Howard and the House of York

John Ashdown-Hill
The History Press

Historian John Ashdown-Hill, who graduated in July, has drawn on his PhD thesis to write this book about Richard III’s main supporter.

Beloved Cousyn is the first book about John Howard and his key relationship with the royal house of York.

Dr Ashdown-Hill drew on the work for his PhD thesis - which focused on Howard’s local connections to Colchester, Harwich and Ipswich - to help write the book. Howard’s local connections included him living at the Red Lion in Colchester High Street and being constable of Colchester Castle.

The book examines Howard’s reasons for supporting Richard III, even at the cost of his own life, and looks at Howard’s involvement with the fate of the ‘princes in the Tower’ and of the royal secrets he knew through his association with the private life of Edward IV.

Also in the printed November edition of Wyvern:

• Children of single mums more likely to smoke
• Playtime initiatives could reduce childhood obesity
• Alzheimer's study could benefit thousands