Director's message
Coastal research at the University of Essex is going swimmingly. A number of researchers have been conducting projects in local coastal communities. In today’s newsletter we highlight two projects: (1) Professor Alison Rowlands has been working with Tendring District Council to create a new immersive heritage trail and (2) Dr Jordon Lazell has been working in Clacton to explore the role of surplus food collection in community food projects that tackle food insecurity.
Two researchers have had key successes in sharing their research with national and international stakeholders. In January, Dr Koldo Casla, submitted evidence to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) and Dr Tony Sampson had a paper included in a national report launched in UK Parliament in May.
In future, there will be a lot more research on mental health in Essex, Southend and Thurrock, due to the success of Professor Susan McPherson, and team, in securing five years of funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
Read more about each of these initiatives below.
Dr Emily T Murray, Director, Centre for Coastal Communities
Coastal grant success
The University of Essex’s Institute for Public Health and Wellbeing (IPHW) has been awarded £2.5 million by the NIHR to bolster research into mental health across Essex, Southend and Thurrock.
The award covers a five-year project which will see the research team, led by Professor Susan McPherson, work with the local community and mental health care providers in the region to understand what improvements can be made.
As part of the project, IPHW will appoint a new professor of mental health research, three new researchers and nine research students. This is in addition to team members across the University of Essex in the Centre for Coastal Communities (Dr Emily Murray), the Institute for Social and Economic Research (Prof Meena Kumari, Dr Cara Booker), the Department of Sociology and Criminology (Prof Róisín Ryan-Flood), and the School of Health and Social Care (Dr Antonella Trotta), as well as team partners at King’s College London and the University of Cambridge.
A key focus of research will look at loneliness and social isolation in young adults living in coastal communities.
Upcoming Event: Wild Essex Imaginarium Symposium
You are invited to CERG’s Wild Essex Imaginarium Symposium: Re-enchanting the Essex Landscape in Times of Climate Crises on Saturday 27th September, University of Essex, Essex Business School – programme starts at 11am.
CERG’s Wild Essex Imaginarium welcomes contributions from researchers and creatives interested in the creative ecological relations between Essex’s coastal regions and the arts.
Situated on the shifting threshold of land and sea, Essex’s south-east coastline—linked by rivers, estuaries, and expansive marshlands—offers a uniquely dynamic landscape of ecological and imaginative potential. It is here that the Wild Essex Imaginarium springs to life: an initiative designed to re-energise and re-enchant the relationship between the arts and conservation practice across this often-overlooked terrain. Over the next five years of this ‘critical decade’, the Imaginarium aims to create a space for learning, collaboration, and creative engagement—one that reflects the fluidity and interconnection of the Essex landscape itself.
The project begins by gathering people from across the country—those working at the intersection of ecology, art, and social practice, or those simply drawn to the particularities of Essex’s wild edges—to share, think, and imagine together. Like the coasts, rivers, estuaries, and marshlands that link Essex’s diverse ecologies, the Imaginarium seeks to connect people, disciplines, and stories in ways that are speculative, generative, and transformative.
CERG will be holding a briefing session on the Wild Essex Imaginarium. Please come along to the Minories in Colchester on 12th June at 12pm for discussion and refreshments.
Evidence submission: social rights from Essex to the UN
Dr Koldo Casla, project lead of Human Rights Local, and Senior Lecturer in the Essex Law School, submitted evidence to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), for their inquiry into the state of socio-economic rights in the UK. Socio-economic rights include, among others, the right to housing, food, education, social security, health, access to work and good working conditions, all of which are recognised in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
Launched in 2020, Human Rights Local is a project of Essex Human Rights Centre to make human rights locally relevant in the UK. In its 2025 Concluding Observations on the UK, the CESCR raised a number of concerns included in the submissions co-authored by Dr Koldo Casla. Human Rights Local has collaborated with a number of local community groups based in Colchester, Jaywick and Clacton. This includes organising local community meetings to start to address the many ways in which the systemic human rights challenges identified in the Special Rapporteur’s report on UK poverty can begin to be effectively challenged with the support of the Human Rights Centre.
Read more here:
New immersive trail tells the story of Essex witch trials
A new immersive heritage trail, revealing the unique stories of the infamous Essex witch trials, has opened thanks to expert input from historian Professor Alison Rowlands.
Professor Rowlands, from the School of Philosophical, Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies, ensured the stories of those impacted by the trials were told authentically and resonated with people today, for Tendring District Council’s new history trail.
Stories of those caught up in the 16th and 17th century witch trials that affected communities in Manningtree, St Osyth, Harwich and Walton-on-the-Naze have been brought to life for the first time using augmented reality, accessed by smart phones.
Unique wooden benches and information boards that reflect each location’s history have been installed, with additional historic information available on the Essex Sunshine Coast website. The trail offers visitors of all ages a living history experience.
Speaking about Tendring’s newest trail, she said:
“It is wonderful to see the months of hard work coming to fruition. “I’m thrilled to see the finished results in their local settings and hope many other people from our region will be inspired to visit them.”
The trail was made possible thanks to a £49,385 grant from the Rural England Prosperity Fund (REPF).
Policy focus: Emotional geography
A national report launched in Parliament, on putting culture at the heart of place-based development and renewal, features a key article by Dr Tony Sampson from Essex Business School. Produced by the Key Cities Innovation Network, ‘Culture, Place and Development’ is a collection of peer-reviewed papers reporting on innovative approaches to using culture to develop successful places which benefit their populations.
Developing ideas presented at the Key Cities Innovation Network Conference held at the end of last year, the report presents projects which have been selected not only for their local relevance but also their potential for replicating in other places. The Centre for Coastal Communities, based at the University of Essex, is a member of the Key Cities Network and Dr Sampson was joined by Centre Director Dr Emily Murray at the official launch.
Dr Sampson’s paper titled ‘Leveraging emotional geographies to boost community empowerment’ discusses strategies for connecting with local communities and ways to foster successful approaches. Dr Sampson, who is an associate member of the Centre for Coastal Communities, said: “Emotional geography provides a powerful framework for understanding the relationships between people, spaces, and cultures.
By acknowledging and leveraging these emotional dimensions, communities can deepen their engagement with heritage and culture, encouraging development that is inclusive, caring, and rooted in shared emotional experiences.” Read the full report online.
Research Spotlight: Surplus food
Dr Jordon Lazell, Lecturer in the Essex Business School, is currently undertaking a project exploring the role of surplus food collection in community food projects that tackle food insecurity. His work, undertaken in the Essex seaside town of Clacton, explores how such organisations have become increasingly dependent on surplus food in order to deliver their services.
Such surpluses result from the overprovisioning of food in the retail sector, with this food surplus to requirements in going unsold but is yet to be designated as waste. Whilst the usage rather than wastage of such food is beneficial from a sustainability perspective, its usage in projects to tackle food insecurity have raised a number of questions. Who should and should not have a right to surpluses? How can such surpluses be equally distributed? Why are supermarkets producing so much surplus food?
Jordon recently presented the findings of this work at the Future of Food Symposium at the University of Birmingham. He shared how clear tensions have been drawn between surplus food and food donations that have implications for how the project is delivered. For example, how charitable organisations are undertaking food sorting actions at the expense the food industry.
His work also demonstrates how the construction of dignity through serving food is conditioned in different ways depending upon the nature of the food. Jordon is currently working on a report that will highlight the implications of utilising surplus food and what this means for the ongoing resilience of community food projects.
Please email coastal@essex.ac.uk if you have any queries.
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