Log in
Thousands of poor rural workers from 11 island states in the Pacific have benefited from the findings of twin research programmes led by Alan Winters of the University of Sussex — one on small island economies and one on the temporary mobility of labour. New Zealand's Recognised Seasonal Employers Scheme (RSE), which welcomes workers from poor Pacific Islands for the agricultural season, is a direct outcome of his research. Winters was also instrumental in designing and implementing the RSE in a way that permitted formal evaluation and which has become an exemplar of good practice. The evaluation shows that households in Vanuatu and Tonga benefiting from the scheme have experienced average increases in income of 35-40 per cent.
The RSE has been described by World Bank staff as `among the most effective development projects ever evaluated'. Persuaded by the positive evaluation, the Australian government has overcome longstanding reservations and introduced a nearly identical scheme, which is potentially much larger. The RSE also inspired the imaginative US response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, providing 1,000 temporary visas for unskilled Haitian workers. And Winters' research on temporary labour mobility and the RSE underpins developing countries' efforts to start serious negotiations on the issue in the WTO's Doha Round of trade negotiations.
The Cambridge University Centre for Risk in the Built Environment (CURBE) investigates techniques to identify, monitor and assess risk. Since 1997, CURBE's research contributed to real- world applications that reduce detrimental impacts of natural and manmade hazards, including the recent Haiti earthquake. Collaborators and users of the underpinning research include the British Council, the Government Office for Science, the US Geological Survey and Federal Emergency Management Agency in the USA, UN Habitat and private modellers and insurance companies involved in risk such as Risk Management Solutions and Willis Re.
Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) is a very well known, international specification for secure mobile radio and `walkie-talkie' communication, that is extensively used and relied upon by emergency and public safety services such as police, ambulance and fire services, as well as governmental and private bodies. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) began standardising TETRA in the 1990s and it is now widely used throughout the world. Foundations of its success include resilience and reliability, but security is a major feature, being underpinned by expert cryptographic design. In particular the authentication and key generation mechanisms in TETRA rely on a block cipher (HURDLE) which was designed by a team of cryptographers at Royal Holloway.
The work carried out at Royal Holloway underpins the integrity and security of TETRA safety- critical networks throughout the world to the present day. A secure design for emergency service communications minimises both the amount of disruption criminals can cause to service operations, and the amount of operational information such criminals can glean from eavesdropping, contributing to the safety and security of society as a whole as well as the economic benefits to manufacturers of TETRA-based equipment.
Research conducted by the Centre for the Study of Poverty and Social Justice (CSPSJ) led to a new way of assessing child poverty in developing countries. This novel method (termed the Bristol Approach) resulted in the United Nations General Assembly's adoption, for the first time, of an international definition of child poverty (2006). It also underpinned UNICEFs Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities (2008-10), which was run in over 50 countries. In the last ten years, the CSPSJ's work has put child poverty at the centre of international social and public policy debates. Its researchers have advised governments and international agencies on devising anti-poverty strategies and programmes that specifically meet the needs of children, and have significantly influenced the way child poverty is studied around the world. The Centre has developed academic and professional training courses for organisations like UNICEF on the issues of children's rights and child-poverty. Our work has also spurred NGOs such as Save the Children to develop their own child-development indices, and so has had a direct and profound impact on the lives of poor children around the planet.
Research by LSHTM has put handwashing with soap (HWWS) at the heart of international efforts towards diarrhoeal disease prevention, changing the way good hygiene practices are communicated globally. The research led to the global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing with Soap (PPPHW), a coalition of stakeholders interested in child health and handwashing, and a billion people have been reached through initiatives such as Global Handwashing Day (GHD). Millions more have benefited from the research through hygiene programmes set up by industry. The risk of death from diarrhoeal disease for those reached by these campaigns has been substantially reduced.
Three films by David Hickman identify and examine contemporary forms of modern slavery in Haiti, Pakistan and India, where the plight of the victims has gone unrecognised by governments and international agencies. The case for impact is made in relation to the international exposure of the films (broadcast by Al Jazeera in more than 100 countries), responses from the general public, their uptake among educators and students studying slavery and human rights and, most importantly, the impact on some of the victims of slavery who appear in the films, as well as for organisations that represent or campaign for them.
Peter Hallward has undertaken the most detailed research in English on recent Haitian politics, focusing on the complex travails of Haitian democracy that began soon after the Duvalier dictatorship collapsed in the mid-1980s. This research has had a significant input into the understanding, advocacy and practices of NGOs working in Haiti, and on journalists and campaigners internationally, with regard to questions of freedom, equality and democracy, and the relationship between domestic and international factors in Haitian politics. Impact has been on opinion-formation and advocacy in NGOs, international media and public political discourse regarding international aspects of Haitian politics.
Comparative legal and penological research conducted by Professor Dirk van Zyl Smit (DvZS) and Dr Róisín Mulgrew (RM) has had a significant effect internationally and nationally in shaping law and policy relating to the implementation of imprisonment in general, and on life imprisonment, sanctions for young offenders and the transfer and treatment of foreign and international prisoners in particular. This research has underpinned the creation and development of penal law and policy in states (e.g. Bangladesh and Malaysia), international and regional organisations (e.g, European Union, Council of Europe, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), as well as in the judgments and policies of international and regional human rights and criminal courts and tribunals (e.g. European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court).