Our research strengths

Essex has a global reputation for excellent research.

In 2009, we were awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize for our "outstanding record for innovative research, publication and practice" in international human rights.

“Essex is... well aware that research is only half the job - the other half is getting it out to those who should be using it."

Polly Toynbee, Journalist and Honorary Graduate, 1999

For our anniversary in 2014, we are raising money for our Human Rights Centre and four more areas where our research across disciplines is at its strongest.

• The Ageing and Assisted Living Network is developing an intelligent wheelchair (‘RoboChair’); investigating the use of the Nintendo Wii to prevent elderly people falling; and developing drugs which can slow down or even prevent Alzheimer’s.
• If a mentally disabled woman's children are in care because she can't look after them, should she be compelled to use contraception or even compulsorily sterilised? The Essex Autonomy Project investigates self-determination and puts our research to practical use, giving people in medicine and psychiatry, social care, policing and law an understanding of autonomy and a forum where they can discuss how to apply it.
• The Essex Sustainability Institute builds on Essex's 25-year reputation for photosynthesis research. It works across disciplines such as Biological Sciences, Economics, Business, Government, Law and Sociology to ask how we can feed a world population expected to hit 9 billion by the middle of the century.
• The Essex Centre for Criminology asks why laws are made and why they are broken, looking not just at individuals, but at society as a whole. It is looking into subjects such as the policing of the London 2012 Olympics and how the UK's energy and transport infrastructure might stand up to natural and malicious threats.

Your support

If you can help to support our work, contact us or fill in an online donation form.