Global Sustainable Development News

Dr Nick Bernards, Assistant Professor in GSD, has recently published two articles on the history of agricultural credit and its importance in shaping global development.

The latest issue of Reinvention: an International Journal of Undergraduate Research presents a diverse range of content and themes that all comment on ideas of interconnectedness, interdisciplinarity, and sustainability. Moreover, it includes several contributions from students and staff in the GSD Department!

Current and former students from the School for Cross-faculty Studies presented their research on 12-13 April at the British Conference of Undergraduate Research (BCUR) 2021.

Established in 2011, BCUR is the largest conference in the UK dedicated exclusively to undergraduate research, promoting and sharing research in all disciplines. The conference usually takes place each year at a different University. This year, the University of Leeds delivered the conference virtually.

^{Image credit: Payoon Gerinto on Unsplash}

GSD Assistant Professor Marco J Haenssgen is part of a research group that has won a £249,000 award to study how people navigate their social and physical food environments in Thailand and Laos.

The 5th Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching Conference, hosted by the University of Warwick, took place virtually on 15 April 2021 and brought together a diverse range of speakers and audiences including those involved in Liberal Arts, joint honours degrees, and single interdisciplinary modules.

Staff and students from the School for Cross-faculty Studies presented during the conference, sharing their experiences with collaboration, co-construction of knowledge, and practice underpinning interdisciplinary teaching and learning.

Congratulations to our students for securing funding for research projects over the summer!

The Undergraduate Research Support Scheme (URSS) enables undergraduate students to carry out an interdisciplinary summer research public engagement project. The scheme is open to any undergraduate student at Warwick and research can be completed in the UK or abroad.

This year, seven GSD students have successfully secured a bursary: Sara Azeem, Szebasztian Csernik-Tihn, Annabelle Early, Ari Hassan, Isaac McGirr, Virginia Thomas-Pickles and Melissa Yip. Their research projects will be presented in the form of a poster showcase at the annual URSS Celebration Research Showcase, which will take place next academic year.

Dr Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla, Head of the School for Cross-faculty Studies, was recently interviewed for an article published in the Belgian newspaper, De Standaard, to discuss the Cuban COVID-19 vaccine, Soberana-2.

^{Image: A Pat Jasan volunteer group, copyright Kachinland News.}

Three papers produced in the context of Dr Mandy Sadan's Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) projects have recently been made publicly available. The papers have been co-written with local Myanmar researchers and they are available as free downloads for the next month, forming part of a Special Edition which will be available in full soon.

^{Image credit: R9 Studios FL on flickr}

Together with Daud Mohammed Hamidi from Durham University, GSD Assistant Professor Marco J Haenssgen has won a £15,730 Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) award from the Royal Academy of Engineering to explore the uses and social development consequences of low-cost clay-based water filters that can be produced by potters locally.

^{Image credit: Louie Rosencrans/CDC from flickr}

An international team of researchers led by GSD Assistant Professor Dr Marco J Haenssgen have analysed the impact of mass vaccination campaigns, which are often used in global health efforts in low- and middle-income countries. Based on their findings, the researchers warn that there must be a strategy to safeguard and strengthen health systems with fewer resources in low- and middle-income countries if such campaigns are used in the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.