Departmental news

The GLAM-E Lab, based at the University of Warwick, has collaborated with Amgueddfa Cymru Museum Wales to bring open access to Wales’ national collections.

Professor Arun Advani and the CenTaxLink opens in a new window team attended the Labour and Conservative party conferences again this year, hosting a total of four panels alongside the Chartered Institute for Taxation (CIOT), the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS).

Together with his fellow CenTax Director Dr Andy Summers (LSE), Arun made the case for structural tax reforms at the next Budget to remove distortions and boost growth, not just more tinkering with tax rates.

The CenTax team argued that the UK’s current tax system is so badly designed that there are still plenty of opportunities to both raise revenue and improve economic incentives by making sensible, research-informed changes.

CenTax at the Labour Party Conference

CenTax hosted two panels at the Labour Party Conference, one jointly with IPPR and one with the Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT).

The CenTax/IPPR panel featured Andy Summers, Dan Tomlinson MP in his new role as Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, Yuan Yang MP, member of the Treasury Select Committee and Heather Stewart, Economics Editor at the Guardian. Carsten Jung from the IPPR chaired the discussion.

• Watch the discussion, which focused on how best to fund public services, here.

The Centax/CIOT panel tackled the question, ‘Can we design a tax system which taxes the wealthy and is pro-growth?’ with Arun arguing that Capital Gains Tax (CGT) reform was a prime example of the opportunity to both raise revenue and improve efficiency, by reforming the tax base, not just increasing rates.

• Read more about it here.

CenTax at the Conservative Party Conference

CenTax also hosted two panel events at the Conservative Party Conference. The first, again with CIOT, asked ‘Can we design a tax system which taxes wealth and capital fairly and is pro-growth?’

• Read the CIOT report and watch the debate hereLink opens in a new window.

The second panel was co-hosted with the Centre for Policy Studies. Arun was a member of this panel alongside Daniel Herring of CPS and Harriet Baldwin MP (previously Chair of the Treasury Committee and current Shadow Business Minister). Arun highlighted several areas of the tax system that currently distort economic activity, including the £100k ‘tax trap’ created by the withdrawal of childcare support, arguing “it's a real cost that people who are doing well and could be earning even higher incomes and paying even more tax are reducing their hours or not taking that promotion.”

• Watch the debate hereLink opens in a new window

ENDS

• A full report with policy links is available on the CenTax website: CenTax at Party Conferences| CenTax
• Main Photo: Emma Chamberlain, Barrister and Co-Chair of CIOT’s Private Client (International) Committee, Lloyd Hatton MP, Member of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, Nichola Ross Martin, President, CIOT (chair), Arun Advani, Director, Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax), Gemma Tetlow, Chief Economist, Institute for Government at the Labour Party Conference event.

Calls are now open for the Early Career Fellowships scheme from the Leverhulme Trust for 2026 entry.

Prospective candidates are asked to submit the following information to artsprojsupport@warwick.ac.uk by the internal deadline of 5.00pm on Friday 21 November 2025:

• A short description of their proposed project (maximum 2 A4 pages)
• A copy of their CV (maximum 2 A4 pages)
• The names of three referees. Please note that referees will not be asked to provide a statement at this stage

Eligibility criteria are as follows. Candidates must:

• hold a doctoral degree by the time they take up the Fellowship. If currently registered for a doctorate, they must have submitted their thesis by 4pm on 19 February 2026
• not yet have held a permanent academic appointment, although the Trust will consider applications from candidates with permanent posts that do not include any research
• not have held or currently hold a comparable funded post-doctoral position of three years’ duration or longer to pursue their own research
• not currently hold or have held postdoctoral positions to pursue their own independent research totalling 3 or more years
• have submitted their doctoral thesis for viva voce examination no more than four years prior to the closing date. Those who submitted their thesis earlier than 19 February 2022 are not eligible to apply, unless they have since had a career break
• either hold a degree from a UK higher education institution at the time of taking up the Fellowship or at the time of the application deadline hold a non-permanent academic position in the UK (e.g. fixed-term lectureship, fellowship) which commenced no less than 4 months prior to 19 February 2026

This week we are delighted to interview Teaching Fellow Dr Paula Hollstein Barria, for our Warwick Law School Staff Spotlight series.

Dr Raj Pandya from the Department of Chemistry has been named as this year's recipient of the Henry Moseley Medal and Prize.

On Friday 10th October, the Warwick Economics Society hosted Nobel Laureate and former Warwick Economics student Professor James Robinson (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 2024) for an intellectually rich and wide-ranging conversation that bridged rigorous economic theory with deeply personal insight.

The event opened with an introduction by Professor Sascha Becker, Professor of Economics at Warwick and a leading scholar of economic history and political economy. He was followed by Emeritus Professor Marcus Miller, Professor Robinson's former tutor at Warwick, whose opening question drew a subtle connection between Isaiah Berlin's two concepts of liberty and Robinson's hypothesis – articulated in The Narrow Corridor - that liberty emerges only when there is a delicate balance of power between a strong state and a strong society.

Co-Head of Talks Maria Kirpichnikova then led a fascinating interview-style conversation that explored the intellectual journey behind Professor Robinson's ground-breaking work. The discussion ranged from the formative experiences that sparked his research interest in global inequality, to extensive fieldwork across Latin America and Africa; and Professor Robinson shared how conversations with ordinary people, not just policymakers, shaped his understanding of development.

A significant portion of the afternoon centred on Professor Robinson's recent work on "wealth in people," a framework that challenges Western economic assumptions about property as wealth. He explained how engaging with this cultural concept - that wealth resides in social connections rather than material accumulation - has helped countries like Botswana to prosper where others struggled. This insight, with its links to his Nobel Prize-winning research on institutions, will surely have important implications for contemporary development policy.

Robinson also reflected candidly on the craft of economics itself: the challenge of writing for both academic and popular audiences, the tension between personal values and analytical rigour, and the intellectual curiosity that drives his work beyond the lecture hall.

The event concluded with questions from an engaged audience, followed by Maria's closing remarks which emphasised the importance of applying what had been learned. For those attending the event in person, it was a rare opportunity to witness scholarship at its finest: rigorous, humble, and profoundly human.

Thank you to Maria Kirpichnikova (Year 2 EPAIS) for submitting the article.

The ABSPIE Lab participated in the IUPESM World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering 2025. In this congress, the ABSPIE Lab shared its contributions to affordable, sustainable, and inclusive healthcare technologies, particularly in the context of low-resource settings.

We are thrilled to announce that Warwick Law School has once again achieved outstanding results in the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) 2025, with particularly high levels of student satisfaction across all areas of the survey.

Warwick Law School welcomes a new Associate Professor to our community.

Prior to joining Warwick, Alex Powell was an Associate Professor in Law at Oxford Brookes University, where he also acted as Director of the LLM Programmes.

Key visits to WMG in September 2025 

WMG was pleased to showcase its world-class research facilities and education programmes to international organisations, such as the Monash Centre for Additive Manufacturing, the UK Academic Alliance for Pavement and Highway Engineering and Beijing Research Institute of Chemical Industry, throughout September.