Departmental news

We really enjoyed celebrating with our fantastic graduating students on Friday. If you have Instagram you can watch our reelLink opens in a new window to see the highlights!

We would like to wish all our graduates all the best in their future work or study.

Click the link to view our 2024/25 prize winners.

New analysis by an international team including Professor Sonia Bhalotra of Warwick Economics and CAGE finds a strong link between job loss and domestic violence. According to the research, published this month in The Review of Economic Studies, men who lose their jobs are more likely to inflict domestic violence, while women who lose their jobs are more likely to become victims. The increases are upwards of 30%.

• Unemployment - whether of men or women- increases domestic violence
• Men who lose their jobs are more likely to inflict domestic violence
• Women who lose their jobs are more likely to become victims of domestic violence
• Unemployment benefits have potential to mitigate this if designed correctly
• These results are relevant globally given that unemployment occurs not just cyclically but also on account of structural changes and automation.

The study discusses carefully designed unemployment benefits as a new approach to policy measures intended to protect women and girls.

Professor Bhalotra said:

“Our study uses administrative data from Brazil to understand the effects of job loss and unemployment benefit payments on domestic violence. Our evidence suggests that job loss triggers two mechanisms – income loss, and an increase in potential time at home. The loss of income creates stress within the household, while more time at home increases exposure to the risk of domestic violence.”

The study is based on large scale data from Brazil, analysed by Sonia Bhalotra with Diogo Britto and Paolo Pinotti of Bocconi University in Italy and Breno Sampaio of Universidade Federal de Pernambuco in Brazil.

The researchers analysed court registers for Brazil that contain every domestic violence case during 2009–2018. In this period there were 2 million domestic violence cases, representing 11% of all criminal justice cases, which were then linked to employment registers, with details of around 100 million workers, 60 million employment spells and 10 million layoffs per year.

The study also included measures of domestic violence that do not rely on victims reporting the event to the police. These are indicators for women using domestic violence public shelters, and notifications of domestic violence by health providers that are mandated by the federal government.

They find that job loss has a significant effect on domestic violence, and that unemployment benefits may not mitigate this effect if they lead to men being unemployed for longer. Benefits do, however, have the potential to mitigate the effect if accompanied by policies that encourage men back into work.

Professor Bhalotra added:

“Our main findings are that job loss influences domestic violence first by generating an income shortfall, and second by increasing exposure to violence. So, the ideal policy intervention would compensate the income shortfall and get people out of the home and back to work.

“Unemployment benefits can help but need to be combined with active policies aimed at getting the unemployed back to work. Traditionally, these policies are training and support with job search, but they could include community service.”

“The policy infrastructure has been primarily concerned with providing support to victims in the shape of shelters, counselling and protection orders. Interventions designed to prevent domestic violence have focused on the economic empowerment of women, though the evidence shows that they misfire in settings where men want to maintain economic control. Our research suggests that it is equally important to consider the economic status of men and the potential for policies that compensate both men and women for income losses.”

• Sonia Bhalotra, Diogo G C Britto, Paolo Pinotti, Breno Sampaio: Job Displacement, Unemployment Benefits and Domestic Violence, The Review of Economic Studies, 2025; rdaf004, https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdaf004
  
  
• The authors acknowledge financial support from The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Professor Bhalotra acknowledges support from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement No. 885698 and from ESRC grant ESM010236-1 awarded to the Human Rights, Big Data and Technology project at the Human Rights Centre in Essex.

A new paper from the Royle lab describes a method to label membrane contact sites in living cells on-demand. Laura Downie found that the Lamin B Receptor (LBR), which is usually on the nuclear envelope, can be used as a multi-purpose contact site highlighter. With a bit of engineering, LBR can label ER contacts with the plasma membrane, mitochondria, lysosomes, endosomes, lipid droplets and the Golgi! We found Golgi-ER contact sites persist in mitosis, a time when the Golgi is broken down but the contact sites remain intact! As a bonus track, the paper contains a method to segment mitochondria and ER from volume-EM data using machine learning, and find their contacts in 3D.

Read the paper here.

We are excited to share that Dr Rachael Blakey has been shortlisted for the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS) Peter Birks Prize for her monograph, Rethinking Family Mediation: The Role of the Family Mediator in Contemporary Times. The prize recognises outstanding legal scholarship published by Early Career Academics.

Cheers of celebration echoed across campus as staff and students celebrated the achievements of the latest cohort of graduates from WMG, University of Warwick. A highlight of the University calendar and the pinnacle of every student’s academic journey, this year’s summer degree congregations saw 305 students awarded their degrees from WMG.

Congratulations to Dr Rebecca Nealon (previously Astronomy and Astrophysics Group) who has recently relocated to Monash University, Melbourne and has been awarded an ARC Future Fellowship.

Dr Nealon's project titled 'Solving the mysteries of warped discs to reveal how planets are born in evolving star systems' will delve into the origins of planet formation in warped discs. Planets are born in dusty, swirling gas discs called protoplanetary discs. However, the process by which these planets are created is still poorly understood and recent observations of discs show interesting geometries like warps. Dr Nealon's project will use these warps to explain how and when planets are born.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Mark Knights has been appointed as Fellow of the British Academy and congratulate him on this prestigious appointment.

More details can be found hereLink opens in a new window

The Department of Economics was delighted to welcome two outstanding female economists as Honorary Graduates during the 2025 Summer Graduation celebrations.

On Friday 18th July Dr Gemma Tetlow received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree; and on Tuesday 22nd July Professor Ekaterina Zhuravskaya received her award.

Dr Tetlow’s longstanding relationship with Warwick began as an undergraduate in the Department of Economics. More recently, she has been a great supporter of the Department’s research agenda, as a member of the advisory board of CAGE, the Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy, and Chair of the Advisory Board of CenTax, the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation.

Presenting Dr Tetlow for her honorary degree, CenTax Director Professor Arun Advani highlighted her successful career in thinktanks, in journalism and as a media commentator, and also praised her contribution to addressing the under-representation of women in the profession, saying “with her impressive career history and her visibility across the media, Gemma provides a much-needed role model for young economists, whether studying for degrees in the discipline or already embarked on their careers. In this capacity, and as an alumna, Gemma has given up her time to take part in events on campus organised by the Department of Economics to promote a more inclusive environment for women studying economics, and to encourage them to go on to work in jobs in that area.”

Accepting her award, Dr Tetlow said: “Before coming to Warwick I had never studied economics, and so it was a real leap of faith to choose that as my degree subject. But it turned out to be one of the best choices I ever made in my life.

The teaching here at Warwick gave me a great appreciation for the subject and made me realise how economics can be used to understand and improve so many real-world issues. And it was what I learned here that really inspired me to pursue a career in economics, where I could apply that knowledge. And it’s a career that has continued to motivate and challenge me over the years.”

On Tuesday 22nd July Professor Ekaterina Zhuravskaya was presented for her honorary degree by Professor Sascha Becker.

Professor Zhuravskaya took her MSc at LSE and her PhD at Harvard. She has been based at the Paris School of Economics since 2010. She is a frequent visitor to the Department and has co-authored several papers with colleagues.

Professor Becker praised the “breathtaking width” of her research and described her as a “shining light and a role model” for all female academic economists.

Speaking to the economics students graduating alongside her, Professor Zhuravskaya said: “This moment takes me back to my own graduation. It was 1999 and I was a fresh Harvard PhD graduate, with very high aspirations but a lot of doubts. I was convinced that I had mastered the tools and possessed a substantial body of knowledge – but looking back I realise that I had completely misunderstood what education was useful for!

“The frontier of knowledge shifts much faster than we expect. Most of the techniques I learned became outdated within a few years of graduation. But education teaches you how to truly learn. This is the core of what we do as researchers but it is equally useful outside academia.

“In your head you shouldn’t graduate at all. You should always remain in the learning mode of a student. Congratulations to all of you and I wish you a long, surprising and meaningful journey ahead.”

Photo from left to right: Professor Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Professor Sascha Becker, Professor Arun Advani, Dr Gemma Tetlow, Professor Stuart Croft.

Pleomorphism in influenza viruses, characterized by diverse morphological forms ranging from spherical virions to elongated filaments, has been suggested to present significant implications for pathogenesis. This review examines the role of pleomorphism on the influenza virus life cycle, encompassing viral attachment and entry, replication, assembly, and budding, as well as transmission dynamics. It explores the determinants' underlying morphological variability in virions and their impact on viral fitness and host interactions. Insights into how pleomorphic forms of the virus influence disease severity and the efficacy of antivirals are discussed. Understanding the implications of pleomorphism in influenza virus pathogenesis is crucial for the development of effective disease prevention, control, and treatment strategies.

Read the paper here.

In June, a team of enthusiastic physicists attended the annual Big Bang Fair at Birmingham's NEC, aiming to spark young students interest in science and future careers in the field.

The Big Bang Fair is the UK's biggest celebration of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) for schools and runs for three days each year, with thousands of year 6, 7 and 8 students in attendance. The team from the Department of Physics were also joined by colleagues from the Department of Engineering, Department of Chemistry and Warwick Manufacturing Group from the University of Warwick.

Watch the video of the team at The Big Bang Fair.