Departmental news

Warwick Law School, in collaboration with United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa), hosted a successful public lecture last month in Nairobi, Kenya, that attracted over 100 students, academics, and legal professionals. The event provided a platform for insightful discussions on pressing legal and social issues, reinforcing Warwick’s commitment to global engagement and academic collaboration.

Diamond Scientists Julie Macpherson and Mark Newton star with Dara O'Brien and Hannah Fry on BBC Radio 4 Curious Cases Postcast. Listen at BBC Radio 4 - Curious Cases, Series 23, The Diamond Throwdown.

Staff and students from across WMG at the University of Warwick had another busy, fun-packed British Science Week, taking part in a total of 11 special STEM events reaching out to more than 1,500 young scientists, teachers, and families.

British Science WeekLink opens in a new window is a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths running from 7-16 March.

WMG staff and students joined the Outreach Team at the University of Warwick’s Resonate Festival of Science and Technology; led science workshops at schools and held the Royal Institution (Ri) Engineering Masterclasses and celebration events.

The Resonate Festival of Science and Technology welcomed over 500 people. Here the WMG team ran ‘Inventors, Explorers and Engineers’, which featured a robot maze; a robot vehicle battle arena; coding workshops; a controllable model train system and more.

Expert comment from Dr Gregory EpiphaniouLink opens in a new window, Associate Professor of Cyber Security Engineering at WMG, on the UK Government’s forthcoming Cyber Security and Resilience BillLink opens in a new window.

"The forthcoming Cyber Security and Resilience (CSR) Bill introduces sweeping changes such as stricter compliance requirements, stronger enforcement powers, and steep daily fines for cybersecurity lapses, which means organisations without large in-house security teams face mounting pressure to meet regulatory standards."

The Warwickshire Junior Lawyers Division is a recently re-launched community for junior lawyers across Warwickshire. LLB student Jaskiran Sandhu is Vice Chair of the WJLD. She told us a little more about the launch event, what the WJLD has to offer, and why WLS students should consider joining whilst membership fees are waived.

There is an urgent need for novel classes of antibiotics to combat the ever-increasing threat of Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR). This work builds upon prior research conducted in collaboration between Professors Scott (Chemistry department) and Waterfield (WMS). Prof Scott’s lab has, and continues to produce, a very large and diverse library of synthetic metallohelix compounds, some of which are very potent against pathogenic bacteria. Importantly slight changes in the chemistry of the compounds allows us to “tune” their target specificity, for example, against Gram-positive bacteria (e.g. Staph aureus) or Gram-negative bacteria (e.g. E. coli). Two enantiomeric pairs of iron(ii) metallohelices, of different types can be created as water-soluble, stable, and optically pure bimetallic complexes, differing principally in the length of the central hydrophobic region between two cationic domains.

In a new study, led by James Shelford (Royle lab) and Selena Burgess (Bayliss lab, Leeds), we report a structural model for the interaction between ch-TOG and TACC3. These two proteins have a conserved interaction and are linked to cancer due to their overexpression in a range of solid tumours. Using this knowledge, we uncovered Affimers that can inhibit the interaction. Expressing the Affimers in cells led to the fragmentation of the pericentriolar material (see image), uncovering a new role for these proteins during mitosis.
The work was funded by a Cancer Research UK Programme Award to Royle and Bayliss labs, and was a collaboration involving the labs of Pfuhl (KCL), Tomlinson (Leeds) and Calabrese (Leeds).
Read the paper here.Link opens in a new window

The Warwick Law School team recently participated in the oral phase of the Oxford Intellectual Property Moot, held in-person at the University of Oxford, from 19-22 March 2025. Following their successful qualification through the challenging written phase, the team represented the university at this internationally renowned competition.

We are excited to share new research from Warwick Law in the Community, Advicenow and Central England Law Centre, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Read the full report: 'Understanding Local Legal Needs: Early Intervention and the Ecosystem of Legal Support'.

Warwick Law School’s Dr Ming-Sung Kuo was awarded the 2025 Prize of Scholarly Excellence in Constitutional Studies by the Constitutional Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin last month.