Departmental news

Imperial War Museums (IWM), and the University of Warwick are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative doctoral studentship from October 2025 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships (CDP) scheme.

Start date: 1 October 2025

Application Deadline: 3 June 2025

Interviews: 30 June 2025 (online)

Find full details of the studentship and how to apply at https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/news/phd_studentship/

Warwick Medical School is proud to be part of the new NIHR INSIGHT programme: ‘Inspiring Students into Research’, working with other higher education institutions, the NHS, and local authority partners in the West Midlands. This £4.6M investment from NIHR provides an opportunity for newly qualified and early career health and care professionals (excluding medical and dentist professionals) to undertake research training leading to a Master's qualification.

We are excited to announce that our team “TIAKong” secured leading positions in the recent Monkey Grand ChallengeLink opens in a new window, organized by the Department of Pathology, Radboudumc, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Drawing more than 400 participants from around the globe, the challenge focused on automated detection and classification of mononuclear leukocytes in PAS-stained transplant kidney biopsy images.

Led by our PhD student Jiaqi Lv, and supported by Esha Nasir, Kesi Xu, Mostafa Jahanifar, Brinder Singh Chohan, Behnaz Elhaminia, and Shan E Ahmed Raza, TIAKong’s cell detection and classification model finished first place in the overall detection track and second place in the detection classification track.

The team is currently evaluating the model for publishing and sharing the code through open-source platforms. We look forward to sharing more updates in the near future.

'Our Subversive Voice: The History and Politics of English Protest Songs, 1600-2020', a new multi-disciplinary book is launched on the four hundred year history and politics of protest songs. Dr Angela McShane, Department of History Honorary Reader, is part of the 'Our Subversive Voice' research project team looking at the use of song to register protest through the ages.

The book is published by McGill Queens University Press in Canada: https://www.mqup.ca/our-subversive-voice-products-9780228023722.phpLink opens in a new window 

The protest song is - and has always been - a form of political oratory as vital to political representation as it is to performance. Investigating five centuries of English history, Our Subversive Voice establishes that the protest song is not merely the preserve of singer-songwriters; it is a mode of political communication that has been used to confront many systems of oppression across its many genres, from street ballads to art song, grime to hymns, and music hall to punk.

For more information about the research project visit website: https://oursubversivevoice.com/Link opens in a new window

In this new vlog, watch Bience discuss how she feels about becoming Chancellor, and what Warwick was like when she was a student here at the Law School in the 1980s.

Two WMG researchers, Mert GülçürLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window and Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new windowDerya Kaya Özdemir have received MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships from Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie ActionsLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window. MSCALink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window are the EU’s flagship funding programme for doctoral education and postdoctoral training, supporting career development, whilst fostering excellence in research.

We are delighted that Soumya Dabriwal, a former student of the Department of Economics has been selected for the Forbes India Directory 30 Under 30. The list, published by Forbes annually, recognises exceptional achievements of 30 individuals under 30 years old, in 19 different categories.

Soumya, who graduated with a BSc Economics degree in 2016, has been listed in the NGO & Social Entrepreneurship category alongside her enterprise partner Aradhana Rai Gupta, for creating Project Baala, working to provide quality, low-cost menstrual products, and creating awareness about menstrual hygiene and health.

Soumya and Aradhana’s Forbes’ profile states that since 2017 their enterprise has reached a million beneficiaries across 28 states in India, apart from Ghana, Nepal, and Tanzania.

In a news article on the Warwick Alumni webpage Project Baala: Breaking the cycle of taboo, published two years ago, Soumya said that it was her visit to Ghana as part of the Warwick in Africa scheme and later her volunteering for Warwick in India programme during her BSc Economics studies, inspired her to set up Project Baala.

Soumya commented on her success:

“Being recognised by Forbes 30 Under 30 is an incredible milestone for both Baala and myself. This recognition is not just about me, it’s about the incredible people, stories, and resilience that have shaped Baala. We’re just getting started.”

We congratulate Soumya on this fantastic success and wish her and Project Baala further successes in the future.

Related articles

Forbes India 30 Under 30 2025: Meet our young groundbreakers and trendsetters

Project Baala: Breaking the Cycle of Taboo 

Emeritus Professor Marcus Miller and Economics Alumnus and Honorary Warwick Graduate Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin have been invited to join a prestigious commission that will address the sovereign debt and development crises affecting countries across the Southern Hemisphere.

The Commission of Experts is an initiative of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PASS) and Columbia University’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD). It is inspired by the Roman Catholic tradition of the Jubilee, an annual event once every 25 years, which can include calls for social and financial justice.

The Commission’s members are tasked with developing reforms to the international financial architecture that would enable countries across the Southern Hemisphere to achieve sustainable debt levels; allowing them to increase investment in healthcare, education, clean energy, and climate adaptation.

Professor Miller said:

“Joseph Stiglitz is, I guess, the prime mover behind the idea of producing a Jubilee Report on the Debt and Development Crises in Countries from the South, ably supported by Martin Guzman and Sr. Helen Alford.

“Inspired by the impact that previous pressure in the year 2000 had in promoting the HIPIC program for reducing the debt of many Heavily Indebted Poor Income Countries, they’ve contacted academics and practitioners in the fields of development and debt with the goal of generating an agenda of positive steps 25 years later.

“Having written on debt restructuring with Joe Stiglitz, I was invited to join the panel, which started with a nuts-and-bolts workshop last week.

“As well as debt write-downs and interest relief for the poorest countries, matched by commitments for promoting health and education and tackling the issue of over-borrowing, options for improving debt contracts and for IMF reserve allocations to assist with liquidity and rollovers were outlined.

“These and other proposals are to be embodied in a Report which - with the moral support of the Catholic church - is to be presented to the Finance for Development Conference in Seville in June.”

UN envoy Mahmoud Mohieldin, PhD and recent Honorary Graduate from Warwick, is also a key member of the Commission, advocating a greater role for Multilateral Development Banks and a comprehensive revision of IMF quotas.

Dr. Mohieldin said:

“I am honoured to join the Jubilee Commission among distinguished scholars and experts. Our task to suggest reforms to address the sovereign debt and development crises affecting developing countries is indeed challenging but very pertinent.

“Public debt in developing countries has surged at twice the rate since 2010, with median external public debt service rising from 5% of government revenues in 2010 to 8.8% in 2022. The creditor landscape has shifted significantly, with over 60% of lenders now being private, making debt more expensive and restructuring more complex. Concurrently, debtor countries now face a growing challenge of balancing essential public spending with debt service obligations. Given their costly debt service bills, many developing countries are forced to de-prioritize spending on basic social services, such as health and education, as well as essential investment in long-term infrastructure, ending up with limited capacity to achieve SDGs, the most important of which is combating extreme poverty. The problem today is not just countries defaulting on commercial debt but rather defaulting on development.

“As the United Nations Special Envoy on Financing the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, and also mandated by the UN Secretary General to lead a group of prominent experts to promote solutions for resolving the debt crisis, it is my conviction that the debt crisis of developing countries must be treated through a development-oriented approach that aligns suggested solutions with the SDGs. I am looking forward to continuing working with my fellow commissioner to present concrete, fair, inclusive, actionable and durable recommendations that inform the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), which will take place from 30 June to 3 July 2025, in Sevilla, Spain.”

• Read more on the PASS website: Press Release Jubilee Commission

Eleanor Hoverd (NIHR ICA Clinical Doctoral Research Fellow, Warwick Applied Health) has co-produced a short film as part of her PhD study: Developing an inclusive health and care research system: a realist evaluation of participation in health and care research with people from Black African Diaspora Communities, in the UK.

Edward Motson, a BSc Cyber SecurityLink opens in a new window graduate from WMG at The University of Warwick, was named as the Fred Piper Award Winner at ‘CIISec LIVE’ in Bristol.

In honour of Professor Fred Piper, this national award is presented by The Chartered Institute of Information Security (CIISec) to celebrate outstanding students, not only for academic achievements but for contributions to the cyber community too.

Those nominated for the Fred Piper Award have previously been awarded the titles of Best Student or Best Project by CIISec’s Academic Partners, as part of CIISec's Student of the Year Awards.