Research
Newcastle University academic staff engage in research of the highest calibre, across a broad range of issues relevant to the European Union, and often working across disciplines in order to enhance the practical relevance of their work. In addition to conducting ongoing research of international, national and regional relevance, often with EU funding, there are several large research projects currently underway or recently completed which provide useful examples of the diverse and cross-disciplinary nature of EU-related research at Newcastle. The examples listed below cannot provide a full picture of all EU-related research undertaken by Newcastle staff, many of which are affiliated to the Jean Monnet Centre. EU-related research at Newcastle is often undertaken with the vital initial support of the Business Development Directorate within the University, links are provided below. The particular research interests of Jean Monnet Centre Research Associates are listed alongside their details on this website, and more information, including their publications, can be found on the individual staff pages by following the links provided.
For anyone interested in undertaking postgraduate research studies, the academic staff at Newcastle provide an extensive range of postgraduate supervision for EU topics. Research students form a vital part of the research and teaching culture in the University and its European Union projects. Prospective students wishing to apply should consult the University Postgraduate website and the Schools in which they are interested.
HASS Specific Research Projects
Business School
Professor Chris Hicks and Dr Tom McGovern are both working on the European Regions for Innovative Productivity (ERIP) project which is funded by Interreg. Tom McGovern is a member of the Steering Group and chairman of the Academic Research Group. The project will be establishing Innovative Productivity Centres (IPCs) in the various countries. The aim is to develop a mechanism to transfer Lean knowledge from exemplar companies to SMEs. Chris Hicks and Dr Tom McGovern also have a joint project with the Institute for Health and Society and the Wolfson Centre at Durham University to evaluate the North East Transformation System. One strand of this project includes evaluating the implementation of Lean in healthcare organisation. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/nubs/staff/profile/tom.mcgovern
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/nubs/research/centres/most/
Law School
Professor Joanna Gray and Dr Francesco de Cecco are involved in a multi-disciplinary research aimed at investigating the implications of the events surrounding the nationalisation of Northern Rock and their connections with the current financial crisis. Their work focuses on financial regulation and on EU state aid regulation respectively.
Dr Gil-Bazo is working on an international research project involving academics in nine EU Member States. The project examines the use of foreign law and case-law by the judiciary when interpreting EC asylum legislation. The project is funded by the British Academy and its findings will be published by Cambridge University Press.
Professor Chris Rodgers (Law School), Dr. Patrick Olivier (Institute of Informatics), Margherita Pieraccini (Doctoral student, Law School) and Dan Jackson (Computing Science) are involved in a collaborative project with researchers in the History Department at Lancaster University on modern governance in common land. The research involves looking in depth at how EC environmental governance instruments, such as the 1992 Habitats Directive and 1979 Wild Birds Directive are implemented on common land with multiple property rights regimes. The multi-disciplinary project is funded by the AHRC Landscape and Environment Programme and runs from February 2007 until end of January 2010. If you would like to know more about the project or get in touch with the research team, please visit the project website: http://commons.ncl.ac.uk
School of Geography, Politics and Sociology
Dr Jocelyn Mawdsley (Politics), together with Sven Biscop (Egmont Institute), Laura Chappell (Surrey) and Petar Petrov (Maastricht) have been awarded L5000 by the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) to convene a collaborative research network (CRN) looking at the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy and strategy. The CRN aims to critically assess the EU's role in security and defence, the term 'strategy' and what this implies analytically, the extent to which some form of strategy already exists or is feasible, and what the key elements of any future CSDP strategy and the connected military and civilian capabilities might be. It will look at three key elements:
1. What is meant by strategy? How might a CSDP strategy fit with the internal security strategy? Can elements of a CSDP strategy(ies) already be discerned in the practice of EU operations? What does this tell us about the (non)existence of an EU strategic culture?
2. If the EU were to draft a CSDP strategy, which regions and issues should it prioritise? To what extent do factors such as the economic crisis, CSDP 'fatigue', the EU's institutional (in)capacity, perceived democratic deficit and international expectations impact on the type of strategy which the EU can acquire?
3. What capability implications would that have? What impact does the financial crisis have on the EU's ability to match any CSDP strategy with the necessary capabilities? Can the new Defence Task Force improve matters?
The CRN will run from 2012 to 2015 and already has over forty participants, both academics and EU officials, from across Europe. Three workshops are planned in addition to panels at the UACES annual conferences. To find out more go to our website join our mailing list.
Dr Roman David is studying transitional justice, which encompasses various processes of dealing with the past in Central Europe. They include the reparation of victims of human rights abuses; and lustration systems which denote various methods to address the presence of personnel inherited in the administration of transitional states from previous regimes. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profile/roman.david
ISBP (Integrative Systems and the Boundary Problem), co-ordinated from Newcastle, is the latest project in a series stretching back to the early 1990s that studies the management of cultural and natural life-support systems. Its focus is on the relationship between different perceptions of 'the problem' and their link to cultural, geographic, political and temporal perspectives in water management, sustainable land-planning, higher education and asylum policy among other issues.
http://www.tigress.ac/isbp/index.html
Dr Alison Stenning is working on a research project examining the ways in which households and individuals negotiate forms of social exclusion emerging from the introduction of market economies in central European cities in the context of European Union enlargement.
http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/socialexclusion/
Dr Anthony R. Zito is conducting a multi-year project seeking to situate and compare environmental agencies [including the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvardsverket), the German Umweltbundesamt, the Environment Agency of England and Wales and the European Environmental Agency of the European Union] in their political context and to see how they are facing the governance challenges of the new millennium. The project has been supported so far by the Leverhulme Trust, a British Association of American Studies Short-term Travel Award and the British Academy Overseas Conference Travel Grant.
http://research.ncl.ac.uk/ceag/
Dr Anthony R. Zito is currently finishing a monograph for the ESRC Future Governance Programme Project entitled: 'Innovation in Environmental Governance: a Comparative Analysis of New Environmental Policy Instruments.' The co-researchers Dr Rüdiger Wurzel, Principal Investigator, University of Hull, Dr Andrew Jordan, University of East Anglia, and Dr Zito conducted an extensive study, which received an 'Outstanding' from the ESRC, of environmental policy instruments in Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/cserge/research/fut_governance/dissemination.htm
School of Modern Languages
Dr Dauncey is involved in an advisory role with a planned EU research project investigating European public policies, identity and sport, focusing on a pluri-national case-study of media coverage of the forthcoming 2012 UEFA European Football Championships, to be held in Poland and Ukraine. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sml/staff/profile/h.d.dauncey
School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape
Prof Ali Madanipour is a co-investigator in the European-funded SUME project (Sustainable Urban Metabolism for Europe). This project is focusing on the way future urban systems can be designed to be consistently less damaging to the environment than the present. http://www.sume.at/
University Services
Business Development Directorate
The Business Development Directorate (BDD) is part of the Central Services of the University and is involved in supporting and developing all University research, commercial services, intellectual property, consultancy, and other externally funded projects. Within BDD, the University Research Office (URO) is responsible for developing and supporting research and our first points of contact within the URO are Sue Mitchell (UK research councils, charities and other funders; susan.mitchell@ncl.ac.uk; ext: 6463) and Kati Schwab (EU and other European funders; katalin.schwabne-gefferth@ncl.ac.uk; ext: 4588). They liaise with funders to provide academics and researchers at Newcastle University with the information needed to help them build high quality proposals. They are happy to work with individuals or groups, or schools/institutes to help them to identify, target and develop high quality applications for the most relevant opportunities. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/business-directorate/application2award/