annual review 2011–2012 - university of reading€¦ · nations (rumun). this society has a...

Annual Review 2011–2012

School of Politics, Economics and International Relations

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Contents4 On balance and trade-offs

6 Teaching matters

10 Student achievements and opportunities

16 Research, policy and enterprise activities

24 Conferences, seminars and public engagement

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On balance and trade-offsIf national resources were unlimited few staff or students would welcome the innovations to student finance coming into operation this October. But resources are finite and one of the central aims of Economics as a discipline is to shed light on the best allocation of scarce resources. Politics introduces a further set of constraints on decision making in terms of democratic acceptability. Broadly, the decision trade-off for government is between fewer students in higher education, greater taxation or the introduction of increased student fees. The decision is complicated by the fact that higher education produces both a private return to the student and wider returns to the economy in terms of stronger growth.

Inevitably, work in the School of Politics, Economics and International Relations (SPEIR) over the last year has been heavily influenced by the prepara-tion for these changes. For the School, the biggest challenge has been to main-tain the appropriate balance between different activities – teaching, research and administration – and at the same time not to neglect our families and friends. It would probably be fair to say that few of us have been entirely suc-cessful and we are still learning.

The appropriate balance of activities has a number of different aspects; first, there is a balance between teaching and research in the new environ-ment, recognising that the two are not independent – cutting-edge research benefits teaching and vice versa. Quite rightly, students will expect a great deal for their £9,000s. But the School will never treat its students as ‘custom-

ers’. This would be to devalue the full university experience for students. Amongst the most important objectives of the School is to inculcate a life-long love of learning in our students, which would be threatened if education simply became a box-ticking exercise. We will challenge our students, which may not always be popular, but understanding the difficult is always more rewarding in the long run. All universities are aware that difficult courses are sometimes less popular and this affects league table positions. We look at the league tables, but treat them with a healthy degree of scepticism and they will never rule what we offer our students. In this light, we were particularly pleased by the teaching awards won by Alan Renwick and Emma Mayhew this year. Alan won the Gold Star award from the Student Union on the basis of student votes. Emma won a University Award for Teaching and Learning. Emma and Alan both challenge and engage our students and the School is learning from their good example.

Second, there is a balance to be achieved between teaching the major theoretical concepts of the disciplines and teaching with a greater labour market focus. Only a few years ago most academics would probably have argued that teaching of key theories, concepts and methods was their primary focus. This must never disappear or be diluted, but in the difficult labour market conditions that graduating students now face, this is insufficient. Our modules and degree programmes are gradually being redesigned to add more applied

material into their structures, includ-ing placement opportunities. But this cannot be done overnight, because all programmes have to go through rigor-ous quality assurance procedures. The School has appointed this year a Devel-opment Officer, Amy Harris, to help students with their placements and some of these placements are described in the following sections. The largest employer of economists in this country is the Government Economic Service, which provides many of the most pres-tigious destinations for new graduates. The School has recently appointed Andy Ross as a Visiting Professor. Andy is Deputy Head of the Government Economic Service and writes about the skills required by new GES econo-mists and the type of work they are likely to undertake. We are taking on board Andy’s recommendations in our programmes. A related balance that students have to address is the extent to which they should concentrate nar-rowly on their degree programmes versus wider involvement in society. A particularly pleasing item to report this year is that eighteen of the School’s students have been involved in commu-nity-based voluntary activities. These activities, of course, help improve the students’ CVs, but I would also like to believe that involvement arises from wider social concerns.

The third balance is between theoretical and applied research and, particularly, the extent to which research should be geared directly towards improving the performance of the economy – so-called ‘Impact’. This is highly controversial in the academic community. At first sight, it appears entirely reasonable


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that publically-funded researchers should be accountable and contribute to society. Most academics would agree with this; we are not here simply to conduct the research we find interest-ing and we need to regularly examine our consciences and assess whether there is public benefit. The controversy concerns the true meaning of public benefit. Often this is clearer in social sciences than in natural sciences, where any benefits may not be revealed for twenty or thirty years or in the Arts and Humanities, where research may have cultural benefits that are difficult to quantify. But, even in the social sci-ences, there is a danger of skewing research towards applied research to the detriment of more fundamental theo-retical work. Some of our research is described in later sections, including the work carried out by Dr Dominik Zaum, who has spent the last year working on policy issues within the Department for International Development, combining both theory and practice.

One of our responses has been to appoint a new Professor of Public Policy to lead our new cross-School Masters in Public Policy, which starts in October. We have adopted the novel approach of recruiting a senior economist from the Govern-ment Economic Service, who will be able to stress the policy angles and con-straints to our students. Public policy is also a central theme of the School’s research and he will promote synergies between our research and government.

The fourth balance is between domes-tic and international students. Most universities are attempting to increase

numbers of international students and Reading is no exception, including the setting up of a new campus in Malaysia and the appointment of a Director of Internationalisation within the School. But this also brings additional pres-sures; most importantly, courses have to recognise the different cultural and learning backgrounds of some international students. Furthermore, case studies and examples have to be internationally-focussed rather than purely UK-orientated. Given the global economy, this wider perspective can also be beneficial to home-grown stu-dents, but the School has to recognise potentially different needs. At the moment this primarily affects our post-graduate rather than undergraduate degrees. Finally, the School is proud that there is an almost equal gender balance in terms of staff. Nationally, female university staff have been under-represented at senior levels. This is not true in the School, where 50% of the professors are female.

Later sections of the Review discuss teach-ing issues, student achievements, research and public engagement. The activities of our students are particularly fascinating, including placements, internships and the Model United Nations Society, which includes the organisation of a major forth-coming conference. In addition two of the School’s former students represented Great Britain at the Olympics. Jonty Clarke (BSc Economics 2002) competed in the men’s hockey and just missed out on a medal in the battle for bronze against Australia. Bill Lucas (BA Politics and Inter-national Relations 2009) finished fifth in the men’s double sculls final.

On the staff side, we are pleased to congratulate Dr Christina Hellmich on her promotion to a Readership. In rec-ognition of their wider contributions, Dr Ken Dark was awarded the Freedom of the City of London. The Freedom is among the City of London’s oldest traditions, going continuously back to the medieval period. There are many myths about the rights of Freemen; contrary to popular belief the Freedom of the City does not allow one to drive a herd of sheep over London Bridge! In addition, Professor Alan Evans was awarded the prestigious 2012 Interna-tional Real Estate Society Award for outstanding achievement for research, education and practice. Christina Hellmich was runner-up in the Faculty Research Endowment Trust Output prize, and Yelena Kalyuzhnova was the winner of the Bergson Prize for the best paper published in Comparative Economic Studies.

Finally I would like to express my thanks to members of staff, who are leaving at the end of this year, from Politics, Dr Jeremy Lester, Dr Oisin Tansey and Dr Dale Walton, from Economics, Dr Rupa Chakrabarti, Dr Federico Martellosio and Dr Lynda Porter, and our School Administrator, Kate Peak. We look forward to wel-coming Dr Keith Hyams, Dr Daphne Halikiopoulou and Dr Burak Kader-can in Politics; Dr Zahra Siddique in economics and Mary Boitz as our new School Administrator.

Professor Geoffrey Meen, OBE Head, School of Politics, Economics and International Relations

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Teaching mattersThe School comprises two departments – Economics and Politics & International Relations. The Department of Economics offers five undergraduate programmes – BA and BSc degrees in both mainstream Economics and Business Economics and a degree in Economics and Econometrics. The Department of Politics & International Relations runs undergraduate degrees in Politics and International Relations and War, Peace and International Relations. The School also offers joint degrees in Politics & Economics and International Relations & Economics, in addition to an extensive range of degrees in conjunction with other departments across the University.

The School’s undergraduate degrees are amongst the most popular in the University and in, October 2011, the School accepted approximately 200 stu-dents across the different programmes. Perhaps surprisingly, there has been no fall-off in demand with the intro-duction of the new fees regime and a similar number will arrive in October 2012. Although difficult to demonstrate empirically, it seems likely that the strong policy focus (see the article by Andy Ross below), coupled with theo-retical rigour, and the incorporation of placements within the degree pro-grammes have been important factors in maintaining student numbers. In addition, the work of our admissions team, led by Melva Jeffries, should not be understated. The School also now has a dedicated officer to help students obtain placements, particularly as part of the British Government and Politics

module, which is available to students in the second year, but also more gen-erally for students across the School. Some of the students write about their experiences later in the Review.

An exciting new development for 2012/13 is the introduction of a Model United Nations module, where students become diplomats. They represent different countries, advancing their foreign policies and debating the issues and crises that face the world today. Model United Nations covers a variety of subject matters such as the operation of the UN and its commit-tees, international law, foreign policy formulation, and public speaking and networking.

The international Model UN confer-ence that students will attend as part of the module brings together student teams from many different universi-ties and countries, each representing a different state. In their role as diplo-mats, students work together to resolve conflicts and to formulate resolutions that effectively address critical world problems. In addition, the students run the Reading University Model United Nations (RUMUN). This society has a growing reputation on both a national and international basis; it has acquired a reputation for both its skills in diplo-macy and its talent for debating. With funding support from the University Annual Fund, the society will be hosting its own major conference later this year, following conferences previously run at Oxford, Warwick, Nottingham and Durham. RUMUN has won awards at all

these earlier conferences.

The School also offers a range of taught Masters degrees. Economics currently runs eleven programmes, centred on banking and finance, busi-ness economics, and development and emerging markets. The Department is offering two new programmes in the coming year – Masters in the Econom-ics of Climate Change and in Law and Economics. Politics offers six degrees, concentrating on international rela-tions, security and strategy. In addition, as noted above, the new cross-School Masters in Public Policy comes into operation in October. Across the School, 103 new students were admit-ted to the programmes last year and at October 2011, 69 research students


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Awards

In 2011/12, four of the School’s students received the Chancellor’s Award for outstanding academic achievement – Aparna Biswas (BSc Economics), Yinghui Lee (BA International Relations and Economics), Ian McGuinness (BA Business Economics) and Adam Pasier-bek (BA Economics). These are given to students on the basis of their first and second year exam results.

In addition, there were exceptional performances by some of our finalists this year; Bethany Tasker (BSc Econom-ics) won the Head of School’s prize for highest marks, which was awarded at the School’s Graduation Day celebra-

tions. Beth’s placement at HM Treasury was featured in last year’s Annual Review. Awards for Overall Excellence for students in Politics and Interna-tional Relations went to Yinghui Lee, Daniel Button, Luca Ferrini, Svenja Pinkepank and Catherine Perry. Prizes for achieving the highest mark for a dissertation were won by Lewis Van Diggele and James Ward. Awards for Outstanding Contribution to the Department were received by Yinghui Lee, Danielle Weekes, Conor Monk and Sophie Maudsley. In Economics, Megan Baddeley, Sarah Bryant, Alex Lynch and Lucas Penfold all won Head of Depart-

ment Prizes for Academic Excellence. The awards for Outstanding Contribu-tion to the Department of Economics went to Megan Baddeley, David Kirk, Ed Burn and Adam Pasierbek.

In addition, Lucas Penfold (BA Economics) won a highly-competitive ESRC Doc-toral Studentship under what is known as the 1+3 programme. This provides government finance allowing Lucas to undertake the Masters in Public Policy for one year, followed by three years for a PhD at Reading. Lucas will begin the programme in 2013, after taking a year out to work at HM Treasury.

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Working as a useful economist: a guide for mortals

In May, it was my pleasure to present to economics students at Reading’s School of Politics, Economics & International Relations. The title (above) shared my experience of being a ‘mature student’ in the 70’s, when blackboards full of hieroglyphics seemed daunting. It seemed that unless I could write in advanced mathematics my opinions did not matter. No doubt Reading has students who love that sort of stuff, and quantitative techniques have since proved useful in my own career, but I wanted to reassure others more like me, those not destined to be pushing back, or rather forward, the frontiers of science that there are many other ways to be useful. Gus O’Donnell, recently Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service, is candid about abandoning his university career after being told that he would never be a path-breaking academic. Lord O’Donnell did not regret his decision to become a government economist!

A prerequisite for a career as a govern-ment economist is to get a job as one. The Government Economic Service (GES) has over a thousand applicants a year, but many do not perhaps do themselves justice. Many fall at the first ‘sift’ because of gaps left in completing the application form: You may have a Nobel prize in economics but unless you write something in those puzzling

‘competencies’ and ‘extra-curricular’ boxes you will not be joining the GES; and just writing ‘completing degree assignments’ as an example of ‘prior-itisation’ does not make you stand out. So do make the most of what you have done in life to give stronger examples. But you do not have to have swum the Amazon to satisfy the ‘determination’ criterion; and if you claim to have done so we may well ask you about it! Also, as you will use much of the same mate-rial for separate applications, watch the cut and paste. It is best to confine a ‘life-long ambition to work for ‘KPWC’ to just your application to KPWC.

On actually getting to interview, many candidates are overly worried about being nervous. It is quite OK to be nervous. One candidate actually threw-up with fear, but, after cleaning-up, even she went on to pass; though I do not recommend this particular interview technique. But you are not expected to be the finished product. Nervous is better than behaving like a candidate from ‘The Apprentice’; though a bit of ‘selling yourself’ is fine.

Reeling off complex techniques that you do not really understand can back-fire. If you cannot say it in words, or apply the basics competently, then no amount of eigenvectors or Jacobian

matrices will save you. Government economics is about dilemmas not lemmas. The vast majority of GES recruitment questions require no more than the knowledge in introductory tomes, but you must have practised applying these ‘threshold concepts’. Look at the world around you: What is the opportunity cost of that toothbrush before and after I buy it? Is the oppor-tunity cost of that house its price? Is this park a pure public good? Have you ever seen equilibrium? If you respond to a question on the crisis with ‘What crisis?’ then you have not read beyond (old) textbooks. Read the FT and gener-ally keep up to date with economic events, there have been a lot recently. You should present yourself as a living thinking economist.

Of course, first find out what you might be getting into! Go to employers’ open days; look at their websites, e.g. www.ges.gov.uk. Your university may invite representatives from employers; use the careers service at your university. Look for relevant articles and forums in the newspapers, e.g. the Guardian, and seek contacts with people who have the jobs you want.

So what do government economists actually do? Last year 85 per cent had synthesised evidence, 75 per cent

www.ges.gov.uk

www.ges.gov.uk


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produced briefing material, 70 per cent provided policy advice, 70 per cent had used cost-benefit analysis, 55 per cent had been involved in policy evaluations, 55 per cent had used math-ematics and 50 per cent econometrics, and 15 per cent had used game theory.

It is clear from this that good commu-nication is vital, but communicating as a professional practitioner is different from authoring as an academic. Min-isters do not say ‘I didn’t understand that’, they say ‘You’ve explained that badly’. And that is right for govern-ment: If the people who make the decisions cannot understand you then you have wasted everyone’s time. Be clear, concise and compelling. ‘Plain English campaign materials are useful, as is The Economist ‘Style Guide’. Government publications can be good guides for effective format and style, with some notable exceptions. Practise short strong sentences. Be concise but use spaces to break-up long documents. Use ‘active’ verbs: ‘I shot the sheriff’ not ‘The sheriff was shot by me’. Wear your intellect lightly and avoid jargon, pomposity and redundancy: ‘At this moment in time’ just means ‘now’.

Once in the job it doesn’t take long to realise that economic models are to be used, not believed. At best they offer only partial insights, so applying different

perspectives can actually be more reveal-ing than consistency. Everyday human values of ‘honesty, tolerance and clarity’ are closer to the Civil Service Code and a better guide for GES practitioners than dogged adherence to, say, a set of axi-omatic rules for theoretic consistency.

Lastly, GES economists serve the govern-ment of the day, so if we want to go into politics we must resign from the civil service. But to be useful to any govern-ment, regardless of its politics, we must be intellectually pluralistic. What is certainly wrong and unscientific is to defend one’s own view relentlessly with hostility to other approaches; the oppo-site of trying to discover new and better ways of understanding and addressing the real world. And that is another reason why it is a pleasure to visit Reading. This University understands that economics is improved through critical exposure to other disciplines such as politics and international rela-tions. Good economics is not a subset of business studies or a manual of received wisdom, and a critical approach pro-duces much better economists.

By Andy Ross Visiting Professor University of Reading and Deputy Director, Government Economic Service

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Student achievements and opportunitiesOver the past year students in the School have taken part in a wide range of placement activities. From raising conservation issues in Zambia to working at PwC, our students have worked hard in developing their employability skills through placement opportunities. Our Development Officer, Amy Harris notes that ‘Students in SPEIR have demonstrated a high level of enthusiasm, commitment and passion over the past year and I have been particularly impressed by the diverse range of placements secured.’

There are three types of embedded placement opportunities available in SPEIR. Students can choose to take a year out and complete a sandwich year student placement. These students will graduate with a year placement experience stated on their transcript and degree certificate. Students can also take part in a placement module, during which they are required to complete 120 hours of placement experience, write a report on their experiences and deliver a presenta-tion. This is worth 20 credits and has proved to be a popular way to integrate placement learning into the degree course. Politics and International Rela-tions students can also choose to take the British Government and Politics module, which includes a two week placement. In total 23 students took part in formal placements during 2011/12. The placement learning they have gained will count towards their final degree result and certainly serve them well when it comes to making decisions about future career paths. Many students have also taken part in volunteering, summer internships and placement opportunities that will not count towards their final degree, but all contribute to their employability skill set.

Students have also benefited from a new series of placement workshops designed specifically for students in the School of Politics, Economics and International Relations and delivered by our resident Development Officer. These popular workshops seek to ensure students have the necessary skills in order to ‘search, secure and succeed’ in a relevant placement. ‘Search’ is an interactive session where students talk about their placement objectives, receive advice on searching for placements (with rec-ommendations for types of placement they might be interested in) and learn optimal times to apply. ‘Succeed’ is a dynamic workshop where students are coached in the different types of application journey – be it a formal summer internship with a competency based recruitment process, to making a speculative application. The final session in the series is titled ‘Secure’. This is a mandatory workshop for students who have secured a placement. In this session students are briefed on impor-tant health and safety factors, given tips for their first day and learn how to make the most out of their placement opportunity. In addition students have booked one to one appointments with the Development Officer for specific questions, advice and coaching.

On top of this students have taken part in lunchtime placement sessions, organ-

ised jointly by the University’s Student Employment, Experience and Careers Centre (SEECC) and SPEIR. In these informal and relaxed sessions, students who are interested in taking part in a placement have the opportunity to talk to students who have already taken part in a placement. These popular sessions have proved to be a fun and informative way to find out what it is really like to go on placement.

Congratulations are due to Economics students Peter Foley, Lawrence Key, Steven Lucas and Matthew Turner who have all secured sandwich year internships for the academic year 2012/13. Three of the students have secured placement years by applying to the Government Economic Service. Steven Lucas will be working for the Treasury, Peter Foley and Lawrence Key will both be working for the Depart-ment for Work and Pensions. Matthew Turner will be working as a Manage-ment Trainee at Enterprise Ltd. We wish them the best of luck for their time away and look forward to sharing their experiences in the Annual Review 2012/13!

The following students are a sample of those who have recently returned from placements this year and write about their activities. Also included below are testimonials from students who have studied abroad during the year.


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Placements in the words of the students

‘During my Politics and International Relations degree I had the opportunity to incorporate my campaign work at Oxfam into my studies through the Work Placement Module. This credited and rec-ognised my work with Oxfam as part of my degree. While at Oxfam I had a fantastic opportunity to develop my organisational, communication, team working and leader-ship skills. Through training in Oxford and London I was educated on Oxfam’s cam-paigns and international development. Training included: how to influence politi-cians, using social media, school speaking, public speaking and how to campaign cre-atively. As a member of the Action Board I supported Oxfam’s Youth and Schools Team in London and campaigned on issues including Education, Maternal Health and Water Sanitation. However, I found that the campaign against the Arms Trade was so interesting and dynamic that I decided to write my dissertation on the topic.

Politically, Oxfam was a brilliant avenue to use knowledge from my degree in real-life. I attended Tea Time for Change, The Westminster Lobby for International Development and Aid, in London and met with MPs and other NGOs to discuss the Robin Hood Tax, aid budget and trans-parency of MNCs. However, my most memorable experience at Oxfam was chairing a meeting at Parliament Street between Stephen O’Brien, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development, and local school children during Oxfam’s Water Week.

I have travelled across the UK to attend meetings, political party conferences, pub-licity stunts and events – including Oxjam. This is all while studying, which gave me the chance to experience the charity sector before graduating. While campaigning with Oxfam I have appeared in various local papers and during the launch of the GROW (Oxfam’s campaign to fix the global food system) contributed to Oxfam’s London and the South East blog. This was my first hands-on experience of communications, which I now look forward to hopefully entering as a future career.

In June 2011 I was supported by Oxfam to set up the University of Reading Oxfam Society and build a student movement on campus. This was also at the same time of

the GROW campaign launch, the society got involved with publicity stunts includ-ing ‘Dorm Picnic’ and land grabs.

Leaving the board in July 2012 after two years was a bit of a shock, as time had flown by. However, I am now Oxfam’s Constituency Campaigner for Reading East and regularly meet, email and influ-ence my local politician to keep him both informed and interested in Oxfam’s cam-paigns.

Throughout my experience I met enthu-siastic and intelligent people who are passionate about both Oxfam and the issues which the campaigns cover. They were inspiring to work with and learn from. Oxfam has opened many doors, even though I have not graduated just yet. In the summer of 2012 I gained a paid summer internship, after previously working unpaid, at a B2B and Corporate Affairs agency in London. My ability to time manage, organise myself and self-start were qualities that had been acquired from working at Oxfam alongside my degree. It was a thoroughly enjoyable two years and I feel privileged to have had the opportunity at Oxfam.’

Coralie Frost BA Politics and International Relations, Part 3

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‘I was fortunate enough to gain a place with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) for an 11 month business placement with their Assurance department in Reading.

The PwC placement program is challeng-ing from day one. I worked alongside the first year graduates, undertaking the same training, examinations, practical experience and performance reviews. The role, at first, was extremely daunting, particularly as prior to starting the place-ment I had no accounting knowledge. However, the graduates joining the firm held degrees ranging from Geography to Physics and Philosophy, proving that there are no barriers to this industry if you are dedicated and willing to work hard.

The job enabled me to move from client to client every few weeks, working with different PwC team members, experienc-ing new industries and constantly meeting new people. I undertook audits of the

client’s operations, discussing and testing their accounts, in order to provide assur-ance to the company’s shareholders that their financial statements were accurate. The role was particularly relevant to my degree, as I was able to better understand the direct impact of changes in govern-ment legislation and how companies adapt to cope with economic pressures in an ever challenging financial environment.

I had the opportunity to work on a number of very high profile clients, but of course, due to corporate governance regulations, I am unable to disclose their names (you will just have to take my word for it!).

The graduate / business placement first year is a mix of training, 9 examinations and prac-tical client auditing which counts towards the ACA qualification. After a successful year, I was lucky enough to be offered a gradu-ate position to continue working towards becoming a chartered accountant.

I was given an amazing opportunity to gain qualifications and practical experience for a future career, but this wouldn’t have been possible without the fantastic support of my fellow graduate joiners and other PwC colleagues. The business makes a conscious effort to employ top academic graduates, but more importantly selects individuals who will work well together as a team. They encour-age a good work/play balance and the sports

and social committee organise a broad range of events. Specifically, I went on a week long holiday in Portugal with 20 other PwC employees, and next year’s holiday is already in the pipeline, so the university experience does not have to end once you have a degree. (If anything the excellent pay in your pocket allows for a more extravagant night out!).

The key benefit of undertaking a place-ment is the opportunities available on completion of your degree. Whilst I intend on returning to PwC after graduation, I am also fully aware that the skills and experi-ence gained will make me a far greater asset to future employers.

From a personal perspective taking a year out in industry has allowed me to assess my options after graduation and has given me an insight into how different working life is to university. I definitely have a new appreciation for student life and look forward to making the most of my final year at Reading before returning to PwC.

My placement was above and beyond all expectations and I would strongly recom-mend a placement with PwC.’

Alexandra Frostick BSc Economics and Econometrics (with Placement Experience), Part 4


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‘Young people and education are issues that are very close to my heart and, as such, the low turnout figures amongst young people concern me; these show that young people

are not being represented effectively in government. As part of the Part 2 British Government and Politics module, I secured a placement at George Abbot School in Guildford, Surrey. During my time there, I conducted research into what education young people receive regarding political issues as well as finding out what issues were important to them. I did this by observing lessons that had a political theme and asking small groups of students to fill out a ques-tionnaire that I had prepared.

This placement allowed me to conduct research into an issue that I care passion-ately about and is directly relevant to the type of career I would like to pursue fol-lowing my graduation from the university. I would highly recommend this placement idea as an alternative to some of the more obvious options; the fact that I chose an issue that is important to me and is rel-evant to my future career choices will help me stand out on the job market.’

Christopher Newman BA English Literature and Politics, Part 3

‘I’ve always had an interest in America but had never considered studying there until I went along to the Study Abroad meeting held for first year Economic stu-dents. Through the encouragement of my parents I decided to undertake the slightly scary prospect of studying abroad. I was successful in my application to Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, just an hour from New York City. I then set about filling out lots of forms, arranging my visa, flights and class schedules. I was overwhelmed with the choice of subjects available to me and it took a while before I settled on my classes.

Founded in 1766, Rutgers is the eighth-old-est college in the US. It has 3 campuses with around 58000 students from over 125 coun-tries. I was based in New Brunswick which itself has 5 campuses. Upon arrival I met new students from many countries, all in the same position as I was. I lived in an apart-ment with 3 other girls from the US, Jamaica, and Japan. It’s very common to share a room at American universities and I was fortunate to get along well with my Japanese room-mate. It was interesting learning about the culture differences she was facing.

The classes were quite different from what I was used to at Reading, particularly in the way they were assessed. Homework, mid-terms, papers, finals and class participation all counted towards my final grades. This led to continuous assessment throughout the semester allowing students to see how they are progressing through the class. Extra credit assignments were also avail-able in a few of my classes.

Whilst studying was my main reason for being there, I still found time to do lots of travelling. I made good use of the close-ness of NYC and its good transport system and travelled within the US to Princeton, Boston, Orlando and Austin, and to Canada, visiting Niagara Falls and Toronto. I also took advantage of the many clubs including sailing and the programmes run by Rutgers including numerous trips to Broadway and day trips to go snowboarding.

Studying abroad enabled me to take classes in topics that I otherwise would not have had the chance to learn about including the finan-cial and monetary history of the US. I was also able to join ODE, the International Economic Honours Society, through which I met many distinguished alumni. As a result of my time at Rutgers, I feel I have a much broader under-standing of current economic issues. I can’t stress enough just how much I enjoyed my time spent in America and I would recom-mend the experience to every student.’

Rebecca Pollitt BSc Economics with Year Abroad , Part 3

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‘As part of my Part 3 placement module of my undergraduate Politics and Inter-national Relations degree I had the great opportunity and pleasure to work with a British organisation called “The Book Bus”, which promotes literacy and facilitates English speaking sessions throughout Zambia, Malawi and Ecuador.

Originally I was supposed to spend six weeks working in Meheba, a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) set-tlement in the North-Western province of Zambia that provides shelter to about 16,000 refugees from the Democratic

Republic of the Congo, Angola, Rwanda, Uganda and Somalia. However, after 30 June 2012 the settlement was expected to decrease in size by about a half with the departure of the Angolan residents, who no longer shared refugee status. Further, due to security concerns UNHCR requested that Book Bus volunteers delay their work in Meheba until mid July.

As a result, for the first four weeks of my stay I worked and travelled through dif-ferent parts of Zambia, meeting people from many of the approximately 72 ethnic groups of Zambia and learning about their

different cultures, languages and religions. In my last two weeks I lived and worked in the UNHCR refugee settlement, reading and doing arts and crafts with the children and also spending my afternoons with them, during which time I learned about their lives in the refugee settlement.

Throughout the six weeks I met and spoke to children and adults from very differ-ent backgrounds, ranging from privileged farmer children to orphaned refugees. They included Zambians, Congolese, Angolans, and Rwandese. In addition, I spoke to UN field officers and other UNHCR staff about the UNHCR and experienced their daily work and perspective. I also had the opportunity to see some of Zambia’s extraordinary wildlife and nature. Among many insights, I was struck primarily by the difference in perspective on the refugee situation between the UNHCR workers and the refugees themselves, and the persistent influence of witchcraft in the refugees’ minds and lives.

I would recommend this module and the opportunity to work with the Book Bus organization to anyone who desires a broader insight into the UNHCR’s work and impact, who at the same time wants to bring joy and knowledge to underprivi-leged children’s lives through reading.’

Vanessa Pogacnik Murillo BA Politics and International Relations , Part 3


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School internships

One of the innovations of the School has been the introduction of paid, six month internships for new graduates from the School. This provides our graduates the opportunity to work with members of staff on research projects. In addition to improving the CVs of the students, the scheme is intended to provide students with an idea of what is entailed in academic research and to inspire them to undertake higher research degrees. In the last year, two students were employed – one from each of the departments. The appoint-ments are competitive and students are required to undergo full interview pro-cedures. Richard Wood, who worked with Alan Renwick in Politics, writes about his experiences.

‘My six months research at the Uni-versity has been both rewarding and useful. I have learnt a lot about the topics I was researching, and gained new skills, while also growing aware of what I want to do going forward.

In supporting Alan Renwick’s research I have been focusing on several different areas, using a variety of methods. My principal task was to support him in his research on the Republic of Ireland and the constitutional changes occurring there. I investigated how the media and political actors have changed in their stances towards reform over the past decade: a time of boom, then bust, then bailout in the country.

I was trained on the Atlas.ti software programme, which allows articles and text to be coded for certain authors, topics, arguments and stances which then can be used for mathematical

analysis and drawing conclusions. My background research involved the interesting political circumstances of Ireland’s evolving political landscape and the constitutional emergency in the wake of the financial crisis and bailout of the country. With the previ-ous dominant party facing defeat and a new coalition of parties rising in its wake, this is a time of great change in the country, including in its consti-tutional structures. My preliminary research involved reading ongoing debates in the Irish Parliament and the literature the parties were producing, as well as the stances of leading NGOs and the media.

As I became confident in the software and the context I was looking into, I began the real research. I went to the Bodleian in Oxford to retrieve thou-sands of Irish digital newspaper articles concerning political reform, from the Irish Times, Irish Independent and the Irish Examiner going back a decade.

Alongside this, I also helped out on his UK research. This involved looking through Hansard and collecting debates on key constitutional issues over the past 70 years, such as Lords reform and the Human Rights Act. I wrote a piece on the Reading Politics Department blog concerning this.

After my Irish research was finished, in my final months I turned my attention to three other areas. Using the same computer software as I employed for the Irish data collection, I analysed materials from the Times newspaper since 1945. The first area was party candidate selec-tion, concentrating on the first Black

and Asian selections in the 1980s, and all-women shortlists. Then I focused on the one-member-one-vote debate in the political parties from the early 1980s to the present, with the trade unions shift-ing support of most interest. Finally, I looked at the Lords reform debate from 1945 to the present. All three will go towards Alan’s future work.

Overall the experience has been a good one. I have learnt a lot. I now have much improved computer and data handling skills having learnt to work with vast quantities of data on a computer and to then analyse it. I am sure these new skills will be of much use in future employment. I also found the research very interesting; reading through debates on reforms over their history in great detail has given me the freedom to learn in a way the fast pace of a degree simply cannot. My knowl-edge of UK reform debates has been greatly strengthened and my under-standing of Irish politics is now strong having come from zero.

I am currently looking for new work, applying for roles that are very similar in that they require research experi-ence. I have found that this experience always plays a lead part of any applica-tion I make, with the skills it has given me being of great value to an employer. I also want to return to higher education in the near future to complete a Masters.

I thank the Department for given me this opportunity and Alan Renwick for being a supportive mentor over the six months.’

Atlas.ti

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Research, policy and enterprise activitiesMost staff are active researchers, publishing in top-quality academic journals and monographs in their fields. Full lists of publications produced by members of the School in recent years can be found on the University’s web site under CentAUR (the University’s central archive). Research is wide-ranging and the School has established reputations in a number of areas. But rather than attempting to do full justice to all avenues, our selection of highlights is based on newly-emerging themes, issues of particular contemporary relevance and research by some of our newer staff, who have more recently completed their doctoral studies.

Dr Dominik Zaum discusses his work on tackling corruption in developing and war-torn states, Dr Ale Ferrari considers issues in European banking, Dr Vivien Burrows looks at some of the implications of her work on household mortgage debt, Dr Jonathan Golub discusses decision making in the Euro-pean Parliament, Dr Andi Nygaard outlines his work on immigration and social cohesion, Dr Patrick Tomlin examines the rules of criminal trials, Professor Mark Casson examines what can be learned from looking at very long-run economic trends. This work is linked to the research programme of the University’s new Centre for Economic History. Dr Patrick Porter outlines his work on international strategic affairs and Professor Nigar Hashimzade discusses her research on gender biases in business.

Tackling corruption in developing and war-torn states

Corruption poses major challenges to development and security, and has become a major priority for donors and development agencies. Corruption undermines the provision of public services like education and health care, disproportionately affecting the poor and vulnerable. Grievances about corrup-tion can fuel insurgencies and provide incentives for violence. The British gov-ernment is committed to spend 30% of its official development assistance (ODA) in fragile and conflict-affected countries by 2014/5. War-torn countries, however, are highly susceptible to corruption as conflict has often weakened state institutions, including those normally controlling corruption (like the police and the courts), and because they experi-ence sudden inflows of large amounts of aid, sometimes multiples of local GDP. It is therefore no coincidence that in 2011, sixteen of the twenty countries at the bottom of the global Corruption Percep-tion Index had experienced conflict within the last five years.

In many respects, corruption and the challenges of tackling corruption in developing countries remain poorly understood. There is only limited evi-dence on what works and does not work (and why) when tackling corruption, and little data on the complex roles that corruption plays in contexts of conflict and weak governance. Dr Dominik Zaum, from the Department of Politics and International Relations, has been working with two parts of the UK gov-ernment to address some of these issues.

Since being seconded as a Senior Research Fellow in Conflict and Fragil-ity to the Department for International Development (DFID) in November 2011, Dr Zaum has been evaluating the evidence for the impact of different donor-funded anti-corruption interven-tions. This review found that the overall evidence base on which decisions to support one form of reform over another is very weak, and only a small number of anti-corruption reforms are supported by robust evidence, including reforms of public financial manage-ment systems (PFM) and supreme audit institutions. It also identified several reasons for the weakness of the existing evidence. While on the one hand the study of corruption is always hampered by data problems as it is a clandestine activity and consequently difficult to measure, it also found that there are only few studies that explicitly examine whether and why particular anti-corrup-tion reforms work or not. On the basis of this work, DFID is currently develop-ing a research programme to address some of the identified evidence gaps.

As part of an ESRC Public Sector Place-ment Fellowship, Dr Zaum has also been working with the Stabilisation Unit, the UK government’s centre for expertise for stabilisation in conflict-affected states, to examine the complex roles of corruption in stabilisation, and the process of establishing early peace and security in countries affected by conflict and instability. The research found that security and political and economic


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dynamics are affected by the character of corruption, rather than its scale. In countries with weak institutions, and with deeply divided, competitive politi-cal systems, corruption is more likely to fuel further violence than in countries where institutions are weak, but power is concentrated in a small elite. In the case of the latter, rulers often use cor-ruption to sustain extensive patronage networks that help to provide stability in the absence of strong state institu-tions. While such states are more stable, in the long run their iniquity can undermine legitimacy and stability, as witnessed in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011.

He also found that international efforts to address a conflict can often entrench and shape the character of corruption, for example through negotiated peace deals that gives the leaders of armed groups formal positions of power and access to state resources, through govern-

ance reforms, and through the aid and financial assistance that donors give. In fragile and conflict-affected states, aid that is spent off-budget and bypasses the state is often found to weaken state authority and strengthen the power of local elites over local communities.

Addressing corruption in conflict-affected states involves difficult moral and political trade-offs. Accepting corruption might buy stability in the short- and medium term, but fuel griev-ances (and with it the risk of violence) in the long term. Actively pursuing the venally corrupt might satisfy our sense of justice, but undermine fragile orders in conflict-affected states. This then highlights the need for a more dif-ferentiated discussion about corruption and its roles in war-torn states, and also a need for greater reflection on the role of external actors in shaping and per-petuating such orders.

Gender biases in business

Professor Nigar Hashimzade presented her work on gender bias in manage-rial appointments (jointly with Yulia Rodionova, of De Montfort University) at the annual European meeting of the Econometric Society. The researchers analysed the effect of the gender of the business owner and of the top manager upon business performance. In the pres-ence of gender bias in hiring a female, on average, she must exhibit better skills than a male in order to be appointed to a skilled job, if the hiring decision is made by a male. The converse also holds. The research is supported by empirical evidence based on the firm-level data for twenty six emerging economies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, from the 2009 wave of the Business Envi-ronment and Enterprise Performance Survey. In particular, the authors found that male-owned firms with female top managers perform better than male-owned firms with male top managers, after controlling for various factors, including possible constraints on access to external finance. Furthermore, the researchers found evidence of an exac-erbation of discrimination in the labour market (gender bias in hiring), from discrimination in the capital market (gender bias in access to finance).

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Efficiency and performance of banking systems

Dr Alessandra Ferrari is involved in col-laborative projects on the efficiency, performance and convergence of banking systems; she has also been a member of the scientific committee for the International Finance and Banking Society conference in Rome. Two of her current projects focus on European commercial banks, a topical issue given the financial crisis and the talks about a banking union.

The first project looks at bank produc-tivity growth and convergence patterns within 9 countries in the Eurozone for the years 1992 to 2009, so before and after the introduction of the common currency; it uses novel econometric techniques to identify the existence of technology gaps. This work finds that productivity improvements, in terms of technical progress, cost reductions and increased efficiency, have charac-terised the Eurozone countries until the inception of the financial crisis, which in most cases reversed the posi-tive trends. The project also finds that even if Eurozone countries appear to benefit from technological spillovers and are moving towards the use of the best available technologies, significant differences across them continue to exist. This suggests that recent calls for a banking union might be premature as some persistent differences among member states seem to exist, with some countries leading the changes and others lagging behind. This work

has been presented at several interna-tional conferences.

The second project is called Prospective Analysis for the Mediterranean Region (MEDPRO) and is a large collaborative piece of work prepared for the EU Com-mission, within the 7th Framework Programme. The scale of the current financial crisis has certainly revealed how important banking regulation is, and how relevant it is to have smoothly functioning financial markets. With this in mind the project looks at the different regulatory structures and at the cost performance of commercial banking systems in over 30 countries in the EU, North Africa and Middle East, over a period of 13 years. With a data set of over 45,000 banks the project looks at their technology changes, efficiency and convergence and in particular at the existence of a North-South divide. The

results of this analysis will soon form part of a EU Commission book and the research is currently being extended into academic papers.

Finally in a paper to appear in the Review of Economics and Statistics, Dr Ferrari adopts a novel methodologi-cal framework to analyse the impact of regulatory reforms on the produc-tivity growth of Indian commercial banks. She finds that financial reforms did help to improve productivity via positive changes in efficiency and technology and that these changes have not been eliminated by heavier re-regulation processes. However she also finds that in a developing country such as India corporate ownership matters in how banks respond to such changes and that foreign banks have a leading role in introducing and pushing forward technological advances.


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Household indebtedness

The rise in household indebtedness has been one of the key factors in the current financial crisis in the UK. In the decade up to 2007, the level of debt held by households increased dramatically and one category of debt in particular saw a sharp rise – home equity borrowing. This is where homeowners borrow against the value of their homes, net of any outstand-ing mortgage debt they already hold. Rising house prices increased the equity available to households and, combined with low real interest rates, helped fuel this boom in borrowing. However, it also made indebted households more vulner-able to house price falls. This increase in home equity borrowing was coupled with a fall in aggregate household saving, raising important questions about the sustainability of household indebtedness.

Looking at aggregate statistics offers only a limited insight into household behaviour. Households are different; they have different needs and different motives for borrowing and saving. A more complete understanding of what drove the increase in home equity bor-rowing and fall in household saving during this period therefore requires a more detailed household-level analysis.

This was the focus of the work carried out by Dr Vivien Burrows as part of her PhD thesis and which she has contin-ued to pursue since her arrival in the Department of Economics. This work highlighted the role of both current and expected future house prices, as well as their volatility, in understand-ing households’ equity borrowing and saving decisions.

Since 2007 these trends have been reversed, with tighter credit markets and increased economic uncertainty restricting access as well as the will-ingness of households to take on more debt and boosting household saving. However reactions to the current crisis have not been uniform across house-holds and future work will examine how individual households are now acting to reduce their debt burdens.

Dr Burrows work also links up with long-standing research in the Depart-ment on the operation of housing markets, notably causes of housing market volatility and the implications for young households attempting to step onto the owner-occupation ladder. Research by Professor Geoffrey Meen, forthcoming in Urban Studies, shows how potential first-time purchasers have suffered from the housing deci-sions of older households who are already home owners. Despite the rapid increase in mortgage indebted-ness since the early 1990s, most of the increases have gone to existing home owners, leaving first-time buyers to still face credit shortages.

Rules in criminal trials

In a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Political Philosophy, Dr Patrick Tomlin, from the Department of Poli-tics, takes a close look at the rules of criminal trials and, in particular, the presumption of innocence and the high standard of proof required to overturn it. What, it asks, could justify this pro-cedural rule, famously described as the ‘Golden Thread’ of our legal system? One natural answer, and one that most criminal law theorists seem happy to reach for, is that it is a terrible wrong to punish the innocent, and therefore we ought to take great care to avoid this outcome. If this is the right way to understand the presumption of inno-cence, Tomlin argues, this would have major ramifications for our practices and institutions in other parts of the criminal justice system. For example, two other ways in which our institu-tions distribute wrongful punishment are through criminalising conduct which should not, in fact, be crimi-nalised, and through giving people overly-harsh sentences. Therefore, it seems, when criminalising conduct or sentencing criminals, we should err on the side of caution in the same way, and as much, as we ask our juries or judges in making conviction decisions. The idea is to show how the principles we endorse at the trial stage of the criminal justice process can have rami-fications for how we ought to set up institutions and behave in other areas of the criminal justice process, and therefore to promote more ‘joined-up’ scholarship across the criminal justice process as a whole, rather than think-ing about principles for punishment, the content of the criminal law, and trials independently from one another.

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Social cohesion in an ethnically diverse area

In 2010 Dr Andi Nygaard (Department of Economics) and Dr Ellie Francis-Brophy (Institute of Education) were awarded a small grant to assist Slough Borough Council to map and evalu-ate social cohesion and advise on local authority public policy intervention in an ethnically diverse neighbourhood in Slough. This research is now in its final stage with a second cohesion audit carried out in the summer of 2012. This community-based research was the basis for an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP) project that enabled a 2nd year Economics student to participate in the research process and gain first-hand experience of collecting data intended for evidence-based policy develop-ment. A key finding of the research is residents’ emphasis on social integra-tion alongside economic integration in order to improve social cohesion and getting along together. As a result of the three-year relationship with Slough Borough Council (SBC), the Economics-Education team is a partner in SBC’s successful £410,000 bid for a Migration Excel project funded by the European Integration Fund. The aim of the project is the development and evaluation of policies to further social and technological integration of newly arrived migrants.

This project thus continues the Depart-ment of Economics’ focus on the spatial impacts and dynamics of international migration and its focus on evidence-based public policy analysis. In their grant decision Home Office officials commented positively on the clear integration of a research component and the continuation of an established local authority-university relationship. Building on the experience with local migration issues in the Thames Valley area Drs Nygaard and Francis-Brophy are members of the Thames Valley Stra-tegic Migration Group. This regional stakeholder group is now alternately convened at the University of Reading and Slough BC.

The Economics-Education team is also funded by Bracknell Forest and Buckinghamshire local authorities to evaluate the efficacy of local author-ity intervention with respect to the school readiness of pre-school children. Specifically this project is concerned with measuring and evaluating the efficacy of local authority programmes designed to improve the school readiness of children in low income households, with a view to reduc-ing school attainment gaps overall. A tuition efficacy study is also currently being carried out for Explore Learning.

Which states win most in the European Union?

The England football team may have come up short against some of the top teams in Euro 2012 but new research shows the UK has historically performed better in the European Union (EU) than its fellow large member states. In two papers published in the Journal of Euro-pean Public Policy in 2012, Dr Jonathan Golub highlights how when it comes to the daily regulatory decisions hammered out in Brussels, smaller EU states enjoyed more bargaining success compared to larger countries, the exception being the UK. The research also highlights how Germany, despite contributing most to the EU budget, is one of the worst per-formers in terms of getting the laws it wants, a fact that could potentially harm the EU’s long-term prospects.

Looking at the pre-2004 period which offered him the most complete data, and using a better measure of bargain-ing success and improved statistical techniques than previous studies, Dr Golub found that commonly held views on which states best translate their preferences into EU law were incorrect. Not only did states differ far more sig-nificantly in their respective levels of bargaining success than previously rec-ognised, but some of the smaller states are the ones that excel. France, Italy and Germany did especially poorly,


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whereas Ireland, Luxembourg, Austria and the Nordic states did particularly well. The UK is the only large state whose bargaining success was on par with these much smaller leaders.

Dr Golub, from the Department of Politics says: ‘We know surprisingly little about whether European Union law reflects the preferences of some member states more than others. Most people either believe that no state con-sistently achieves more of what it really wants than any other, or that large member states tend to beat small ones. My research found that neither view of how the EU works is accurate. Finding a full explanation for the surprising results remains a real puzzle. Perhaps small states achieve more because they pick their battles carefully, focusing their diplomatic efforts on a small number of proposals. They also have excellent communication between their national capitals and their nego-tiators in Brussels, and they don’t isolate themselves by adopting extreme negotiating positions. A common view is that France does unusually well from EU agricultural policy, and Germany benefits disproportionately from inter-nal market measures. Whatever truth there is to these claims, in terms of bargaining success on agricultural

policies France failed to beat any of the smaller states. It even managed to lose to tiny Luxembourg. On internal market policies Germany did no better than any of the smaller states.’

Dr Golub’s results reflect well on the effectiveness of the previous British government’s bargaining efforts, and they are good news for small Member States, but they potentially ring an alarm bell for the future of the EU. He continues: ‘Germany contributes the most to the EU budget, it might be called on to underwrite the Euro via a massive bailout fund and Eurobonds, yet it seems to get precious little legislative compensation for its money. Several of the smaller states had their cake and ate it too, receiving substantial financial support while also enjoying signifi-cantly more legislative success than Germany. The risk is that, if publicly recognised, this combination of footing the bill and not getting the laws it wants could undermine German support for the EU, without which the entire inte-gration project would unravel.’

Data for the post-2004 period is only just becoming available, so it remains unknown whether things are any differ-ent today but Dr Golub’s conceptual and analytical tools will allow researchers to answer these important questions.

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Big issues and big data

When economic statistics first developed as a subject, data were relatively scarce and costly to process. They were entered manually, and computations were carried out using mechanical calculators rather than electronic computers. When social surveys were first undertaken, there was an opportunity to analyse large amounts of data on individuals or households, but much of this was cross-section data, relating to a specific point in time. Relationships over time were generally studied in terms of eco-nomic aggregates. As successive surveys were carried out on the same sets of households, however, panels of data became available, and this inspired the development of panel data estimation techniques. In some areas of economic research, therefore, large data sets have become the norm, and along with the data sets have come new techniques with which to analyse them.

This is not true of all areas of econom-ics, however. In economic history, statistical analysis often involves rela-tively small amounts of data. Ideally, economic history would rely on data sets going back into the distant past, with a wide coverage of commodi-ties, countries, and so on. The further researchers go back into the past, however, the scarcer data become.

Some just were not collected, because people could not see the point of col-lection when they did not know how to use the data; or if they were collected they were not recorded. Other data were recorded but have not survived because the records have since been lost.

Over the past few years, international teams of historians, supported by large research grants, have set about address-ing this problem. Big new data sets are being delivered for historians to analyse, but disappointingly many his-torians are simply analysing the data using the same old techniques that were used to analyse the small data sets that they were used to in the past. This is true in respect of land owner-ship, commodity prices, money supply, as well as other more specialised areas. But, increasingly, even mainstream economists are beginning to appreci-ate the value of analysing long-run changes in the economy and the value of economic history. This interest arises partly from the failures of financial markets in the recent global financial crisis and the recognition that financial crises have occurred periodically since the medieval era.

A new project, led by Reading econo-mists Nigar Hashimzade and Mark Casson, is setting out to address this

problem. In a forthcoming book on Large Data Bases in Economic History: Research Methods and Case Studies (Routledge, 2013), Hashimzade and Casson show how quantitative histo-rians can raise their game. They are working with a team of historians to apply modern econometric techniques to these exciting new historical data sets. Their collaborators include Jane Humphries, current President of the Economic History Society, Sir Tony Wrigley, co-founder of the famous Cambridge Group for the History of Pop-ulation and Social Structure, and Nick Mayhew, Deputy Director of Collections at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Reading members of the team include Andrew Godley of the Henley Business School, Adrian Bell, Chris Brooks and Tony Moore of the ICMA Centre, Mar-garet Yates of the History Department , and Jane McCutcheon, doctoral student in economics. The new techniques are charting more clearly than ever before how the market economy developed in England over the last seven hundred years. Although research is still in pro-gress, it is already clear that history textbooks may need to be re-written in the light of the some of the statistical patterns that modern techniques are able to detect in these data sets.


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Strategic affairs

Over the last year Dr Patrick Porter has worked on a range of projects in the field of strategic studies, the study of the relationship between armed force and policy. His main focus has been on the military and diplomatic history of the United States and the development of grand strategy and defence policy in the present. His work has attracted considerable media attention and he has become an occasional, syndicated columnist in the Australian Press on strategic affairs, writing in the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. Dr Porter’s newspaper writings come at a time when the debate over defence and the implications for Australia are par-ticularly relevant, with the rise of new giants. Uncertainties over the relative powers of Washington and Beijing in terms of economic growth are fuelling increased defence spending, confron-tations over critical areas such as the South China Sea and a fresh debate in Australia about its future as a Middle Power. Dr Porter also acted as a con-sultant and as a ‘talking head’ for an upcoming History Channel documen-tary, ‘World War Two from Space’, an account of the United States’ role in the

war and its rise as a superpower.

In addition, in the public sphere, Dr Porter made a submission to the House of Commons Public Administration Committee and its inquiry into National Security Strategy and he is a Fellow of the UK Chief of Defence Staff’s Strategic Forum. The House of Commons submis-sion was made at a time when the UK Government is increasingly treating National Security Strategy as a process to be institutionalised in declaratory documents and in mechanisms such as the National Security Council. Dr Por-ter’s contribution was to place this in historical context, explain why the role of ideas matters as well as structures of government, and to suggest the need for greater rigour in defining and ranking the national interest.

With the support of a grant – a Fellow-ship from the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College – Dr Porter is writing a monograph on prospects for ‘Sharing Power’, or alternative grand strategies based on Concerts or Power Balancing, with a particular focus on East Asia and the Persian Gulf.

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Conferences, seminars and public engagementLiberal way of war conference

For the last three years, the School has been the academic home of the Lever-hulme Major Research Programme ‘The Liberal Way of War: Strategy, Ideology, Representations’. This £610,000 grant was secured in 2008 as the outcome of an open competition inviting institu-tions to put together teams to study ‘Security and Liberty’. It has brought together 15 Reading scholars from four departments (Politics, Law, History, and Modern Languages) to research the shifting nature of the constraints on ‘liberal’ states arising from their liberal commitments. The Programme is origi-nal in conception. Though it is led by Alan Cromartie, who is primarily an historian of political thought, it is ulti-mately practical in focus; its aim is to bring to bear insights drawn from cul-tural and intellectual history upon the present-day strategic problems experi-enced by major Western powers.

Since 2009-10, the Programme has supported nine fully-funded PhD stu-dents (six of them based in Politics; three in the other departments), who have met at least weekly in term-time to give presentations or hear external speakers. Along with the more professionally-oriented General Dynamics Seminars, it has done much to sustain and develop Reading’s place as a leading centre of Strategic Studies. Its more notable achievements have included a workshop compar-ing Western and Islamic laws of war and the first ever multi- disciplinary conference that was devoted to ‘Inter-rogation’. As we hoped, the lively class

of graduate students has formed the hub of a much larger grouping that integrates the study of war into the study of many other things. Scholarly outputs now in preparation include four books and two special issues of journals.

From July 5 – 7 2012, the School was host to a major international conference, devoted to the overarching theme of ‘Liberal Wars’, whose purpose was to sum up and reflect on these achieve-ments. In the course of three days, just over sixty speakers, led by the strategist Sir Lawrence Freedman and the historian Richard Overy, gave papers concerned with all aspects of those military conflicts conducted by agents loosely described as ‘liberal’. The framework of the conference was quite a simple thought: whatever else it does, war puts societies under pressure; it forces them into choices between priorities that then require public explanation. If they are ‘liberal’ in any sense, it forces them into presenting the violent things they do as part of a

larger project of preserving or extend-ing liberty. It compels them to talk to themselves and the world about what they really value.

We did not define liberalism: we wished to avoid presupposing that we knew what was really involved in having, and thinking oneself to have, broadly liberal commitments. At the conference’s end, we were no closer to consensus. But three days of absorb-ing discussion gave ample food for thought about the complex interactions between the character of war and the nature of the societies that wage it. The conference ended with a convivial launch of one of the Programme’s first products: the stimulating essays edited by Andreas Behnke and Chris-tina Hellmich under the title Knowing Al-Qaeda (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). The Programme ends next year, but the interdisciplinary community it has created will certainly continue to exist. We look forward to many similar publications and events as part of the School’s intellectual future.


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Stand-up economics

A welcome treat towards the end of the spring term came with an evening of stand-up economics! Dr Yoram Bauman is the world’s first and only stand up economist and he visited Reading as part of his 2012 ‘Gold Standard’ world tour. Yoram’s aim in life is ‘to spread joy to the world through economics comedy; to reform economics educa-tion; and to implement carbon pricing.’

His hugely entertaining set certainly was a delight and the standing ovation at the end of the evening was a testa-ment to his triumph. In his other life he is an environmental economist and he presented one of his academic papers on the economics of climate change to the department. Thanks go to Dr Marina Della Giusta and Dr Martha-Marie Klein-hans for organising the event.

Centre for institutional performance

In May the Centre for Institutional Per-formance hosted a one-day workshop on ‘Taxation and Tax Evasion: Economics and Beyond’. This workshop highlighted an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of taxation and tax evasion for academics and practitioners, integrating economics with politics, history, psy-chology, sociology, and law. Renowned experts in various aspects of taxation and tax evasion came to present their

work, including Michael Braddick (Shef-field), Jane Frecknall-Hughes (The Open University) , Mathieu Lefebvre (Liege), Alan Lewis (Bath), Gareth Myles (Exeter and IFS), Matthew Rablen (Brunel). The presenters and the participants in the discussion emphasized that a better understanding of tax compliance and tax evasion behaviour requires an understanding of the cultural and politi-cal context, taking into account the

effect of peer networks, social customs, and institutional arrangements. The workshop was organized by Professor Nigar Hashimzade, a member of CIP, and was attended by staff and students of the University of Reading, and other UK universities, as well as representa-tives of HMRC. It was funded from an HMRC/HMT/ESRC grant for research on tax evasion in networks.

Diplomacy and strategy

Professor Beatrice Heuser held visiting professorships at two Paris universi-ties during the year, including the Sorbonne. As part of her activities, she helped to co-ordinate a series of work-shops and conferences, which will lead to publications. These included confer-ences in October on ‘Britain and the

Afghan Wars, 1979-2011’; on ‘Diplomacy and the New Media’ in November; on ‘Cinema in the Cold War’ in January; on ‘Counterinsurgencies’ organised with the Bar Ilan University, Israel, sup-ported by the Academic Studies Group; on ‘Origins and Diversity of Small Wars, from the 16th century to 1830’ in May.

In addition, Professor Heuser completed a manuscript on ‘Asymmetric Wars’ expected to be published early in 2013. Finally, at not least, Beatrice was one of the School’s star media performers appearing on Radio 4 as part of Melvin Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ programme, talking about Clausewitz.

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Staff-student question time

In March of the Spring Term SPEIR stu-dents Lewis Van Diggele, Adam Pasierbek and Ed Burn, members of the Reading University Think Tank Society, hosted an event styled on the famous ‘Question Time’ topical debate programme. The subject for the evening’s discussion was ‘The Value of Higher Education’. The night began with a short welcome from the chair Lewis Van Diggele and swiftly progressed to a lively discussion with questions raised such as ‘should students attend University just to get a good job’ and ‘why does the first year not count’ to ‘what is the importance of learning how to think for oneself’. With lengthy comparisons to the American Liberal Arts education system (perhaps owing to

the American contingent on the panel, Professor Brad Hooker and our resident economist Dr Mark Guzman) along with inspiring comments from education expert Sir David Bell KCB (Vice Chancel-lor and former Permanent Secretary at the Department of Education) and pas-sionate remarks from Dr Alan Renwick (Politics and International Relations), the questions were addressed. The audi-ence and panel were challenged with thought provoking interjections from panellist James Fletcher (President of Reading University’s Student Union and former Politics and International Rela-tions student), but the debate ended with an almost unanimous conclusion that the importance of a rich, academically

stimulating, student experience is the true value of higher education. It was encouraging to note the mixture of staff and students in the audience and panel, contributing to the success of the night.

International summer school

In July-August the Department of Eco-nomics ran an International Summer School course on Crises, Bubbles and Macroeconomic Policies. This three-week course started with an overview of the history of asset bubbles and crises, from the South Sea bubble and Tulipmania to the Great Depression and the more recent dotcom bubble, and to the latest global financial crisis, as well as the ongoing Eurozone crisis. Lectures and class presentations and discussion covered, among other issues, the latest events in the national and global finan-cial markets, such as the sub-prime mortgage crisis and toxic assets, and the macroeconomic policies aimed at the economic recovery and the prevention of similar crises in the future.

Departmental seminar series

Both Departments ran active weekly seminar series over the last year, where distinguished speakers from the UK and Europe were invited to present the results of their latest research. Amongst the many highlights of the programmes were Dr Laleh Khalili from SOAS, who spoke on the litera-ture generated by counter-insurgency campaigns and Dr Daniel Branch (Uni-versity of Warwick) on Loyalism and War in the British Empire.

Happiness and wellbeing

At the invitation of the Prime Minister of Bhutan, Colin Ash attended the high level meeting on ‘Happiness and Wellbe-ing: Defining a New Economic Paradigm’, held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on April 2-4, 2012. He was asked to lead a discussion group and to participate in the ‘Experts and Scholars’ Group, (For the report see www.2apr.gov.bt/images/BhutanReport_WEB_F.pdf). Fol-lowing on from the UN meeting, he was invited to contribute to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Interfaith Seminar on Inter-national Development held at Lambeth Palace in May.

www.2apr.gov.bt/images/BhutanReport_WEB_F.pdf

www.2apr.gov.bt/images/BhutanReport_WEB_F.pdf


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Social media

This year has seen an increased use of social media, throughout the school, to promote our good works and interact with our students. We have two depart-mental Facebook pages, an alumni Facebook page, a twitter account and a Politics blog. Our departmental Face-book pages are used to share photos, remind students about events and to engage with prospective students. This year we launched an alumni Facebook page for our graduates. The alumni Facebook group offers a central place for graduates to network with one another and as a way to contact anyone in the department. It also provides an opportunity for us to advertise events

and seminars that we feel our past students will be interested in attend-ing. Our twitter page may not be as prolific as other departments across the University but we have found it a great way to alert our followers to any new ‘press releases’, essentially as a signpost to our news articles on the website. We have also experimented with Facebook advertising, with some surprising results. We received in total over 4000 ‘clicks’ on our adverts, with the majority of clicks coming from India, from our international advertis-ing campaign. We will continue to use Facebook as a means to advertise our school, particularly for our Postgradu-

ate taught courses. It has been another absorbing year of posts from our Poli-tics bloggers with engaging articles discussing current political affairs including a live blog from a House of Commons debate (on Lords Reform) a guest blog by Dr David Chuter on the French Political system and a number of contributions from research stu-dents. Over the next year we will continue to make effective use of social media to maintain an active environ-ment for students, staff and colleagues across the wider University to engage with one another.

International centre for housing and urban economics

In May, the International Centre for Housing and Urban Economics held a workshop on ‘The Shaping of Cities: Long-Term Changes in the Urban Envi-ronment’. The aim of the meeting was to look at the long-run development of cities across the centuries and millen-nia, bringing together economists and researchers from other disciplines to

examine the impact of geology, migra-tion and demography, technology and trade, war and conflict and economic policy. In addition to contributors from different departments at the University of Reading, speakers participated from the LSE and Universities of Glasgow, Birmingham and Santiago.

The idea of the workshop was that city structures change only slowly, because of the persistence of the stock of physi-cal capital and this has implications for both economic and social policy today. Patterns of segregation and poverty today, for example, are still heavily affected by developments in the 19th century and earlier.

Centre for euro-asian studies

This was another busy year for energy research within the Centre for Euro-Asian studies (CEAS). In September, the Centre’s director, Professor Yelena Kalyuzhnova provided a briefing paper on the Caspian region for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In June, Professor Kalyuzhnova and Dr Chris-tian Nygaard were keynote speakers at a seminar co-hosted by CEAS and the British-Kazakh Society, at the House of Lords, in which they disseminated the main results of their research under the

British Council’s INSPIRE project. The Council aims to strengthen academic linkages between UK Universities and those in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. The team’s talk was entitled, ‘Local Content in Kazakhstan –Perceptions of Households’. Professor Kalyuzhnova also presented the results to Kazakh stu-dents at UCL in February and took part in the Ditchley conference in November on ‘The Central Asian Republics and Their International Partners’. The Ditch-

ley Foundation is a privately-funded charity established in 1958 to promote trans-Atlantic understanding. Their con-ferences are designed as a resource for senior policy-makers and professional analysts from the fields of politics, the civil service, education, civil society, business, industry and the media. The Centre also secured 6 scholarships for postgraduate studies sponsored by Burren Energy for 2011/12.

Annual Review 2011–2012 For more information, please contact:

Amy Harris Development Officer, School of Politics, Economics and International Relations Room 182 HumSS Tower University of Reading Whiteknights Reading, RG6 6AA

[email protected] Tel (0118) 378 8230

www.reading.ac.uk

mailto:[email protected]

www.reading.ac.uk

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