College Dean, Professor Debra Myhill, said: “I am delighted by this exceptional performance that places the College in a nationally competitive position. The results emphasise our focus on excellent research across a number of related disciplines”.
Further details can be found on our dedicated pages: www.exeter.ac.uk/ref2014
The College of Social Sciences and International Studies research has been rated as world-leading or internationally excellent in the first assessment of the research quality of UK universities since 2008, the Research Excellence Framework (REF).
Submissions to the REF were made in 36 Units of Assessment (UoA) and the quality of research was assessed using a 0-4* rating system. Law had 85% of research rated at 4* and 3* – compared to 73% nationally. At an institutional level, 82% of Exeter’s research has been rated as worldleading or internationally excellent which represents a huge rise from 56% in 2008 and places it first in the South West. When taking research graded at 4* and 3* together, Exeter is ranked 16th in the UK for 4* research – the very highest grade.
UPDATE FROM SOMALIA By Michael Sanderson
Readers of our last newsletter might recall that I have been working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Federal Government of Somalia to introduce a series of reforms to the Somali citizenship regime. The past few months have been among the most stimulating and challenging of my professional career, not to mention surprising – I hadn’t expected to find myself teaching during this experience. Opportunities for teaching outreach don’t stop when you walk out the front door. Discussions with the legal community in Kenya and Somalia led to opportunities to meet with faculty and before I knew it, I was back in the classroom. Before the end of last summer, I delivered lectures on nationality and the prevention of statelessness to students from a range of institutions in Mogadishu, at the University of Hargeisa in Somaliland (pictured) and at the University of Nairobi. By mid-autumn, I had delivered lectures to universities in China, the UK, and to the National Law School in Bangalore, India – all via Skype and often live from my desk in Mogadishu.
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This really caught my imagination. I could work with students in any country, from any country – and it was as easy as replying to an email and arranging a Skype call. Although video-conferencing isn’t a new idea, whereas in the past it meant a dedicated suite and an IT guy on stand-by, now it means a laptop, a projector and a half decent broadband connection – all things that are increasingly affordable and that virtually any law school will have to hand. Just imagine the possibilities; we could walk out of a lecture hall in Exeter and deliver the same lecture
to another group of students anywhere in the world. We could, in effect, “adopt a law school” and deliver a course of lectures at a university in the developing world where they might be struggling to offer a full curriculum or to cover particular issues. Of course, there’s no question who would really benefit. Given the opportunity to work with talented law students with different training and from very different backgrounds – while it would certainly be interesting and fun, it’s also one of the very few things that I can guarantee would make us all better lawyers.