Lancaster Global Showcase

Religion & Society

Professor Linda Woodhead has directed the largest ever research initiative on religion in the UK, the £12m Religion and Society Programme, involving 240 academics from 38 UK universities over five years from 2007-12 which has produced research of the highest quality on the interrelationships between religion and society.

Part of the programme involved the Westminster Faith Debates, organized by Lancaster University, which put religion back onto the agenda of public discussion. The debates culminated in a discussion between former Prime Minister Tony Blair, the then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, and the former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore.

Graphene

Lancaster physicists are investigating the thinnest electronic material in the world called graphene, which is touted as a 'wonder material' of the 21st Century. Lancaster's Professor Vladimir Falko is one of the leaders of a 10 year European 'Graphene Flagship' Project which is starting in 2013 with a €54M budget for 76 academic institutions and companies in 17 countries and will unfold into a €1bn program in the EU Framework Horizon 2020.

The fundamental studies of extreme materials at Lancaster extend far beyond graphene, into the next generations of two-dimensional atomic crystals including boron nitride and various metal chalcogenides. Together with Nobel Prize winning collaborators at Manchester and researchers at Cambridge, Professor Falko has won an exclusive €13.8M Synergy grant of the European Research Council for research in a broad range of atomically thin materials and their heterostructures with graphene.

Food Security

The Lancaster Food Security Research Programme forms part of a global response to a global issue. Professor Bill Davies and his team at Lancaster Environment Centre recognise that sustainable changes in people's access to food require a flexible, interconnected approach underpinned by rigorous research.

Lancaster's tradition of interdisciplinary thinking, training and researching, as well as extensive experience of collaborating with the food supply industry, policy makers and other key partners means they are well placed to address the most contentious and apparently intractable food security issues. They constantly seek out new and practical ways of applying scientific advances to improve the production and distribution of food around the world.

Lancaster scientists are actively involved in pioneering new methodologies for producing food in difficult conditions. In 2009, work led by Professor Davies won Lancaster University a Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education.

Cyber Security

The new Lancaster University Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research, led by Professor Awais Rashid, brings together internationally recognised researchers from diverse disciplines to address key issues threatening our security online from national security to online hacking.

Spanning the School of Computing and Communications, the Department of Psychology and the University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language, Lancaster's cyber security researchers are undertaking work including:

  • developing sophisticated language analysis tools to detect the techniques used by paedophiles to groom children in chat rooms
  • an analysis of a database of literature endorsing violent extremism
  • an influential study about emerging threats to the future internet
  • developing a network of wireless sensors to protect high security buildings from attack
  • developing mechanisms to protect the internet form cyber threats and tools which enable the network to repair itself and adapt to challenges.

Palliative Care

Established in 2003, the International Observatory on End of Life Care, led by Professor Sheila Payne, is now a globally recognised centre of excellence for research in palliative and end of life care. The Observatory undertakes high quality research, clinical studies, evaluation, education, advocacy and consultancy to improve palliative and end of life care for patients and family carers. It offers a range of methodological and theoretical expertise drawn from clinical and social science perspectives. Research focuses on clinical studies, particularly on:

  • the management of pain and other symptoms
  • understanding the needs of family and carers and planning interventions to support them
  • addressing the needs of older people including those with dementia and improving the provision of end of life care in residential and nursing homes
  • public education and awareness of end of life issues
  • research across the lifespan in chronic illness and end of life care, from childhood to old age.

Particle Physics

Researchers from Lancaster University, analysing data taken by the ATLAS experiment, were at the centre of what is believed to be the first clear observation of a new particle - the chi b(3P) - at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2011.

Lancaster Physics Department has a leading role in the LHC project , looking for the Higgs boson, as both a major player in ATLAS and the development of part of this detector. The Department has also helped construct the powerful computing systems used to analyse the data from the experiment and part of this system is hosted at Lancaster.

Innovation and design

Through its rigorous research programmes targeting organisations, cities, regions and economies, Lancaster University's Work Foundation is a leading provider of research-based analysis, knowledge exchange and policy advice in the UK and beyond. The London Creative Digital Fusion Project supports innovative collaborations between small and medium-sized businesses in the London digital and creative industries. Other partners in the initiative are the University of London, Queen Mary University, the Royal College of Art and the Council for Industry and Higher Education. This initiative runs until June 2014 and is supported by the European Regional Development Fund.

The EU funded Design in European Policies project aims to evaluate and share design innovation policies to help spur European growth. Lancaster's Big Innovation Centre and ImaginationLancaster are collaborating to map EU design innovation policies; create a tool for policymakers to evaluate future design policies; and provide an online platform for policymakers to access the evaluation tool. Other partners on the project are Politecnico di Milano, Confartigianato Lombardia, Munktell Science Park and Pro Design.