Bulletin Academic News

Beijing invests a lot of diplomatic and public-relations effort in persuading the world that China’s “peaceful rise” is nothing to fear. This is especially true in Africa, where government and business links to China increase by the day.

Yet recent events in Libya highlight Beijing’s apparent misunderstanding of what precisely makes others uneasy about China’s rise, and how best to address those concerns, argues Professor Steve Tsang, Director of the China Policy Institute, in the Wall Street Journal.

China has been rooted to the Tier 2 watchlist of the United Nations’ global trafficking report for seven years for its failure to improve awareness of and services for Chinese victims of transnational trafficking.

But later this year it has a chance to make amends, writes Jackie Sheehan, associate professor at the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies and the China Policy Institute, the University of Nottingham.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) has released its assessment criteria and working methods for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF).

The Big Society has divided opinion ever since the concept was first unveiled in last year’s Conservative Party manifesto.

Joanne Hindle, Director of the Financial Services Research Forum, argues that its very lack of definition should serve as encouragement for the financial sector to work for the greater good – and that in thinking Big we should never forget the individual.

China is increasingly being seen by developing nations as a role model for economic development, but what lessons can be learned from its privatisation programme?

Writing in China Daily, Dr Kevin Amess, of Nottingham University Business School, argues that partial privatisation is best equipped to deliver a win-win scenario for nations seeking to create vested interests that support an agenda of reform.

The sheer scale of “latecomers” involved in the Doha round of trade negotiations presents a challenge unprecedented in the history of the World Trade Organisation, a leading authority on the WTO has told an audience at the University of Nottingham.

Delivering The World Economy Annual Lecture 2011 at the Globalisation and Economic Policy Centre (GEP), Professor Robert Staiger, of Stanford University, said the issues surrounding the successful integration of developing nations could not be dismissed as a “trivial problem”.

Underlying the difficulties, he suggested, is the fact that some of the aims stated in the declaration at the start of the Doha round in 2001 are simply “incoherent from the perspective of economic analysis”.

A leading adviser on pension policy has backed the “bold reform” of UK retirement planning after warning the current approach can no longer be seen as relevant.

Addressing the influential Financial Services Research Forum, Malcolm Small called for the pension age to be raised to 70 as soon as possible and indexed to life expectancy thereafter.

He branded the present system too complex and said it could not endure in the face of concerns such as long-term care issues and the national debt.

Academics, policymakers and third sector figures gathered at the London School of Economics on June 13 to debate how academic research can impact on policy, industry and wider society.

This seventh report looks at research impact and the REF.

Academics, policymakers and third sector figures gathered at the London School of Economics on June 13 to debate how academic research can impact on policy, industry and wider society.

This sixth report looks at improving academic communication.

Academics, policymakers and third sector figures gathered at the London School of Economics on June 13 to debate how academic research can impact on policy, industry and wider society.

This fifth report looks at knowledge exchange and the role of research mediators.