Five Asa Briggs Visiting Fellowship awards have been made to a prestigious group of international academics and Sussex faculty.
Named after a 'founding father' of the University and its second Vice-Chancellor, this prestigious scheme will enable inward visits for internationally outstanding academic collaborations to work on specific projects with Sussex faculty.
Professor Michael Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, said:
“This relatively new scheme, which has been championed by the Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Interdisciplinary Research, Professor Alan Lester, has certainly proved its worth with this year’s cohort of visitors.
"Across the spectrum of research fields, from hard sciences to humanities, world-leading experts have been able to come and enjoy the community, facilities and environment of Sussex as they work in collaboration with our faculty.
"Already the fruits of these collaborations are being shown, with new books, articles, grant applications and externally funded projects developed.”
Asa Briggs Visiting Fellows for 2018
Professor Limin Qiu, Chang Jiang Chair Professor in the College of Energy Engineering at Zhejiang University, will be collaborating with Dr Kun Liang (Engineering and Informatics) on the project High efficiency linear compressor for cryogenic systems. The project will focus on investigating the application of a novel moving magnet linear compressor being instrumented at Sussex.
Dr Antke Engel, Director of the Institute for Queer Theory, will be collaborating with Professor Cynthia Weber (Global Studies) on the project Diversity, Queerversity, Conflictual Heterogeneity. The project will focus on how queer theory might mitigate conflicts arising from socio-sexual and transnational differences. It does this by proposing ‘queerversity’ rather than diversity’ as its analytical lens.
Professor Robert Abrams, Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, will be collaborating with Dr Khalid Ali (BSMS) on the project Intergrating Medicine, History and Humanities in delivering compassionate care for older people. The project will focus on understanding the therapeutic benefits of using an ‘audio biography’ approach in terminally ill hospice patients.
Professor Douglas Cumming, Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship at Schulich School of Business, York University, will be collaborating with Professor Ranko Jelic (BMEc) on Financial Markets Abuse in Europe. The project will focus on analysing the implications of the enforcement of insider trading regulation in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK during the period 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2017. The results of the project should inform debate regarding whether London will remain the leading European financial market after Brexit.
Professor Wenming Zou, Chair of the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Tsinghua University, will be collaborating with Professor Michael Melgaard (MPS) on Variational Methods and Applications to Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations. The project addresses very challenging mathematical problems at the cutting edge of modern research on nonlinear partial differential equations, modelling electronic structure models and Bose-Einstein condensates, in particular involving magnetic fields and relativistic effects.
More details about the Asa Briggs Fellowships can be found on the Sussex Research website.
Current Asa Briggs Fellow, Steven Finkelstein, Associate Professor of Astronomy at University of Texas at Austin, will be giving a public lecture on Monday 4 June on Reionization: A Cosmic Detective Game. Register to attend via Eventbrite.