海角社区

The VET2050 project is launching a series of vision workshops bringing together practitioners, policymakers, employers, and learners to co-design what high quality vocational education and training could look like in England by 2050. These workshops explore long-term challenges and opportunities, from technological change to regional inequalities, and invite participants to imagine ambitious, evidence informed futures for the sector.

VET2050 is funded by the Youth Futures Foundation and delivered by the Institute for Employment Research (Terence Hogarth, Emily Erickson and Stef Poole) in collaboration with colleagues at SKOPE, University of Oxford (James Robson and Yushan Xie ). Our recent blog post provides more detail on the project鈥檚 aims, approach, and how these workshops contribute to a wider programme of research and engagement.

If you鈥檇 like to stay informed about upcoming workshops, publications, and project activities, we warmly invite you to join the VET2050 mailing list by visiting the our project website.

Register your interest here!Link opens in a new window

Suji Ko and Troy McConachy have published a new article examining how intercultural learning is supported in two English Conversation textbooks used in Korean high schools.

The study analyses the cultural representations presented in the textbooks, alongside the activities they include, to explore how they may support students in developing intercultural understanding and awareness.

The article, published in Language, Culture and Curriculum, is titled:

Ko, S., & McConachy, T. (2026). Examining intercultural learning in Korean high school 鈥楨nglish Conversation鈥� textbooks: The role of cultural representations and textbook activities. Language, Culture and Curriculum.

We鈥檙e incredibly proud to celebrate an outstanding member of our SELCS alumni community, Sue Sentance (Education Studies) following her recognition in the 2026 King's Birthday Honours.

This is a wonderful achievement and a testament to the impact Sue has made through her work and dedication. Being recognised in this way highlights her exceptional contribution and the difference she continues to make.

Sue's success is an inspiration to our students, alumni, staff, and wider SELCS community. Huge congratulations from everyone in SELCS!

Read more about the 海角社区 alumni and honorary graduates from a range of fields, who have been recognised in the recent Kings Birthday Honours and Garter Day here.

The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Diversity in Data Visualization (Diverse CDT) is a pioneering, fully funded four-year PhD programme jointly delivered by City St George鈥檚, University of London and the University of 海角社区.

Applications for PhD studentships with Diverse CDT are now open for 2026 entry.

We have rolling deadlines across several months and the first deadline for submitting an application is 4pm, GMT on 30th January 2026.

Further details here: /fac/cross_fac/cim/apply-to-study/phd-programmes/diverse-cdt/

We are delighted to share some positive results we have received from National Student Survey 2022.

Professor Thiemo Fetzer has researched the relationship between political polling and election outcomes. He comments: 

鈥淭he Reform UK sting highlights the vulnerability of the British political system from outside money and influence. This is well known, well understood, but yet, the British system is struggling to meaningfully improve its defenses. Channel 4 News reported three polls that were effectively commissioned by Reform, costing 拢32,500, were ultimately paid for by a US company that Reform figures believed belonged to a wealthy American backer. This construct effectively circumvents the already quite weak protections that British democracy has from outside influence.鈥�

Eleonora Alabrese adds: 鈥淭here are three separate failures here. A party seeking money from abroad to pay for polling. A pollster accepting an undisclosed commission, which sits uneasily with the industry鈥檚 own transparency rules. And newspapers running the results as independent findings without checking, or telling readers, who was behind them. Our work on UK general elections shows that polls published in the final weeks of a campaign can affect turnout: a poll is not a neutral piece of news, it is something people act on. There is a double standard too: had the same construct been used to move money for other purposes, a criminal investigation would follow. Here the cost falls on trust in the media, already low, and unlikely to recover if front-page numbers turn out to have been quietly paid for by a party. The practical answer is not necessarily to restrict polling, but to require disclosure along the chain.鈥� 

These polls effectively were commissioned in a way that was informed by Reform鈥檚 political strategy. The polls subsequently generated major newspaper coverage without Reform鈥檚 involvement being disclosed. As usual, Reform denies wrongdoing; two senior officials have stepped down, and the Metropolitan Police is assessing the allegations.

The episode reveals something more fundamental about the information architecture of elections: opinion polls do not simply measure politics. They can change politics.

This is precisely what Eleonora Alabrese and I have been studying.

In our paper, , we compare polls published at similar points before UK general elections. Polls appearing in Conservative-leaning newspapers systematically report lower Conservative vote shares than polls appearing in other news sources—and the difference becomes larger as election day approaches. In the final week, the estimated Conservative vote share reported by Conservative-leaning newspapers is 1.47 percentage points lower. In the paper we write that this pattern could suggest that polling is being used for 鈥渢urnout engineering whereby aligned voters may be mobilized by a perceived worse expected performance in the run up to an election.鈥�

That is not proof of deliberate manipulation by newspapers. Selection of which polls newspapers commission and publish may explain the pattern. 

Polls affect turnout.

When national polls predict an uncompetitive election, turnout falls. The effect is stronger in constituencies already perceived as safe and becomes more pronounced closer to election day. In Britain鈥檚 first-past-the-post system, national information therefore interacts with local electoral geography to change participation and party performance.

The intuition is straightforward. If your team appears not to be doing well, that can become 鈥�a voter mobilization mechanism.鈥� Conversely, if victory looks assured, some supporters may conclude that the personal cost of voting is no longer worth paying.

Now consider what the Reform sting appears to show.

According to Channel 4 News, the first of the polls appeared on the Telegraph front page under the headline 鈥�Labour would face wipeout if elections went ahead.鈥� Reform鈥檚 role in commissioning it was not disclosed to readers. It is not unlikely that such media coverage may have had impact on the internal politics within the Labour party, as scrutiny of Reform UK鈥檚 affairs was working its way through government. The poll cost 拢18,000, with payment subsequently arranged through the supposed US-backed company used in the sting.

That matters because a poll is not merely a number. It is also a news-producing technology. It is potentially the conversion of political expenditure into apparently independent public information: cash-strapped media organisations have a strong appetite for clean, authoritative content: a poll offers a number, a headline and an immediate political narrative. 

This is much more valuable than buying advertisement. This is precisely how dark influence operations can be orchestrated. While an advertisement says: a political party would like you to believe this, an apparently independent opinion poll may suggest to the public: this is what reality looks like.

Such information can affect political participation and may produce electoral surprises.

There is a second reason to take this seriously. 

In , we study electoral surprises by comparing opinion-poll expectations immediately before elections with eventual results across 233 elections in 51 countries.

Those surprises have economic consequences. A one-percentage-point larger electoral surprise is associated with about 0.37 percentage points lower year-on-year growth one year later, with the effects concentrated in strong democracies and operating primarily through increased policy uncertainty and weaker investment.

That paper is emphatically not evidence that manipulating polls allows somebody to manipulate the business cycle. But put the two papers together and they make an important point.

Polls help construct political expectations and may affect intra-party politics. Political expectations affect participation. And surprises relative to those expectations affect economic behaviour. The provenance of those expectations therefore matters.

This is where the Reform episode exposes a genuine regulatory blind spot. We tend to imagine political influence as:

donor 鈫� political party 鈫� campaign expenditure 鈫� voter.

The legal system and political convention are built around this dynamic. The Reform UK episode highlights that information can travel by another route:

funder 鈫� pollster 鈫� media 鈫� voter.

The party does not necessarily need to receive cash for somebody else鈥檚 expenditure to generate political value. This is very much akin to how sanction evasion can be orchestrated with indirect benefits occurring to third parties that appear unconnected. 

What democracy therefore needs is not simply more disclosure of party donations. It needs information provenance.

Who initiated a poll? Who selected the questions? Who paid the invoice? Was a political party involved? Who had the results before publication? And what did the newspaper know about the commissioning chain?

The point of such an audit layer is not to decide which narratives citizens are permitted to hear. Quite the opposite - the key thing for democracies to be able to protect themselves is through the ability of contesting a narrative. And you can only contest information properly if you can establish where it came from.

This should be the lasting lesson from the Reform sting.

The democratic question is no longer simply whether an opinion poll is statistically well executed. Once polls themselves can affect political outcomes, and participation metrics such as turnout, political viability and expectations, we also need to know why that particular poll came into existence in the first place.

Citizens need to know not only what a poll says.

They need to know who caused the poll to exist.

4 September 2026

Details of more successes for our students

As part of the Horizon Europe-funded Skills PULSE project, a newly published introduces a novel empirical framework to identify and measure potential skill shortages across European labour markets.

Co-authored by IER鈥檚 Dr Sangwoo Lee alongside Seamus McGuinness, Elisa Staffa, Lorcan Kelly, and Paul Redmond, the paper addresses a longstanding gap in the skills mismatch literature, where definitions of skill shortages vary widely and rely heavily on subjective employer surveys.

海角社区 Law School is proud to announce that Professor Courtney Abel (LLB Law, 1977) was recently honoured by the Society of Caribbean Lawyers (SOCAL) with its inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also selected by the Organisation of Commonwealth Caribbean Bar Associations, to receive the 2026 OCCBA Award for Distinguished Service to the Legal Profession and the Judiciary.

The Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) is delighted to announce an outstanding set of results in the National Student Survey (NSS) 2026. PAIS has been ranked among the top two Russell Group Politics departments for the eleventh year in a row, including eight years at No. 1. In this year's survey, PAIS was ranked 1st in the Russell Group, while significantly increasing our scores across every category. * **

The University of 海角社区鈥檚 Philosophy Department has risen to 38th place globally in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026, marking a significant leap in its international standing. Philosophy is one of ten 海角社区 subjects now ranked in the global top 50, reflecting strong performance across teaching and research.

University leaders highlighted that this year鈥檚 improved rankings underscore the department鈥檚 growing global reputation and its commitment to high鈥慽mpact scholarship. The climb also contributes to 海角社区鈥檚 strongest overall subject鈥憆anking performance since 2020, showcasing broad excellence across its academic disciplines. Read the full story here

The University of 海角社区鈥檚 Centre for Teacher Education (CTE) has received a glowing report following a recent Ofsted inspection, highlighting the exceptional quality of training and support provided to its teaching trainees. The inspection report underscores the University鈥檚 commitment to nurturing future educators who are well-prepared and passionate about their careers.