Postgraduate Medical Institute

Keyhole surgery expertise

Anglia Ruskin's Postgraduate Medical Institute (PMI) in Chelmsford is developing a unique package to train consultants in Asian countries in keyhole surgery. The Asian project at the ICENI Centre in Colchester is a joint venture with Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust.

This type of surgery has real advantages for patients with bowel cancer, including reduced pain, less chance of infection, shorter times in hospital, quicker recovery and getting back to work sooner. The number of operations using keyhole surgery has tripled in the UK since the programme began in 2009.

Thousands of people on the other side of the world could get better medical treatment - thanks to this pioneering training programme.

For more information on the PMI and their work visit the PMI microsite.

The Childhood and Youth Research Institute (CYRI)

Giving young people a voice

The Childhood and Youth Research Institute is of huge significance to vulnerable, marginalised and excluded children and young people and their families. It is a unique multi-disciplinary initiative that puts the well being of children and young people at the heart of research, supporting, encouraging and producing innovative research and publications of an internationally recognised standard.

The institute engages with themes that broadly straddle 'social justice', including disability, inclusion and special educational needs, intimacy, sexuality/asexuality, marginalised and vulnerable children and young people, children's literature and performance, early childhood, crime/deviance, families, formal and informal education, mental and physical health, law, pregnancy and care.

The research is based on the participation of children and young people who want their voices to be heard and who can improve the way things are done in the future by changing society's, largely outdated, preconceptions about critical issues surrounding them.

For more information on the Childhood and Youth Research Institute visit the CYRI microsite.

Global Sustainability Institute (GSI)

Financing green growth

The International Energy Agency estimates that the total investment required by 2030 to reduce emissions by 50% by 2050 is around $1 trillion per year. Between 2005 and 2009 investment in clean energy grew by 230%, with $162 billion invested globally last year. To realise this scale of investment the capital markets have a vital role and Climate Change Minister Greg Barker (UK Department for Energy and Climate Change, DECC) launched the Capital Markets Climate Initiative (CMCI) at the London Stock Exchange in September 2010.

DECC is bringing together key players from the City with international financiers and policy makers, with the initiative aimed at driving green economic investment across the globe and identifying how the current barriers to new investment can be dismantled. Two working groups have been set up to deliver the work of CMCI. One working group brings together the evidence of what needs to change and is chaired by Anglia Ruskin University's Global Sustainability Institute. The other working group will then attempt to put in practice the lessons learnt from gathering this evidence in partner countries. The second working group is chaired by the World Economic Forum.

For more information on the Global Sustainability Institute visit the GSI microsite.

Institute of International Management Practice (IIMP)

It's sometimes hard to believe that, less than 20 years ago, a large number of the countries of central and eastern Europe operated soviet-style planned economies. The sudden collapse of eastern European communism, quickly followed by the accession of many of these countries into the European Union, has left them scrambling to resurrect or create the variety of structures essential for a modern market economy. One of the most important of these has been the need to establish an enterprise culture and promote entrepreneurship.

A team in one of the Institute for International Management Practice centres, CEDAR, led by Professor Lester Lloyd-Reason, has been intimately involved in just such activity in Romania where, over the last 18 months and with support from the EU, they have founded a School of Entrepreneurial and Management Studies under the direction of the National Council for Private SMEs in Romania. The work has led to a transformation in the approach to education at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and stimulated the creation of more than 150 new businesses so far. Not surprisingly, the programme's success has attracted interest from other countries where there is no established tradition of enterprise or entrepreneurship - including a specific request to run a similar programme in Saudi Arabia.

For more information on the Institute of International Management Practice visit the IIMP web pages.

Cultures of the Digital Economy (CoDE) Research Institute

This project creates an archive of subtitled digital films of oral storytelling drawn from a wide range of European languages and cultural traditions. A video archive has been created in order to preserve not only the texts of the stories, but also the non-verbal narrative and performance techniques of a wide range of storytellers.

This is of use to both the study of scholars and to teachers who wish to encourage their pupils / students to tell and record their own stories, giving them the opportunity to contribute to the archive themselves. To encourage these additional contributions there is a plan to develop a suite of open source software tools through which school pupils and FE/HE students will be able to create their own digital stories using computer technology and social media as a contemporary analogue of oral transmission. There is also a plan to create a virtual environment for communication and self-initiated, peer-supported creative learning - an online European Story Map - through which these contributions can be shared to stimulate and encourage further storytelling.

For more information on Cultures of the Digital Economy (CoDE) Research Institute visit the CoDE microsite.