Momentum - November 2023

Researchers at Swansea University have completed the world’s largest study of the link between facial scarring and anxiety and depression.

A new study published in The Journal of Sex Research has revealed the complex world of involuntary celibacy, providing important insights into the challenges faced by a growing community of men known as incels.

Three academics from Swansea University have received one of this year’s annual medals from the Learned Society of Wales. The medals are awarded each year to celebrate outstanding research coming from Wales.

Swansea University is one of five Higher Education Institutions across the UK to be awarded a Community Innovation Practitioner (CIP) Pilot by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Creative Communities programme, for a project that will explore ways to regenerate heritage sites in the region that will benefit communities now and in the future.

Industrial waste gases are contributing to climate change and the evolving climate crisis. To mitigate this and help clean up these waste fumes from local industry Dr Emily Preedy, along with her follow researchers at the Reducing Industrial Carbon Emissions (RICE) project, is using waste carbon dioxide to help grow microalgae and produce useful high-value products.

Collaborating with leading academics and experts nationally and internationally, Dr Anita Zhao is seeking to understand the role of consumers and the impact of their consumption decisions on sustainability, and whether they can play a more influential role towards sustainability within the international agenda of climate change.

Increasing numbers of the 200+ million students in global Higher Education (HE) are paying others to complete assignments for them. Professor Phil Newton, Professor Michael Draper and their team carried out large surveys, research and analysis of students’ and academic staffs’ views on contract cheating and the legality of essay mills.

In this episode of Exploring Global Problems Season 3, Professor Ann John explores suicide and self-harm prevention and how anonymised data can help to design interventions and develop policies to help inform and train professionals in contact with those who are at risk of suicide.

_{Warning: This podcast episode contains discussions about suicide, which may be distressing to some individuals.}

The world is falling behind on commitments to protect and restore forests, according to the recent Forest Declaration Assessment but new research by Professor Mary Gagen and her team at WWF UK identifies what needs to be done to stop failing forests.

Dr Joe Whittaker is a Lecturer in Cyber Threats at the School of Social Sciences. He has researched how social media platforms’ recommendation systems promote and amplify extreme far-right content, as well as publishing on topics such as counter-narratives and extremist video games.

Alisha Gibbons is studying a PhD in Business Management at the School of Management. Her research focuses on the sustainability of operational excellence programmes, in particular the enablers of operational excellence programmes that enables sustained excellence through the integration of socio-technical systems.

SAIL Databank is a safe haven for billions of person-based records, which enables researchers to answer important questions for the benefit of society. Researchers can access a broad range of routinely collected data spanning up to 30 years from an entire population.

Swansea University is one of only a small number of universities invited to join the UK Higher Education Mission to China 2023 to strengthen academic relations between both countries.

Malaysian university leaders have been given a unique insight into what Welsh higher education has to offer during a six-day visit to Wales.

Swansea University physicists, as leading members of the ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus) collaboration at CERN, have demonstrated that atoms of antihydrogen fall to Earth in the same way as their matter equivalents for the first time.