The Levelling Up Secretary and West Midlands Mayor Andy Street have signed a landmark deeper devolution deal for the region at the University of Warwick today, marking a seismic shift in power, funding and responsibility from Whitehall to the West Midlands.

The law on weddings in England and Wales has been too slow to respond to religious and cultural diversity and the increasing number of people who do not identify with any religion at all, finds a new study led by University of Warwick researcher Dr Rajnaara Akhtar of Warwick Law School.

In his new book published this week Professor Mark Knights presents a history of corruption in Britain and its empire between 1600 and 1850, and explores its reform processes. Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office in Britain and its Empire, 1600-1850 reveals a colourful history of scandals, dramatic trials, illicitly gained wealth and a campaigning press intent on exposing misconduct despite governmental attempts to stifle it.

A new study from the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick combines research on populist rhetoric, emotions and security in order to examine how particular groups of voters are mobilized.

The impact of COVID-19 on older people and their carers in Coventry and Leicester’s BAME communities will be explored as part of a major new study into how social and economic inequalities have affected health and care provision during the pandemic.

Who decides how political ideas are ‘framed,’ and how are these frames shared with others? A new international three-year project led by Dr Ozlem Atikcan of Warwick’s Department of Politics and International Studies, Professor Anna Holzscheiter of Germany’s TU Dresden, and Professor Jean- Frédéric Morin of Canada’s Université Laval aims to find out.

The impact of COVID-19 on working-class women in the UK will be explored by a team of researchers from the University of Warwick, the University of Nottingham and the Women’s Business Group in a new year-long study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, part of UKRI.

The economic shock of coronavirus has brought perennial questions about government borrowing and spending, NHS funding, social care and welfare, inequality in income and education, and wellbeing, into renewed focus. In a special edition of Advantage magazine published to mark 10 years since the Austerity budget, leading economists reflect on these issues and consider what lessons can be learnt as the UK plans its recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Around £11 billion a year could be raised from an Alternative Minimum Tax rate based on the total amount of income and capital gains that a person reports before applying any deductions or reliefs, according to new research which has gained unprecedented access to the tax records of the UK’s richest individuals.

Trade unions are crucial in advancing workers’ rights, but it is unhelpful to consider their leaders as representatives of the working class as a whole when analysing labour relations and government policies, a new paper from the University of Warwick Department of Sociology argues.

A new e-book co-edited by award-winning economic historian Professor Mark Harrison of Warwick Economics and CAGE has been published in the week of the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe. The book aims to provide new insight into the significant and sometimes overlooked role that economists played in shaping the conduct of the war and its ultimate outcome.

In a further contribution to the debate about how to balance the need to re-open the economy with the need to protect life, Warwick researchers Andrew Oswald and Nick Powdthavee point out the extreme dangers from any general kind of release from lockdown and present more detailed modelling on the fatality risks faced by different age groups. 

Government reforms to housing benefit introduced in 2011 were intended to save the public purse hundreds of millions. Research from University of Warwick economists has found that, far from saving money, the change in policy simply shifted burdens to local councils: for every pound central government saved in housing benefit, local authority spending on temporary housing costs went up by 53p.

Better ways to support young people as they leave the care system and become independent adults are at the heart of a major new research project led by the Monash Warwick Alliance and supported by £2m grant from the Economic and Social Research Council.

Politics should no longer be divided between “left-wing” and “right-wing” because the vital dividing line between groups of voters is now between “anarchists” and “centrists”, a new study from the Centre for Competitive Global Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) shows today.

Professor Mark Harrison from Warwick’s Department of Economics is one of the experts featured this week in a new Radio 4 documentary series exploring the economic issues behind the start of World War 2.

Academics from Warwick’s Institute for Employment Research have found that co-operatives and social enterprises achieve employment growth at least on a par with other types of organisation, and also create good quality jobs. The research is published by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound).

Young people are making decisions about what they plan to do after leaving formal education as early as Year 7 or 8, with parents, teachers and friends being their preferred information sources, according to a new report by the University of Warwick’s Institute for Employment Research for the Department for Education.

Research by Professor Richard Aldrich of Warwick’s Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) played a central part in a new Channel 4 documentary, broadcast this weekend, exploring how British intelligence enlisted the Royal Family as part of its scheme to mislead the Nazis about plans for the liberation of Europe.

A new verifiable e-voting system will be trialled in Gateshead this May. Voters get a receipt which they can check to make sure their vote is properly cast, recorded and tallied while preserving the voter privacy – a process known as being “end-to-end verifiable”. Tallying results are instantaneous once the election is finish along with public audit data to allow anyone to verify the tallying integrity. The trial will be voluntary for people going to cast votes via paper ballot.