The Open University

Are you a spender or a saver? Take our quiz to find out

13 September 2018

The 15th of September is Pensions Awareness Day (PAD). This annual event was launched in 2014 by PensionGeeks, an innovative communications company that aims to put fun into pensions – yes, really! As PAD’s double decker bus hits the road to spread the word, Jonquil Lowe, Senior Lecturer in Economics and Personal Finance at the […]

The hidden history of reading – new research project opens up Europe’s book habits

5 September 2018

From Gulliver’s Travels to Harry Potter, Pride and Prejudice to 1984 – what people have been reading for the past three centuries is under the microscope, with a new €1 million research project involving The Open University. Revealing Europe’s reading history 21st century digital tools – including an online database and smartphone app – are […]

No-deal Brexit: experts on what the UK government’s advice means

24 August 2018

The UK government is releasing a series of “technical notices” outlining what might happen if the country leaves the European Union without striking a deal for its future relationship with the bloc. While Dominic Raab,Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, stressed that this scenario was far from the preferred option, he added that […]

Funding announced for almost 400 new doctoral places in arts and humanities

15 August 2018

The Open University, the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge have been awarded funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to create a new training partnership for up to 400 doctoral students over five years. The Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership is a consortium of the three universities, underpinned by world-class research […]

We live in a populist age – but who are ‘the people’?

9 August 2018

Populism is seemingly sweeping the globe, threatening the established status quo. Optimistically, it promises to bring about much needed change to what appears to be a corrupt political and economic order. More ominously, it is dangerously promoting racism, sexism, xenophobia, jingoism, and attacking basic human rights around the world. It is therefore important not to […]

The remarkable story of Auschwitz survivor and OU graduate Evelyn Lipmann

8 August 2018

The lives of hundreds of thousands of people have been transformed by their study at The Open University, but few can have valued it more than Evelyn Lipmann. Evelyn, now 94, enrolled for a Humanities degree in the early 1970s to help put behind her the horror of the Nazi concentration camps. Decades later, she […]

Three days is still too long to hold pregnant women in immigration detention

25 July 2018

It’s been two years since a coalition of lobbying groups in the UK successfully challenged Home Office policy on the immigration detention of pregnant women. Under the new policy, enforced in mid-July 2016, pregnant women can now only be detained for a maximum of 72 hours (three days), or up to one week with the […]

In depth: What is a smart city?

23 July 2018

The Open University is at the forefront of examining how ‘smart cities’ work. But what is a smart city? Do you know if you live in one? And how might they change how we live and work in the future? Dr Oliver Zanetti and Professor Sophie Watson – who appear on Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed […]

Sounding Coastal Change Norfolk Coast Blakeney

An ear to the coast for World Listening Day

17 July 2018

Conservationist groups from around the UK joined together with broadcasters on Wednesday, 18th July 2018, to present the sound of the coast in a special event to mark World Listening Day. The Sounding Coastal Change research team did a 24-hour broadcast from Blakeney in North Norfolk, which included prerecorded documentary and music, live discussion and microphones […]

A hard Brexit is looking increasingly likely – according to behavioural economics

25 June 2018

Gloomy forecasts for the post-Brexit economy, and a psychological tendency to gamble rather than accept certain losses, may boost public support for a giant leap away from the EU – despite the fact that most experts are advising a cautious small step. Parliamentary rebels have tempered their demands for a vote on the final Brexit […]

OU News

Category: Arts and social sciences