Impact case studies

Research by Professor Neil Wrigley and colleagues has helped transform thinking on food retail development, its role in sustaining viable town centres and the future of UK high streets.

An innovative method for measuring multidimensional poverty is helping governments and organisations globally to design more effective poverty-reduction programmes.

A decade of research into the development of writing in school-aged children led by Professor Debra Myhill has shaped national and international policy, improved children's writing abilities and changed classroom practice.

New approaches to crowd psychology are helping police manage the potential for conflict in crowds while allowing people's rights to protest through dialogue and negotiation.

Early career researcher Hannah Lambie-Mumford's research on emergency food provision in the UK has provided policymakers, the charitable sector and media with thought-provoking evidence to inform the food poverty debate.

In-depth research by Dr Stuart Basten into Asian fertility helped convince the United Nations to revise its influential forecasts on future population trends, with particularly large effects for Pacific Asian economies.

Moves to impose plain packaging for cigarettes, including Australia's 2012 legislation on standardised packaging and the recent UK commitment to do the same, have been strongly influenced by Olivia Maynard's research into tobacco packaging.

An ESRC-funded project building upon pioneering research into how offenders move away from crime is transforming the practice of offender rehabilitation in the UK and beyond.

ESRC Fellow Dr Jonny Byrne's six month placement provided the Northern Ireland Office with a unique resource for analysing and understanding the contentious issues and challenges under discussion in the 2013 Haass Talks.

New research has informed the development of AIDS-related policy in Sub-Saharan Africa, improving the life chances of children who have been orphaned by HIV and AIDS.