News items

Large numbers of children arrive at school without the skills they need to succeed. Practices and policies need to change to ensure all children have a positive start to school and all parents feel empowered to support their children's learning, says Assistant Professor Helen Victoria Smith.

The significance of home-based businesses for entrepreneurship in cities is underestimated, and their needs largely ignored by policymakers, suggest researchers.

The ESRC is pleased to launch the 2019 Celebrating Impact Prize. The ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize is an annual opportunity to recognize and celebrate the success of ESRC-funded researchers in achieving and enabling outstanding economic and/or social impact from excellent social science research. 

Flexible working is not necessarily helping workers to relieve their work-family conflict, suggests a recent report into work autonomy, flexibility and work-life balance across Europe. Workers may end up working longer hours, or worry about work when not working.

1-2% of the population are born with a rare condition that means that whenever they see someone else being touched, they feel a tactile sensation on their own body. These people report literally sharing the sensations of others, be it pleasure or pain. A new study shows that people with mirror touch synaesthesia (MTS) are so tuned into other people's emotions, that they may even lose the ability to differentiate themselves from others.

Ten new research projects announced by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will address issues facing Colombia’s transition from conflict to peace.

The proportion of young adults who were homeowners by their early thirties fell sharply between 1991 and 2011, with people in their early thirties three times as likely to rent in 2011 compared with 1991.

£15 million has been awarded to 16 teams of researchers to allow academics in Europe and Japan to collaborate on a range of exciting projects that will push the boundaries of our understanding of individual and social behaviour with a view to influencing policymaking and practice.

The ambitions and future goals of disabled young people with life-limiting and life-threatening impairments are being documented for the first time in an innovative study.

Some stunning images have captured what life is like in some of the fastest developing cities in Africa and Asia - from Dar es Salaam, a city of nearly 5 million in Tanzania, to Chongqing, a sprawling Chinese municipality with a population of over 30 million spread over an area the size of Austria.