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University develops interdisciplinary research in sustainable development
Newcastle University
As one of the UK’s leading universities, Newcastle University’s reputation rests
on the quality of its teaching, outstanding research, and work with the regional
and local community, businesses and industry. In particular it has developed the
multidisciplinary Institute for Research on Environment and Sustainability (IRES).
IRES examines key questions including: How do we provide safe drinking water to
the one billion people without it? How do we prevent the deaths of the estimated
three million people worldwide who die as a consequence of poor air quality or
environmental pollution? How do we sustain development by meeting increasing
energy demand without mortgaging the future? How can we continue to feed a
growing world population and halt, even reverse, the degradation of agricultural
land? How do we deal with the loss of over 50% of the world’s mangroves and
tropical rainforest?
Diversity and interdisciplinarity of research are needed to transform the
environment. The strategic focus of IRES is to progress integrated systems level
research in each of six key programmes.
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Bioresource Systems; |
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Earth Systems; |
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Energy Systems; |
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Health Systems; |
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Social Systems; and |
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Water Systems. |
 A pioneering Newcastle University research programme which grew from a
community-based project to clean up contaminated water flowing from an
abandoned mine has been awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and
Further Education. The project is led by Professor Paul Younger of IRES.
Bioresource Systems at IRES looks at sustainable development, exploitation
and management of bioresource production systems. The current research
priorities are microbial resources, plants and animal resources, soils and marine
environments, wildlife and ecosystems and bioinformatics.
Earth Systems is developing an integrated programme which combines earth
systems, science, engineering and technology, and governance and policy to
deliver engineering and management strategies under global climate change.
Its current research priorities are the Research Programme, Observation,
Understanding, Simulation, and Management.
Energy Systems focuses on delivering future global energy solutions. It is
developing and maintaining a multidisciplinary energy research environment to
provide focus for energy-related activities and thereby act as an internal/external
gateway for energy related research within the true multidisciplinary environment
of IRES. Through this approach the directorate will develop and maintain an
international energy policy capability that enables research and commercial
opportunities to be developed from a global perspective with respect to benefiting
the surrounding community. The priorities are international energy policy, energyrelated
techno-economics, public sector energy strategy and implementation,
regional economic development, fuel poverty, energy efficiency, energy in urban,
rural and marine environments and Newcastle Science City.
Health Systems promotes interdisciplinary research on the interactions
between environment and human health. Its current priorities are advancing the
understanding of genetics and environmental factors implicated in human disease
related to chemical exposure, the application and development of modelling to
environment and health problems and risk assessment, aetiology of the effect
of contaminated land and particulate matter on human health, relating UV
interactions to health and ageing, water and health and the comparative toxicity
mechanisms in plant microbes and human.
Social Systems aims to find solutions to key environmental challenges by
interrogating how social systems interact with, shape and constitute possibilities for sustainability. It studies ways of prioritising the role of different actors and
governance structures in meeting competing demands for water and energy and
addressing the role of scientists in forging new knowledge and policy agendas,
and further examines how technologies can and do shape sustainable cities. Its
research priorities are environmental knowledge production for a sustainable
world, environmental representation, sustainable cities and technologies and
policy-making for energy and water.
Water Systems facilitates and delivers the highly interdisciplinary approaches
required to holistically address the sustainable management of the natural water
environment in the face of pressures from human agency and the ecological
distribution conflicts arising from socio-economic and political inequities. Its
current priorities are water, people and governance, hydro-ecological conflicts and
justice, and managing quality and quantity of water.
Newcastle University can trace its origins to a School of Medicine and Surgery,
established in Newcastle in 1834. The 2001 Research assessment Exercise
confirmed Newcastle as one of the UK’s leading research universities with 29
of our subject areas receiving either of the highest grades of 5 or 5* denoting
“international excellence”.
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