Quotes

We look forward to hearing about the reasons behind the designs of some of the world’s best known and best loved buildings
Professor Caroline Wilkinson, Director of LJMU’s School of Art and Design
Teeth can be studied to discern, among others, what the hominins ate, the ages of individuals and, importantly, the degree of biological relatedness to other fossil hominins and modern humans. I recorded morphological (structural) features of the tooth crowns and roots specifically to focus on the topic of the species’ relatedness to others. This is something I currently cover in our forensic anthropology modules concerning modern peoples – but this new works helps me to expand the coverage back in time to address the ‘big picture’ in anthropology and a common question by students, where did we ultimately come from.
Professor Joel D. Irish
The research allows us to use the forensic investigation techniques for archaeological purposes to sketch the portrait of men who died millennia ago. The bust I made presents the scientific methodology in a language compatible with the needs of the museum and in harmony with the other artefacts on display.
Dr Matteo Borrini
We are delighted to be shortlisted for this award , which recognises the full range of University entrepreneurship and enterprise activities. LJMU is proud to support student and graduate entrepreneurs and this opportunity to highlight our work is great reflection on the ambition and drive of our graduates
Emma Robinson, Head of Student Entrepreneurship at LJMU
We are dependent on services and goods provided from the natural environment, termed ecosystem services or natural capital. However, under the current economic system these benefits from the natural world are undervalued and not considered in common measures of growth, development or wellbeing leading to poor decision making in the private and public sector.
Co-author Dr Colm Bowe from the Environmental Research Group at the LJMU School of Natural Sciences and Psychology
The current policies for land conversion on Borneo are simply unsustainable. Our models show that the effects will worsen over time, leading to greater and greater loss of suitable land, not just for orangutans, but for the human population as well.
Professor Serge Wich
This study shows that hamsters housed in enriched environments make more optimistic judgements about otherwise ambiguous information. The important note for pet owners is that ensuring pets have adequate opportunities to express natural behaviours in captivity improves their mood and is essential for their welfare.
Dr Emily Bethell, LJMU Senior Lecturer in Primate Behaviour
The most commonly used method to survey great ape populations is counting nests during ground surveys as they build a new nest each night but these ground surveys do not occur frequently enough with due time and costs involved. So far, aerial drone surveys have successfully detected nests of orang-utans, but before this study it was unknown if this technology would work for African apes, which often construct their nest lower below the canopy. This study shows that drones are also a promising tool to assist African ape conservation.
Liverpool John Moores University’s Professor Serge Wich
This discovery confirms that magnetars play a very important role in the evolution of very massive stars, which means that stars which we thought would collapse to black holes collapse to neutron stars instead, and that much of the energy of the SNe that accompany GRBs may be due to Magnetars. Magnetars may be responsible for both GRBs and ULGRBs. It makes physical sense that magnetars can release their energy over a long period (hence the ultra-long GRB.
Professor Paolo Mazzali
These pups are less likely to be inbred, are heavier and have higher survival chances than their within-pack counterparts. However, their mothers risk a lot to mate with extra-pack males; aggressive encounters between packs account for 20% of pup deaths and 12% of adult deaths. Banded mongooses aren’t the only animals that fight with rival packs. Humans, for example often engage in warfare. However banded mongooses are unusual because a lot of mating occurs during these fights, even though it is a dangerous time to decide to mate with one of your rivals!
Dr Hazel Nichols
We wanted to provide a broader look at how mandibles change in primates as a composite taxonomic group. In spite of its definition (from the latin mandere = to chew) mandibles change relatively little in their functional anatomy from one species to its closest ancestor suggesting that chewing food is not a primary mechanism of species differentiation.
Dr Carlo Meloro, LJMU Lecturer in Vertebrate Palaeontology
LJMU is really excited to be leading this multidisciplinary international project. We are bringing together two worlds; firstly the archaeologists and anthropologist who understand the science of uncovering and interpreting the past; and secondly the engineers, computer specialists and UAV/drones researchers who have the knowledge and skills to capture this past in 3D and display it in exciting accessable new ways. Working together these form a team that will change the way we experience our past.
Professor David Burton, who leads the LJMU Drones Research Laboratory, and is Director of the General Engineering Research Institute
This is an exceptional opportunity for the regional maritime and logistics sector. MTC@LJMU will both support and accelerate the establishment and early stage development of the Liverpool Global Maritime Knowledge Hub, by providing the proven knowledge exchange infrastructure at the intersection between the Mersey Maritime business sector and LJMU’s specialist maritime education, training, research and global connections that will result in cluster-based knowledge transfer programmes, innovation support and increased growth, job creation and job security in one of the most competitive of international marketplaces.
Professor Nigel Weatherill, LJMU Vice-Chancellor
Using these established equations to estimate an extinct animal’s mass by measuring the limb bones is really useful when specimens are incomplete – which for dinosaurs can be the majority of finds. But when you have a lot of the animal, it makes sense to try and use as much as possible to gauge how big the thing was, because sometimes, as seems to be the case here, you might just have an animal with really chunky legs!
Dr Peter Falkingham, co-author of the study, based at LJMU School of Natural Sciences and Psychology
To be able to adequately protect our biodiversity we first need to know how many species there are. We know that most of the tree species occur in the tropics, but we do not know how many species there are and whether many tree species are rare or not. So this study that aim to answer how many tree species there are in the species-rich tropical rainforests and how many of those are rare is of key importance for conservation. Determining how many tree species there are is also important for conservation of many other species that depend on these tree species.
Professor Serge Wich
The collections are individual and highlight the wealth of talent created on the fashion programme, with contemporary shapes and colour creating the next new trends.
Lesley Peacock, BA (Hons) Fashion Programme Leader
It’s been a really enjoyable process, right from the online application through to the workshop at Media City, and of course our launch and first broadcast recording which took place at the Hay Festival. I’m incredibly excited to have been selected as one of the final ten New Generation Thinkers this year, and I think it wasn’t until we were assessed on our 2.5 minute programme pitch and an improvised debate that I realised just how much I would enjoy presenting my research via radio and television. It’s a pleasure to write for a medium other than academic publications, and it’s a privilege to bring my work to such a big, new audience, not only because it’s a fascinating topic from a scholarly perspective but also because my research involves women whose stories have been ignored for a long time and are now at risk of being lost forever. To be able to work with an organisation as prestigious as the BBC and to have recognition of the importance and relevance of my work from the AHRC makes this opportunity particularly wonderful.
Dr Nadine Muller, Lecturer in English Literature and Cultural History
The latest league table success in the Guardian demonstrates our commitment to the student experience and ongoing investments in the University and is testament to the hard work and dedication of all our staff. We will continue to build on this excellence across all aspects of university life, from academic quality and the recruitment of new expert academic staff to campus developments and improving graduate employability.
Professor Nigel Weatherill, LJMU Vice-Chancellor
Giving the people input into who runs their government is an essential part of American government, but it has become an incredibly complicated one as the country expanded and grew more diverse
Dr Matthew HIll
By being active with the Liverpool Law Society and sponsoring the annual awards and supporting their events, the School of Law demonstrates our commitment to civic engagement as they work alongside the legal profession and get involved with innovative knowledge exchange. This work certainly enhances the employability opportunities of our students.
Dr David Lowe
There is an exciting world-wide movement where art institutions move from just showing art to act as hubs for affect, engagement, research and innovation with the public, artists, researchers and creative sectors. FACT and LJMU are recognised leaders in this field and FACTLab is our way of exploring this space. Although many other centres exist, we are unique in combining a permanent embedded senior researcher, world class artists, extensive community engagement and now, with FACTLab, in-house public-facing artist developers.
Dr Mark Wright, who holds a joint post with FACT and the Liverpool School of Art and Design,
Dark matter is a hypothetical kind of matter that cannot be seen with telescopes but accounts for most of the matter in the universe. The existence and properties of dark matter are inferred from its gravitational effects on visible matter, radiation, and the large-scale structure of the universe.
Professor Andy Newsam, Director of the National Schools’ Observatory
The Archbishop is renowned for supporting people and communities and has spoken out about current issues which he feels are detrimental to society and, in particular, the poorest members of society.
Liverpool John Moores Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nigel Weatherill
Conservation management decisions for many animals are often based on measures of species’ numbers during the breeding and non-breeding season. However, such measures become problematic when age and sex classes use different habitats during the non-breeding season as we found in the Rusty blackbird.
Dr Claudia Mettke-Hofmann, Reader in Animal Behaviour at the School of Natural Sciences and Psychology
This was an important event in looking at how we address the shortage of cyber security skills and future proof the country’s IT sector, making it more resilient to possible cyber-attacks. We are delighted to be working with the HEA, universities across the region, Cyber Security businesses and involving our Computer Security students
Professor Ahmed Al-Shamma'a, Dean Faculty of Technology and Environment
What we have found is that Paget’s bone disease occurs at a younger age than previously thought long before symptoms come to full effect, which means that diagnosis could take place for young people and treatment could start earlier.
Carla L. Burrell, LJMU Ph.D. Student
The Honorary Fellows each represent a different profession and background and reflect the full range of disciplines within the University. Their passion and commitment in their chosen field illustrates the defining ethos of LJMU to dream, plan and achieve and to do so in support of others. They are all role models for our students and for our staff and I look forward to their participation in the life of the University through our Fellowship.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Nigel Weatherill
This study highlights that countries should try to work together to reach their development and conservation targets. This is an important result and hopefully future studies will assess this for other countries where conservation efforts are ideally coordinated between countries. For great apes it would be very valuable to conduct similar studies in Africa where we see a surge in large-scale oil-palm development, which could easily lead to many of the negative biodiversity outcomes as we have seen in Borneo. Careful planning can hopefully mitigate those negative impacts as indicated for Borneo in this study.
Professor Serge Wich
...with new techniques and headache inducing quantities of new data this area of biology is on the verge of potentially game changing developments
Dr Dave Wilkinson
Observing the formation and subsequent destruction of these systems will ultimately help us to understand whether our own Sun was once part of such a system and if it was, what happened to its stellar siblings.
Dr Richard Parker, ARI
Our previous work has shown that male houbara bustards suffer declines in the number and motility of their sperm as they age, but before now it wasn’t known what consequences this might have for any offspring that may be produced. Indeed, outside of humans, we know very little of the consequences of male aging on offspring quality. Our key finding, was that there were also changes in the quality of offspring produced by males as they aged, in terms of their growth rate, with the highest quality chicks produced by the very youngest males.
Dr Brian Preston, who is based at the LJMU School of Natural Sciences and Psychology
Low levels of physical activity and high levels of sedentary behaviour (sitting and reclining with low energy expenditure) are risk factors for several diseases and all-cause mortality. Despite the evidence base on the benefits of bodily movement for physical, mental and social health, a high proportion of children, young people and adults still fail to achieve recommended levels of physical activity.
Dr Lee Graves, LJMU Lecturer in Exercise and Health Prescription
This research highlights that studying orang-utan calls is very relevant to our understanding of the evolution of the production of human speech. Orang-utans seem to have more capabilities to learn and produce calls than we assumed several years ago. This indicated how important studies are that examine calls in this relatively silent ape species.
Professor Serge Wich from the LJMU School of Natural Sciences and Psychology said
Liverpool John Moores University is a University proud of its heritage and values. It is an international beacon for excellence in education providing exceptional student experiences with life-changing opportunities for its students and staff. The outcomes of this independent assessment of research undertaken across the UK by the government demonstrates that LJMU is conducting internationally recognised and world leading research in a diverse set of disciplines and is one of the leading institutions redefining the role of a university in the 21st Century. Our research and scholarship motivates and inspires our students and staff and, in additional to adding to the base of knowledge, supports businesses and contributes to wealth creation for the City of Liverpool and nationally.
LJMU Vice-Chancellor Professor Nigel Weatherill
At LJMU we have been involved in cyber security research for around 20 years, and this is now focussed through the PROTECT centre. Our research expertise gives us a strong base for teaching in cyber security, but when we talk to companies and practitioners in cyber security it is obvious how the pace of change in real-world problems and responses create tough challenges for teaching and learning – a skills gap. With this project we can narrow that gap
Dr Kashif Kifayat, project leader for VIBRANT and programme leader for BSc Cyber Security commente
While Gouldian finches show distinct personality traits, these are flexible and can be adjusted to allow for convergence of behaviour, i.e., to move together, rather than independently. When in a group, risk seems to be negotiated resulting in convergence of behaviours. However, the finding that black-headed birds do not adjust to red-headed birds may indicate a role as producer in exploring new resources. Since variation in personality can promote group cohesion and improve the functioning of social groups in a variety of contexts, we think that head colour could act as a cue, facilitating preferential associations with those of similar or dissimilar personalities in large mobile flocks of Gouldian finches.
Dr Claudia Mettke-Hofmann
Our new study shows that there are tiny clumps or clusters of stars forming far out in intergalactic space in the plume of cold gas that has been ripped from the largest galaxy.
Professor Mundell, head of Liverpool John Moores University's Gamma Ray Burst team
The Honorary Fellows each represent a different profession but they have all played a central and important role in making Liverpool a vibrant city for its citizens, visitors and businesses. Their passion and commitment reflects the ethos of LJMU in using teaching, research, knowledge transfer and outreach initiatives to impact on the way we live. I am delighted to formally welcome such inspirational role models to the University.
LJMU Vice-Chancellor Professor Nigel Weatherill
This exhibition takes advertising out of the context of the everyday... and asks viewers to step back and admire the artistry that is presented in the name of commerce.
Dr David Clampin
We are particularly delighted by this outcome. Competition between astronomy departments within the UK for resources to carry out astrophysics research is very fierce. Only those projects considered by STFC to be fundable at the highest priority were successful.
Professor Chris Collins, ARI Acting Director and PI of the grant application
Many patients find it difficult to manage their medication when they are discharged from hospital and this often leads to their health deteriorating and they end of having to come back into hospital. The NHS aims to make greater use of community pharmacies to support patients outside hospitals. Our research aims to find ways in which hospital and community pharmacies can work together so that patients can benefit from greater support in managing their medication better
Professor Alison Ewing, clinical director of pharmacy at the Trust and chair in Pharmacy Innovation at LJMU’s Faculty of Science
The tests are designed to push the participants to their full physical potential, and test a variety of important attributes by utilizing different energy systems within the body. We have some great riders involved with the project and are increasingly confident that we can break the world record
Matt Chadwick LJMU MSc Sport and Exercise Physiology student
The speakers were industry leaders and their speeches were inspirational. The scenarios we were presented with were genuinely challenging and an excellent reflection of real world problems. The mentors from Cisco gave us some really valuable advice and the challenge has helped me to identify areas where I can improve both my technical and business skills
Jamie Roberts, BSc. Computer Studies (Team Lead, Hardware and Software Solution)
I’m delighted to have joined the Vikings and I’m looking forward to working with everyone at the Club as we head into the new season. To be at a Super League Club, working with elite athletes as a PhD student with Liverpool John Moores is a great opportunity for me.
LJMU PhD student James Morehen
It is important to bring academic research to the forefront of national policy and make it open to public engagement. Research taking place at universities has a massive impact on how we live and my role was to talk specifically about the crucial part that exercise and nutrient can play in delaying are-related muscle frailty.
Dr Graeme Close, Sports Nutrition Consultant, Reader and Research Scientist
Liverpool John Moores University is proud to be the festival sponsor for Homotopia 2014. This is our second year of sponsorship and reflects the University’s engagement with the arts as well as the importance we place on diversity and respect for all members of our community.
Dr Edward Harcourt, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (External Engagement)
It was not just the courts that over-reacted. An ‘uplift’ was applied at every stage from arrest, to charge, to remand, to which court dealt with the case.
Dr Carly Lightowlers, LJMU lecturer in Criminal Justice
Although many studies have looked at the cardiac effects of sport on football and rugby players, little is known about ice hockey.
Dr David Oxborough, Reader in Cardiac Physiology at LJMU
The humanitarian catastrophe in Syria and Iraq; the displacement of millions of refugees; the casualties of war; the ravages of conflict, endemic global poverty, famine, starvation; and the consequences of totalitarianism and pandemics, are the staple fare of the United Nations' humanitarian agencies. The phenomenal and disturbing scale of the challenges facing the world at this time make Valerie Amos’ Roscoe Lecture all too topical. Later this month, on 24 October we will celebrate United Nations Day – the day on which the UN was founded in 1945. This Roscoe Lecture gives us the opportunity to hear how, nearly 70 years later, it is addressing these awesome challenges and fulfilling the hopes of the fifty nations which founded it.
Professor the Lord David Alton
The detection of high energy gamma rays from novae came as a real surprise. Now with a combination of observations from a new generation of facilities, coupled with new twists on old models, we may have begun to solve this specific mystery. In turn, our work may be able to give astronomers new insights into the evolution of what’s known as the ‘common envelope stage’ which all close binary stars are thought to go through
Professor Mike Bode, Director of the ARI