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This article stems from a systematic literature review conducted by a multi-disciplinary team of 11 researchers who are part of the :

Almeida, J., Netz, N., Nika, D., Krzaklewska, E., Aguiar, J., Botezat, A., Fran莽a, T. Jokila, S., Streitwieser, B., Vigd铆s Gu冒marsd贸ttir, R., & Malet Calvo, C. (2025) The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on social inequalities in international student mobility: A scoping review. Comparative Migration Studies, 13(27), 2-24. Read it .

A new research paper, led by Professor Emma Smith has recently been published. The study compares findings from two national surveys of education researchers - one from 2002 and another from 2022, that was led by colleagues in Education Studies. It examines how the types of research methods used have shifted over the past two decades and places these trends within broader debates about purpose, quality, and methodology in the field.

The study reveals that education researchers today report using fewer research methods than their counterparts twenty years ago. It also highlights an increasing divide between those who use numeric approaches and those who rely on non-numeric methods.

Read the full article below

Smith, E., Gorard, S., Morris, R., Perry, T., & Pilgrim鈥怋rown, J. (2025).

The Gatsby Foundation and the JP Morgan Chase Foundation are supporting the Institute for Employment Research at the 91福利 to undertake research to understand how parents and carers can be better supported by schools and colleges to feel more informed and confident with the advice they give to their children. Dr John Gough from our Careers team has been involved in the research project on 'The role of parents in providing careers guidance and how they can be better supported.'

You can read the report findings along with the recording of a live webinar explaining more about the project here.

Brexit has imposed large and widespread economic costs across the UK, but the burden has fallen most heavily on initially prosperous, trade-integrated regions including London, the South East and Scotland, according to new analysis co-authored by Professor Thiemo Fetzer and published at .

The new study, Measuring the Regional Economic Cost of Brexit: Evidence as of 2026, estimates how Brexit affected output and nominal household income across UK local authorities, regions and constituent countries.

Using a synthetic control approach, the researchers compare each UK area鈥檚 actual economic path with a data-driven counterfactual: how that area might have evolved had Brexit not happened.

The research finds:

• Brexit has reduced UK economic performance substantially. Quarterly GDP estimates suggest a shortfall of around 3–5 percentage points by the end of the sample, while annual GVA estimates point to a UK-level gap of around 7–8%.
• The economic cost is widespread. Around 70% of local authority districts are estimated to be below their synthetic counterfactual, meaning most places performed worse than comparable non-Brexit trajectories.
• The burden is unevenly distributed. Losses are concentrated in initially prosperous, trade-integrated areas, especially London, the South East and Scotland.
• Brexit appears to have 鈥渓evelled down鈥� the UK. Regional gaps may have narrowed not because poorer regions caught up, but because richer and more internationally integrated regions were pulled down.
• Northern Ireland is the major exception. Its estimated gaps are near-zero or positive, consistent with its distinctive post-Brexit trading position and continued partial integration with the EU single market.
• Production losses and household-income losses do not always align. These gaps, measured by GVA and GDHI (see below) diverge across places, showing that Brexit鈥檚 effects travel through commuting, income flows, ownership claims, taxes and transfers.
• The areas that voted most strongly for Brexit are not generally the areas that have borne the largest economic costs. The deepest losses are concentrated in many Remain-leaning, internationally exposed regions.

The analysis uses two complementary measures: real Gross Value Added (GVA), capturing where production takes place, and Gross Disposable Household Income (GDHI), capturing the income households can spend or save after taxes and transfers.

Professor Fetzer said:

"The research finds that Brexit has been a negative-sum shock for the UK economy. While the aggregate cost is large, the spatial distribution of that cost is politically revealing. Rather than delivering gains to left-behind places, Brexit appears to have damaged the UK鈥檚 strongest regional economies most severely.

"The result is a form of 鈥渓evelling up by levelling down鈥�: regional inequality may be compressed, but through decline at the top rather than improvement at the bottom. This reduces the ability to redistribute tax revenues from the south into the rest of the United Kingdom.

"The study also shows why a single national estimate misses much of the story. GVA captures where economic activity occurs, while GDHI captures where household income is received. The latter is being cushioned through transfers and the UK鈥檚 commuting economy. Comparing the two reveals how local production shocks spread through the wider economy via commuting patterns, income ownership, fiscal redistribution and interregional dependence."

Dr Eleonora Alabrese, co-author, said:

"Our findings suggest a troubling spiral. Austerity drove protest voting in left-behind places, and the anti-immigrant narrative proved a powerful tool precisely in areas with little direct experience of immigration. Brexit was the result — yet the economic costs have landed elsewhere: on the internationally integrated, high-immigration areas. The places that generated the political mandate for Brexit have, so far, been relatively shielded from its economic consequences.

"That is not a coincidence — it is a pattern that risks feeding further disillusionment and further support for the politics that produced Brexit in the first place. Brexit may be a self-sustaining political economy."

Professor Fetzer added:

"Brexit did not make left-behind places meaningfully richer. It made the UK poorer, with the largest losses concentrated in the places that were most exposed to European integration. That is why the regional pattern looks like levelling up only in the most perverse sense: not by lifting lagging regions, but by pulling down the places that were doing best."

Notes:

• The paper is available at: /fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/2026/twerp_1617-fetzer.pdf
• The authors estimate Brexit鈥檚 regional economic impact using placebo-weighted synthetic control methods. They construct counterfactual economic trajectories for UK local authorities, ITL regions and constituent countries using a wide range of donor-pool specifications and evaluates both post-2016 and post-2020 treatment windows.
• The analysis covers real GVA and GDHI, enabling the researchers to distinguish between where output is produced and where household income is ultimately received.
• An interactive explorer of the findings and regional estimates, their sensitivity along with broader narration that is specific to different areas can be found on https://www.brexitcost.org.

Do you work in research or innovation? The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) is conducting the 2024 Research and Innovation Workforce Survey. and have your voice heard.

On May 14 2026, the School of Law and the Departments of Sociology and Politics and International Studies put on a Big Questions themed interdisciplinary workshop on Capitalist Institutions and Power, with a focus on 鈥楬ow should the economy be organised to serve society?鈥�

This week, PAIS PhD candidate Raymond Hyma accepted the Artful Integrators Award at the 2026 Participatory Design Conference in Milan, Italy. The award recognises groups that have developed exceptionally creative new forms of participation and collaboration in design.

With increased use of front-facing cameras, mirrors and Zoom calls, we鈥檙e being faced with our own reflections more than ever before.

Is it heightening our preoccupation with the way we look?

91福利鈥檚 Professor Heather Widdows (Philosophy) spoke to Dazed Digital about