• Inclusive medical schools are a must

    Edge Hill Vice-Chancellor John Cater explains why the new non-Russell Group medical schools are so vital: Two and a half decades ago, in my first full year in the day job, I am on the Euston Road in London. Half a mile away, 17 universities are meeting in the Russell Hotel. Edge Hill did not…

  • Virtual reality experience helps demystify the family court process

    As part of the Greater Manchester Court plan, a new virtual reality court experience has been designed to help demystify the family court process. The project, supported by government and the judiciary, has been described as pioneering – claimed to be the first of its kind in the UK. The purpose is to help children, involved…

  • How it feels to be diagnosed with autism later in life

    Michael Richards, Edge Hill University “He is wired differently to you and me, this child of mine. He doesn’t like loud noises, or dark spaces, or strangers touching his head”. These are the first lines from a poem a mother penned about her son 11-year-old son who has Asperger’s syndrome. Sophie Billington goes on to…

  • The James Bulger case should not set the age of criminal responsibility

    Sean Creaney, Edge Hill University; Roger Smith, Durham University, and Stephen Case, Loughborough University On February 12, 1993, two-year-old James Bulger was abducted and murdered by 10-year-olds Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. It was a crime that stunned the world and the shadow of it still looms large over British culture and the English justice…

  • Why we need to review joint enterprise laws

    Joint enterprise is a controversial common law doctrine. It was claimed – in a recent debate secured by the Labour MP Lucy Powell – joint enterprise has ‘produced one of the biggest and most widespread miscarriages of justice ever to face our justice system’. Many MPs backed calls for a review. Put simply, joint enterprise is when…

  • Re Lancastrianising Leonora

    Roger Shannon, Professor of Film and Television at Edge Hill University. Edge Hill recently celebrated the Centenary of the birth in Lancashire of one of the world’s most renowned surrealist artists, Leonora Carrington. Born in 1917 in Clayton Le Woods, Chorley, and raised in Lancashire, Leonora became a ‘national treasure’ in her adoptive home of   …

  • ‘Sex prescriptions’ may not be the answer but we must respect disabled people’s right to a sexual life

    Michael Richards, Edge Hill University Sex for disabled people is an important aspect of their lives, as it is for most people. But there remains a taboo around sex and disabled people. Discrimination and marginalisation means disabled people often spend their lives denied the opportunity to explore their sexual identities. Consequently, the Green Party in…