June 1999

Centre of Excellence for European Studies

Essex University has been selected by the European Commission for a Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence.

The project will also provide administrative and financial support for the Journal of European Integration, whose headquarters were moved to Essex in 1998.

Graduate opportunities in Essex and Suffolk

Terry Barry, of the Careers Service, has recently completed a directory of opportunities for graduates in Essex and Suffolk. The directory will help students to make speculative applications for permanent, vacation and casual jobs.
He received sponsorship of £1,000 from Essex Training and Enterprise Council (TEC) for the project.
The finished booklet contains details of 200 Essex and 100 Suffolk organisations.
Copies are being sold to other university Careers Services and (at a heavily subsidised price) to students.

'Essex Wizards' to compete in RoboCup'99

A robotic football team being built in the Department of Computer Science has qualified for ‘the 1999 World Cup of Robot Soccer.’

Dr Huosheng Hu and his team have been working on applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligent Robotics techniques in the robot soccer domain since last October. Their ‘Essex Wizards’ project now satisfies all the scientific requirements to qualify for the RoboCup’99 Simulation League event.

(right to left) Kostas Kostiadis and Dr Huosheng Hu

The ‘Essex Wizards’ is the only team from the UK to join the 32 teams qualifying for this league, beating the team AT-Humboldt97 (benchmark chosen by organising committee) from Germany by 5 goals to nil.

Dr Hu and his PhD student Kostas Kostiadis, a key researcher working on simulation, as well as his MSc student Michael Seabrook, will represent the Essex team at RoboCup’99 in Sweden between 27 July and 6 August.

Dr Hu, explained: ‘RoboCup is the World Cup of Robot Soccer, an international tournament where teams of autonomous mobile robots compete in soccer-like games, including both simulation and real robot platforms (small-size, middle-size, and legged robots).

‘RoboCup competitions pose many new challenges since a team of robot agents needs to deal with an intelligent opponent team in a complex, dynamic and unpredictable environment.

‘Following the landmark project in which the IBM Deep Blue computer defeated Gary Kasparov, the World Chess Champion, in May 1997, RoboCup is another landmark project. Its ultimate goal is that by the mid-twenty-first century, a team of autonomous humanoid robots shall beat the human World Cup champion team under official regulations of FIFA’.

Play tells remarkable story of Ishi

Students on the UK’s only MA in Native American Studies are producing a play at the Lakeside Theatre by Anishinaabe writer Gerald Vizenor. Ishi and the Wood Ducks is an ironic comedy of errors which tells of the ‘savagisms’ of civilisations that have turned Native Americans into museum curios.

The internationally renowned Professor of Anthropology, Michael Taussig, is visiting the UK from Columbia University, New York, especially for the event.

Ishi was the last of the Yahi tribe. He became America’s ‘last wild man’ when he walked out of the Sierra Nevada in 1911. He became a living exhibit in a museum at the University of California where he died in 1916. Against his wishes an autopsy was performed, and his brain removed. Ishi’s brain was ‘discovered’ earlier this year at the Smithsonian Museum, Washington. Now California’s native people are fighting for the return of Ishi’s brain so that they may give him a final burial.

The play explores a range of contemporary Native American issues. Why should tribes need to be legally recognised by the US legal system? What is a ‘real’ Indian? Who can be authenticated as a true member of a tribe, and who decides? Such controversial questions will be discussed in a post-show discussion with Michael Taussig. The first performance of this play in the UK will be given as a rehearsed reading.

Monday 14 June, 7.30pm
Lakeside Theatre. Tickets £3.50/£2.50

Economics at Essex in top 5 in UK

Essex’s Department of Economics has ranked highly in a recent study by the European Economic Review (1999).

The Review provided a ranking of the research in economics departments among universities across the whole of Europe (including Israel), based on total publications in the top economics academic journals during the period 1991-96.

Essex is ranked 15th (out of 198 universities) in Europe and fifth in the UK. The UK universities ranked higher than Essex were LSE, Oxford, University College London and Cambridge.

Professor Tim Hatton, Head of the Economics Department at Essex, said: ‘This is good news for the University. It reflects and confirms the Economics Department’s international reputation. Staff in the Department thoroughly deserve this recognition; they have published top quality research in the best economics journals, and will continue to do so’.

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Human Rights students attend Hague peace appeal

Students (back right to left) Corinne Lennox and Feyzi Ismail
(front right to left) Suzy Sumner and Melanie Adrian.  All are studying for the MA in Theory and Practice of Human Rights at Essex except Feyzi who is postgraduate student at LSE

It is an event that only happens once in a century and seven postgraduate students from the University’s Human Rights Centre were there to experience it: The Hague Appeal for Peace.

The students were among 8,000 delegates from more than 100 countries who joined together for the common purpose of finalising a citizens’ Agenda for Peace and Justice for the 21st Century.

Goals for the Agenda were drafted at more than 65 workshops per day, led by distinguished activists including Nobel Laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, José Ramos Horta and Jody Williams and author Arundhati Roy.

Among the issues addressed were human rights education, reform of global institutions, arms proliferation, nuclear disarmament and the strengthening of international humanitarian law.

The immediate achievements of the conference included the launch of two global campaigns: the Coalition for an International Criminal Court to achieve ratification of the Rome Statute, and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA).

The Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, speaking at the closing session agreed to distribute the final agenda to her fellow Heads of State.

Youth were also a key focus of the conference with 1500 young people taking an active role in the process. University Radio Essex (AM 1404 URE) sent a team to produce a documentary on the conference.

The programme, featuring many highlights from speeches and musical performances, as well as exclusive interviews, will be broadcast on 11 June at 5pm to fit in with ‘One World Day’.

Suzy Sumner, one of the Essex delegation, said: ‘Overall the feeling at the conference was positive and forward looking, despite the heightened concerns about Kosovo, which permeated the atmosphere.’

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Large turnout to debate war in Kosovo

 

Between 200 and 250 students and staff attended a meeting on the conflict in Kosovo called ‘Why War?’ organised by the

Centre for Theoretical Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences on Tuesday 18 May.

Professor Simon Critchley, Director of the Centre, said: ‘The purpose of this debate was simply to try and reflect critically and dispassionately upon the meaning of this conflict, its causes and its consequences.’

Various speakers made short contributions on the conflict in Kosovo: David Campbell, University of Newcastle; Shane Brighton, King’s College London; Frances Millard, Department of Government, Essex; Geoff Gilbert, Director of the Human Rights Centre, Essex.

However, the most interesting part of the debate was provided by the two final speakers - Mr Djurdje Ninkovic of the Serbian Information Centre and Professor Isa Zymberi, Head and Founder of the Kosova Information Centre, said Professor Critchley. Their rather measured and eminently reasonable interventions gave us a much deeper understanding of the nature of this conflict, he said.

The public discussion that followed lasted nearly two hours and the debate was passionate and extremely engaging.

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