Our researchers

I worked at the Met Office for 14 years before coming to the University; my background is in numerical modelling of the climate system. I’m interested in how climate affects land, plants and soil, and how they in turn affect climate.

Professor Peter Cox
College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Science

My research tries to understand how pathogens cause diseases on plants.

Several major diseases have emerged recently, some local, like one affecting Japanese Larch – two million were chopped down in Devon last year. Internationally, banana xanthomonas wilt in Central and East Africa is devastating smallholders. We don’t hear enough about it in the western world.

Professor Murray Grant
College of Life and Environmental Sciences

The evolutionary ecology of sex raises fascinating questions: what are the consequences of reproduction, of having males and females? We can be identical except for a single chromosome, but have different agendas in reproduction; how do the sexes work together, when does it result in conflict?

I work primarily with insects because they exhibit tremendous variation. There’s always an insect that fulfils the criteria for a particular piece of research. Read more...

Professor Nina Wedell
College of Life and Environmental Sciences
Cornwall Campus

We need to understand the nature of the ice sheets to make predictions. Ice sheets hold vast amounts of water, and can respond quickly to changes in climate and the ocean, leading to big changes in global sea level.

No one has researched one of the parts of Antarctica I look at – apart from the bottom of the ocean it’s the most extreme environment on Earth. I love its remoteness and mystery, discovering something completely new. For years I’ve worked with numerical models, investigating Antarctica theoretically. Read more...

Dr Anne Le Brocq
College of Life and Environmental Sciences

Some parts of the Earth – Arctic sea ice, Greenland, the Amazon – have the potential to change dramatically if slightly warmed, having an enormous effect on the entire climate.

Physics can describe how systems behave before they reach these thresholds, and we’re trying to provide early warnings of these tipping points.

The Earth’s climate history reveals such warnings existed before the end of the last ice age. We’re seeing early warning signals in Arctic sea ice records and sea surface temperature data, and investigating potential geoengineering responses.

Professor Tim Lenton
College of Life and Environmental Sciences 

I love solving problems. As the Director of the Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI ), I’ve been given an amazing opportunity to build an international research centre from scratch, with entirely new staff, and the resources to lead interdisciplinary research into solutions to problems of environmental change.

Our ecosystems are not yet all damaged beyond repair but technical or management solutions aren’t enough. Reversing the degradation requires significant changes in our relations with the environment. Read more...

Professor Kevin Gaston
Director, Environment and Sustainability Institute
Cornwall Campus 

I try to understand how the landscape around us has evolved, particularly the countryside.

People’s quality of life is connected to a sense of belonging, security, and identity with where they live. You can drive down a Devon lane that could be 2,000 years old, while another may be only 100.

In the Midlands people tend to live together in villages, but in Devon many people live in small hamlets, isolated farmsteads, and cottages; I want to know why regional differences in landscape character emerged. Finding out is part archaeology, part history, part geography.

Professor Steve Rippon
College of Humanities 

Banded-mongooses are cooperative, but there’s no dominant female as with other cooperative species, like meerkats or wild dogs. All the females in a group give birth on the same day, which is unique; we research the evolutionary causes for this, examining mongooses in the wild and captivity, so I spend a lot of time researching in Uganda.

The UK has a fantastic tradition of TV wildlife documentaries. BBC2 picked up our research and turned it into four-hours of television. To get that level of exposure for your work is extraordinary.

Dr Mike Cant
College of Life and Environmental Sciences 

To understand the emergence and proliferation of an illness you need to understand the society and culture in which it appears, as well as its biology.

I trained in medicine but saw opportunities with the humanities. People are interested in their health, so we ask a simple question: “Why do we get ill?"

Stress is my latest interest, understanding it in terms of the social traumas of the 20th century – wars, economic depression, cultural transition – and our attempts to reclaim and recover stability and harmony through science.

Professor Mark Jackson
Director of the Centre for Medical History 

My research concerns the design, development and characterisation of memory and data storage materials, devices and systems. The amount of data generated and stored in the world is growing, so we need to increase the capacity of memory devices, make them smaller and consume less power.

Conventional approaches to data storage like magnetic hard-disks, DVDs and Flash memory sticks face difficult technological barriers to progress. We're working with research laboratories around the world to develop new materials and techniques that circumvent the limitations of conventional technologies.

Professor David Wright
College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences

A new revolution is taking place, one in which we can manipulate light beyond traditional limits, right down to the nanoscale.

The same properties that enable metals to conduct electricity also give metals their alluring lustre. One of our goals is to exploit this dual character of metals to merge electronics with optics through design at the nanoscale.

At Exeter our work is part of a wider programme in which materials are being designed and made that have properties not found in nature. These new materials offer the prospect of controlling light of other, invisible wavelengths, in new ways.

Professor Bill Barnes
College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences

My team is working to develop new armour materials. We’re moving from fundamentals to applications in our research, the outcome being to save lives in conflict situations. You can’t get a better impact for your research.

Nanomaterials is an area of huge importance to the world. We collaborate with other universities, Cambridge, Surrey, Sheffield, but also institutions in America, Germany, and China, to ensure we stay world class.

Professor Yanqiu Zhu
College of Engineering Maths and Physical Sciences

My work focuses on Iraq, and is divided between researching state-building initiatives (including the management of sectarian and ethnic divides), and Coalition approaches to counter-insurgency and stabilisation.

My work has covered aspects of military intervention and post-conflict strategies, resource management and government legislation, and regional involvement. I have advised the UK military, British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and UN bodies.

Professor Gareth Stansfield
Director of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies

I’m a social scientist but I have no specific disciplinary allegiance. I’ve been a geographer, a political scientist, a sociologist, and a rural historian.

I enjoy using different disciplinary approaches to tackle rural problems. For the last decade a great deal of my work has been about policy engagement; from the hunting controversy through foot and mouth disease to current food and land issues, always trying to work closely with DEFRA.

I came into academia because I wanted to make a difference in the world, engaging in real issues and maybe changing things a bit.

Professor Michael Winter OBE
Director of the Centre for Rural Policy Research

I'm an ancient historian but I take what I have discovered about ancient communities to better understand modern society. 

We are working with different members of the community, helping them to interact with each other, using what we have learned to give them tools that can shift their bonds between memory and place, helping them to build new memories.

I can only do what I do because I am able to work with colleagues in Geography, English and Physics across the University, as well as non-academic practitioners such as artists, musicians and architects. We are all equal scholars with ideas to contribute.

Dr Elena Isayev
College of Humanities 

Most people study theology and religion because of personal investment, but I’m really a religious historian. I focus on the cultures that the Old Testament emerged from; what people really believed and how they expressed it through ritual. I explore the relationship between the human and the divine worlds.

I worked with the BBC to develop a series relating to the Bible and archaeology. People expressed shock at the resultant documentary, but we’ve been having these debates in scholarship for years. We wanted impact, for people to say: 'isn’t the Bible amazing,' even if they weren’t Christian – and that happened.

Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou
College of Humanities

I’m a theoretical astrophysicist, trying to understand the underlying physical processes which rule the evolution of stars and planets based on numerical simulations.

Early in my career, planets outside our own solar system, or extrasolar planets, started being discovered, and I’ve been fascinated by this ever since.

Professor Isabelle Baraffe
College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences

Children don’t have enough time to talk and think. People aren’t always talking when they communicate, so we use ‘dialogue’ to include technology. Dialogic learning is asking questions, admitting you don’t understand the problem; it teaches you to think. Groups empowered like this solve problems quicker, develop an understanding of other people, and become comfortable with diverse views and new ideas.

I love writing. It’s a dialogic process too; I’m reading, I’m responding. I’m very motivated by intellectual dialogues. I have an awful lot of interesting conversations! I love that most about being an academic.

Professor Rupert Wegerif
College of Social Sciences and International Studies

The most exciting problems in public policy have to be addressed by interdisciplinary teams. Regulation affects all our lives, so we have to understand how it can be made efficient, transparent, and dialogic.

My interests are regulatory reform, the theory of the policy process, the role of knowledge and ideas in public policy, and Europeanisation.

Professor Claudio Radaelli
Director of the Centre for European Governance

We’re looking at prenuptial agreements and alternative dispute resolution. Should prenuptial contracts be binding? Would people review them to adapt to changing circumstances? Are disputes about children more suited to mediation than courts? Answering these questions isn’t just about law; social science research can provide crucial evidence on how to reform the law.

The way we live our lives has changed, and people partner and parent in new ways. Cohabitants aren’t so very different from married couples; they’re often just doing things in another order.

Professor Anne Barlow
College of Social Sciences and International Studies

I’m a social as well as an organisational psychologist.

Social identity theory has quite a socialist background; it’s about how people behave in groups rather than as individuals. It’s highly interdisciplinary but with the rigour of psychology, so we can ask big questions but answer them with proven methodology.

I love supervising PhD students; the collaboration and mentorship. Academia’s often a long game; it can be five years from designing a study to publishing it, but seeing a new researcher growing is immediately rewarding.

Professor Michelle Ryan
College of Life and Environmental Sciences

I research the limitations to human performance, what makes some people better at sport than others, and the causes of fatigue. I’m interested in how muscles use oxygen to produce energy.

I’ve worked with elite athletes like Paula Radcliffe and Jo Pavey as consultant physiologist to UK Athletics. I can take my findings, even before they’re published, to the English Institute of Sport and ensure they become practice with elite athletes immediately.

I also work on public health. The factors that limit a top athlete from achieving peak performance are the same as those that stop an elderly person being able to get to the top of the stairs.

Professor Andy Jones
College of Life and Environmental Sciences

With colleagues in the Graduate School of Education I’m investigating child mental health in schools.

Poor mental health has an enormous impact on the whole school community, but teachers have little formal training in child development and classroom management. Changing this will improve children’s mental health.

In London I worked at the Maudsley, which is to clinical psychiatry as Great Ormond Street is to paediatrics. It’s steeped in history and I was following well-trodden footsteps. In Exeter it’s incredibly exciting to be shaping something new.

Dr Tamsin Ford
Medical School

My research focuses on genetic subtypes of diabetes. My team’s research aim is to find the genetic causes of these, and improve the treatment for diabetics.

The biggest discovery we’ve made is that most children born with diabetes have a change in a critical potassium channel involved in the insulin secreting pathway. These patients made no insulin and were always treated with insulin injections but we have shown they can get better sugar control with sulphonylurea tablets.

Professor Andrew Hattersley FRS
Medical School

We work with evidence-based medicine in public health services, improving decision-making and value for money. We use simulation modelling to explore how things work long-term; a trial might last two years, but a condition might last 30. We examine what happens after those two years.

I’ve worked in both medical and academic positions, and I’m proudest of my team; over ten years I’ve assembled a thriving, cohesive, multidisciplinary group, who are all brilliant.

Professor Ken Stein
Medical School

Economics is now trying to understand how people actually behave, with a view to understanding issues like perceptions of climate change, or how identity issues affect economic behaviour. Regulators are becoming interested in what we’re doing, and businesses are paying attention to what they could do better.

In experimental economics we set people a task which simulates an environment we want to investigate: bargaining, cartel formation, how group affiliation affects negotiations.

I’ve had findings cited in a merger case. Being cited outside academia means you’ve made an impact.

Dr Miguel Fonseca
University of Exeter Business School

People grow and change as tourists, and retirement effectively sees people learning to be fulltime tourists. Understanding how people relax and play is important because we’re consumers all the time now. We have to ally this with sustainability concerns; people behave differently on holiday, leave lights on and waste water, things they never do at home.

Our research is moving from discovering behaviours to developing interventions, creating impact through gamification and social marketing.

Professor Gareth Shaw
University of Exeter Business School