Research at Sussex

Wednesday 7 May 2025

Welcome back to Research at Sussex, a fortnightly round-up of the latest research news, insights and discoveries at the University of Sussex.

As a Sussex member of staff, you are receiving this newsletter directly to your inbox. It is also open to anyone outside the University, so feel free to share it with friends, colleagues, or collaborators who might be interested in keeping up with our latest research highlights. They can subscribe here.

In this edition:

• New study asks: Who should have access to donor bodies?

• All ears? Dogs may be picking up more than we think

• Share your 12 May diary – any story, any style

• Are governments locking in a fossil-fuelled future in the name of energy security?

New research explores public views on body donation

Professor Claire Smith wearing blue medical scrubs and gloves, standing in an anatomy lab with an anatomical model and a skeleton in the background.

How do people feel about the use of donor bodies and who should have access to them?

Professor Claire Smith, Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor Education and Innovation at Sussex and Professor of Anatomy at Brighton & Sussex Medical School, has set up a project to find out.

Professor Smith, who appears on BBC Radio 4’s Bodies to discuss body donation for training surgeons and her new research, led the team behind the ground-breaking documentary, My Dead Body.

The documentary featured the public dissection of a donor who waived her anonymity. “It made me question what the public think happens to their body when they donate it,” she said. “In particular, who should be able to undertake work on it?”

Claire, author of the book, The Silent: The Gift of Body Donation, hopes responses to this anonymous body donation survey will lead to better information for potential donors, and their families.

She said: “Many different groups – sports therapists, massage therapists, aesthetic practitioners, body modification technicians, personal trainers, beauticians etc. – all work on living real human bodies, but don’t currently have access to donors. We need to understand if the traditional approach of access only for medical and dental professionals is aligned with who donors want to work on their body and how the use of donors can improve a wider and inclusive approach to education and training.”

What happens to donated bodies? Share your view in this short anonymous survey

Dogs ‘eavesdrop’ on human conversations, study finds

A golden-brown dog with one ear up looks alert, with two people engaged in conversation in the background.

New research led by Professor David Reby, Visiting Professor of Psychology at Sussex, reveals that dogs can pick out meaningful words, like their name, even when spoken in a flat tone and embedded in longer, irrelevant sentences.

Published in Animal Cognition, the study involved 53 dogs of various breeds, each listening to speech containing both commands and unrelated information.

Even without the exaggerated intonation of “dog-directed speech” (think baby talk), the dogs consistently responded when they heard familiar phrases.

“Our research shows that dogs are able to pick out and recognise words relevant to them in a monotonous stream of otherwise irrelevant speech, even in the absence of the intonation cues we usually use to engage them,” said Professor Reby.

Dr Holly Root-Gutteridge, who began the research at Sussex and completed it at the University of Lincoln, added: “The results show just how good dogs are at listening to us and how much they understand of what we say. This enhances our knowledge of how more complex communication and call sequences arose, which are necessary building blocks for language itself. This suggests that the ability to pick out meaningful fragments in babble exists in a domesticated species, rather than being special to humans.”

Read the full story, All ears: new study reveals dogs ‘eavesdrop’ on humans.

“Dear diary...”

Two-part historical image featuring materials from the Mass-Observation Day-Survey. On the left, an orange and cream Faber & Faber cover dated Wednesday 12 May, noting sunrise and sunset times. On the right, a black-and-white leaflet titled ‘Where were you on May 12th?’ encouraging the public to document their experiences on the day of the King and Queen’s coronation.

Each year, hundreds of people across the UK take part in a unique research project: writing a diary of their day on 12th May for the Mass Observation Archive (MOA), housed in the University of Sussex’s Special Collections.

The resulting diaries create a vital resource for researchers exploring how people live, think and respond to the world around them. Anyone can submit a diary in electronic form to moa@sussex.ac.uk in whatever style they wish –

written, typed, drawn, collaged or photographed. The diaries are stored in the archive at The Keep in Sussex and are used by a wide range of people for research, teaching and learning.

In 1937, Mass Observation first called for people from all parts of the UK to record everything they did – from when they woke up in the morning to when they went to sleep at night – on 12th May. This was the day of George VI’s Coronation. The resulting diaries have become an invaluable national resource for those researching countless aspects of the era.

Mass Observation revived 12th May as a national call in 2010 and has been collecting diaries ever since. More than 10,000 day diaries have been submitted since 2010.

Comment: Are fossil fuels key to energy security?

Two large industrial smokestacks emitting dark smoke into the sky at sunset, with power lines and pylons in the foreground — illustrating pollution from fossil fuel energy production.

By Peter Newell and Frederick Daley

This is a claim that is being made not just by fossil companies, but by many in the media keen to discredit moves towards net zero.

Tony Blair’s Institute for Global Change recently published a report claiming that efforts to phase-out fossil fuels are ‘irrational’ and that salvation lay in carbon, capture and storage technologies, which will inevitably prolong the life of fossil fuels.

All of this comes off the back of a recent International Summit on the Future of Energy Security, held in the UK by the International Energy Agency.

Common understandings of energy security have focused on making supplies reliable and affordable, with less attention paid to ensuring sources of energy are sustainable and less volatile. A new definition of energy security – one of the outcomes of the summit – will inform government policies and investment decisions around the world for years to come.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, governments sought to secure as much energy as possible for their citizens at whatever cost. This meant boosting renewables and bulk buying oil and gas. In the UK’s case, it also meant the previous government issuing hundreds of new licenses to drill for oil and gas to “increase energy security”. Meanwhile, large fossil fuel exporters like Qatar, the US and Australia ramped up production locking in higher fossil fuel production and pushing emissions to record levels.

The pursuit of energy security has boosted renewables, but adding additional clean energy isn’t enough.

True energy security means charting a path towards a world that is more socially, economically and environmentally secure by developing a well-managed global plan to phase out fossil fuels. Research at Sussex under the Supply-Side Policies for Fossil Fuels (SUS-POL) project is showing how first-mover countries are doing, with a growing number supporting a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, an idea first proposed alongside colleagues at Sussex.

Professor Peter Newell is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex’s School of Global Studies.

Frederick Daley is a Research Assistant in International Relations at the University of Sussex’s School of Global Studies and a Research Associate at the Sussex Centre for Global Political Economy.

Read the full article in The Conversation: ‘Energy security’ is being used to justify more fossil fuels – but this will only make us less secure.

Sussex in the media

Sussex voices remain central to debates on global trade. Professors L. Alan Winters and Michael Gasiorek co-wrote a letter to The Times warning that only a temporary pause in Trump-era tariffs may prevent collapse of the global trading system. Meanwhile, Professor Magnus Marsden was quoted in Wired on how American tariffs are hitting Chinese businesses, and Dr Mattia Di Ubaldo discussed uncertainty in global supply chains on Voice of Islam Radio.

A BBC Future article exploring lesser-known pollinators drew on a Sussex study showing that moths may rival or even outperform bees as pollinators. The work, from the School of Life Sciences, highlights the importance of conserving all types of insect life, not just the crowd favourites.

And finally, in a letter to The Guardian, Dr Max Lacey-Barnacle (Business School) urged the UK Government to put communities – not just investors at the heart of its net zero strategy. He highlighted the vital role of local institutions, including universities, in ensuring that the green economy delivers for people across the country.

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