November 2011

Many congratulations are due to Wenni Gu, a third-year student at Reading in International Relations and Economics.  Wenni recently attended an award ceremony at 10 Downing Street after designing an innovative mobile phone app.  The app, called A&Express, aims to give patients with non-life threatening injuries advice on the best Accident & Emergency hospital to attend to receive treatment fast.  It has won an ‘Appathon’ prize for students run by Silicon Valley Comes to the UK (SVC2UK), a not-for-profit group that aims to encourage British technical entrepreneurship.

Wenni Gu (right) and her team mates meet David Cameron at 10 Downing Street. © Crown copyright

Wenni and her two team mates (one from Reading, the other from UCL) met the Prime Minister, David Cameron, in Downing Street last week in order to pick up their prize.  They also appeared in a live interview yesterday on BBC Radio Berkshire.

Wenni’s success shows the extent to which a degree programme in IR and Economics can provide valuable transferable skills that can be applied in a very different setting.  As Wenni remarked,

From my course, I leant to speak about my thoughts and ideas, with experiences and evidence. In my politics discussion groups, we need to prove our point and bring it to everyone to discuss rather than just keep it to ourselves. So when my team had the idea about this app, I knew how to bring my idea into the discussion and develop it.

You can find more details of the app on the University’s website: http://www.reading.ac.uk/about/newsandevents/releases/PR418256.aspx.

Alan Renwick

The Department of Politics and International Relations hosted a major seminar last week on the British army’s successes and failures in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.  The seminar was given by the former General Officer Commanding in Northern Ireland, General Sir Rupert Smith, whose paper was called ‘Military Operations and the Good Friday Agreement’.  The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Rt Hon Owen Paterson MP also attended, and the seminar was chaired by Professor Colin Gray.  For more information, see this news story on the University’s website. 

The University of Reading is a major centre of research into Strategic Studies, and this was the first in a new series of seminars called ‘British Military Campaigns Since 1969: An Audit of Performance’, funded by General Dynamics.  The University is also a research leader in the Ethics of Armed Conflict.  The Liberal Way of War programme, funded by the Leverhulme Foundation, will hold its next major seminar, on ‘Interrogation in War and Conflict’ on 29th November.

Details of all forthcoming seminars in the Department can be found on the Department’s website.