research and education in political science at Essex". The first Regius professor was David Sanders of the Government Department, who held the post from 20142017. Since December 2017, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch was appointed as the second Regius Professor. In March 2019, Essex joined seven other universities across European to form the Young Universities for the Future of Europe (YUFE) Alliance. Later in June 2019, the European Commission announced YUFE to be one of 17 projects that will receive funding for a three-year pilot under the European Universities Initiative funded by the Erasmus+ programme. The objective of the programme is to create 'European Universities' based on cross-border alliances of higher education institutions that share a common long-term strategy in the promotion of European values and identity. Campus and architecture Wivenhoe Park, the home of the primary campus, was painted by landscape painter John Constable in 1816. The park houses the main 1960s buildings along with Wivenhoe House, an 18th-century mansion that also features in Constable's painting. Wivenhoe House hotel was closed in December 2010 for major refurbishment and reopened in 2012 as a combined four-star country house hotel and hotel school. The Edge Hotel School was originally a partnership between the university and the Edge Foundation and is now a department of the university. It is the UK's first working hotel school dedicated to the development of future leaders of the hotel, events and hospitality industry. With its concrete architecture, the university is typical of England's 1960s universities and was heavily influenced by the international Brutalist architecture movement. Due to its particular form of architecture involving the use of prefabricated concrete and glass, the university is also referred to as a plateglass university. The architect of the campus, Kenneth Capon, took the Tuscan town of San Gimignano with its squares and towers as an inspiration (the university has six residential towers mainly for undergraduates, but the original plan was to build 29). The landmark buildings include the residential towers, The Hexagon and the Albert Sloman library – which was selected as an 'icon of British design' by the Victoria and Albert Museum in its 2012 exhibition British Design 1948–2012. The library has one of the few remaining still operating continuous loop paternoster lifts in the country. An exhibition called Something Fierce was created in The Hexagon to celebrate the university's 50th anniversary in 2014, reflecting on the university's founding vision and