Over the past year our academics have published 115 articles on The Conversation, the online news site which combines academic rigour with journalistic flair. Their insights, ranging from British politics to the Middle East crisis, have been read more than 742,000 times and generated 1,369 comments.

So just to give you a taste of the amazing content created by our academics over the past 12 months here are the most read articles of 2015?

1. Dr Andrew Fagan - Aung San Suu Kyi victory will test commitment to human rights in Myanmar
2. Dr Tom Quinn - Miliband might scrape through but questions could remain about his right to govern
3. Professor Matthew Woollard - There need not be a digital dark age – how to save our data for the future
4. Dr Alejandro Quiroz Flores - The key role of NGOs in bringing disaster relief in Nepal 
5. Professor Tim Hatton - Explainer: why some European countries do more than others to help refugees 
6. Professor Rainer Schulze - Netanyahu, the Grand Mufti and the Holocaust: why it is important to get the historical facts right 
7. Professor Tom Scotto - Extremism plan pushes the UK down a dangerously illiberal road 
8. Dr Natasha Ezrow - Islamic State vs al-Qaeda: a rivalry that dates back to old personality clashes
9. Dr Natasha Ezrow - Libya: multitude of militias stand in way of new UN peace plan
10. Dr Anna Sergi - The mafia mega-trial that has Italy on tenterhooks

 Visit The Conversation webpage and the University of Essex profile page.