A UEA professor has appealed for help in tracing a stolen laptop which had her new book stored on it.

Prof Lyndsey Stonebridge and her family were at home in Unthank Road, Norwich on Friday, May 30 when thieves managed to open a sash window with a tool in order to reach in and grab an MacBook which was on a desk.

Mrs Stonebridge only realised that it had been taken on the following day when she went to do some work.

She said: 'It's like half of my brain has been removed. It's got five years' work on it including my teaching notes, which are quite precious. It will definitely hamper my teaching, as I will have to go back and rewrite lectures.

'It also contains notes on my students, on research and human rights, and the book I've been working on since 2011, which is subtitled 'refugee writing', about refugees and literature.

'I was looking to get the book published next year, but it will probably be 2016 now. I will have to do a lot of the work again.

'While a lot of the work has been saved elsewhere, a lot of it hasn't, so there's a lot of archive work that I will have lost.

'The lesson is to always back up your work and not to leave things in your home near windows.'

She said the theft had also upset her two children. 'They are taking exams but they could not sleep because they were worried that someone had been in the house,' she added.

Mrs Stonebridge, a professor of literature and critical theory, said the laptop's screensaver was a painting called '1939 The Refugee (Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel)' by German-Jewish surrealist painter Felix Nussbaum.

She has written three books including a work on war crimes trials entitled 'Writing after Nuremberg'.

She joined the UEA in 1993 and specialises in modern literature and critical theory, particularly psychoanalysis, trauma theory and, most recently, critical human rights and refugee studies.

Police are appealing for witnesses after the theft, which happened between 10pm on Friday, May 30 and 1.30pm on Saturday, May 31.

Witnesses should call Det Con Katerina Hamilton at Norwich CID on 101 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Has something precious been stolen from your home in the last month? Email david.bale2@archant.co.uk