Congratulations to Dr Christina Lee, who has been awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s Medal in recognition of her pioneering work in developing interdisciplinary research, notably between the arts and the sciences, where she has played a leading role in the development of an international cross-disciplinary network of historians, philologists and microbiologists to investigate the efficacy of medieval remedies in relation to antibiotic resistance. Key to this work has been her research in to the 10th-century Bald’s Leechbook — one of the earliest known medical textbooks — and the revelation that a 1,000-year-old recipe was capable of killing off the notorious modern-day superbug MRSA.
This became a huge media story for the University, picked up by BBC Radio 4 initially, and when story was released, BBC Online alone reported 1.4m hits in two days. The research and media teams at the University fielded interviews for print and broadcast from all over the world. UoN video material was used by BBC TV, CNN and many other international broadcasters, and has received more than 73,000 views to date on the University’s YouTube channel.
The story went viral, trending on Facebook and Twitter — shared by: New Scientist (1.58m followers) and CNN International (3.43m followers).
Dr Lee and her academic colleagues have dealt with hundreds of emails and media requests, raising the profile of the University of Nottingham across the world. A special report was circulated to University Council to explain not only the academic research, but also the media response by the University’s communications team. By the time of the report there have been over 46 million shares of the research story internationally, in print, online, broadcast and social media.
Dr Lee will be presented with her medal at a ceremony with the Vice Chancellor in October 2016.
Posted on Monday 6th June 2016