Rising Star Award: Public Engagement
This award is presented to a member of staff in the early stages of an academic or research-only career who has engaged the public with their research to generate mutual benefit. Public engagement activity can range from outreach activities, to patient involvement, citizen science and collaborative research projects.
Watch this video to learn about our shortlisted nominees for the 2024/25 award!
Shortlist
Bethany Jackson - School of Geography and Rights Lab, Faculty of Social Sciences
Bethany Jackson is a leading expert on the connections between modern slavery and climate change with a strong focus on engaging survivors in research and policy discussions, amplifying their lived experiences through blogs, podcasts and videos interviews. She has presented her work to the US Department of State, worked with key groups such as the Anti-Slavery International to drive joint action and co-developed survivor focused resources.
Bethany has co-ordinated COP26 briefings, led major international surveys on climate change and modern slavery and developed tailored training for brick kiln workers. Her research has gained national and international recognition, including media coverage in The Guardian.
Blandine French - School of Psychology, Faculty of Science
Blandine French, an ADHD lived-experience researcher, actively engages the public to improve care pathways for those with neurodevelopmental conditions. She founded the Nottingham Neurodiversity Network (NNN), securing funding to deliver events, workshops and resources.
She has shown an aptitude for supporting people with lived experience to engage meaningfully in research and achieve real world impact. Blandine co-created an accessible online survey and utilising innovative methods, like artwork and video, to ensure people with neurodevelopmental conditions and those who support them are heard. Her inclusive approach to research has led to her appointment to the NHS England’s ADHD taskforce, with her research informing the new NHS 10-year plan.
Joanna Lockwood - School of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences
Dr Joanna Lockwood's research focuses on improving care for young people who self-harm and their families. She developed "The Art of Understanding, a comic approach”, using comics and graphic novels to encourage conversations about mental health, securing £5000 worth of funding from City as Lab to host a workshop with young creatives, academics, schools and community groups to develop idea for future collaborations.
Building on this, Joanna collaborated with three community organisations to develop “Crooked Seams”, a co-created graphic novel on mental health. It was exhibited at the Institute of Mental Health, showcasing her commitment to creative engagement.
Winner
Lauren Eglen - Rights Lab, Faculty of Social Sciences
Lauren’s work has connected thousands of people around the world to the stories and voices of survivors of abuse and exploitation. She achieves this through participatory arts research, using methods such as ethical storytelling, zine creation, and curriculum development to equip survivors with new artistic, communication and leadership skills. Lauren works with survivor organisations to amplify and share these materials with a wide public audience increasing understanding and awareness, as well as activating the public and building survivors’ advocacy capacity. Her work with the survivor-led anti-trafficking organisation Azadi Kenya, has led to the development of an annual Ethical Storytelling Fellowship (ESF).This has resulted in delivering the ESF to over 100 Azadi members with survivors now being trained to lead the fellowship themselves and the resulting material being viewed globally online by over 20,000 people and over 500 people at physical exhibitions in both Kenya and the UK.
Shortlist
Aishah Nasir - Biodiscovery Institute
Aishah helped to pioneer the HeART project, working with a textile artist in partnership with City Arts, to connect science and art to convey the science of the heart to the public. The project’s success has led to Aishah delivering an extension programme of workshops within schools and community settings, such as libraries. The work created in these sessions led to a gargantuan book approx. 2 meters across made of new, animal-free biomaterials. She has actively engaged and showcased her research to more than 5000 people at major public engagement events. These include the Nottingham Festival of Science and Curiosity, Science in the Park, LUSTRE at Lakeside Arts, the Vice Chancellors’ Winter Reception, and an art-science initiative for the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Boston, USA.
Luke Norman - Nanoscale and Microscale Research Centre (nmRC)
Luke initiated the public engagement programme "Under the Microscope". First debuted on Notts TV, featuring the imaging of a feather from the lead reporter's budgie, the project encourages the public to suggest objects or materials they would like to see in microscopic detail. Since then, one idea is selected each month to be imaged by the nmRC team using state of the art Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) equipment that can create images at the nanoscale and then these findings shared publically.
Luke also led the Coronation Coin project, producing the University's official coronotion gift to King Charles III. A 50p was etched at a microscopic level with the House of Windsor emblem, the names and coronation date of each Windsor monarch and a portrait of King Charles. The gift gained significant media coverage and reaching an estimated audience of over 3.5 million people, with a letter from Buckingham Palace stating that the King was “most impressed” by the piece.
Scouting and Guiding Initiative (SAGI) Team - School of Psychology, Faculty of Science
SAGI is a new public engagement initiative aiming to engage diverse groups of young people, from local scouting and guiding groups, with different aspects of psychological research. The overarching aim of this research project is to promote awareness and foster interest in science. This is achieved by actively engaging young people with psychological research through a series of fun and accessible activities. The small research team are led by Dr. Lee Parkin, an Assistant Scout Leader, from the School of Psychology. He identified SAGI as a unique opportunity to engage the voices of diverse groups of young people aged from 5 to 17. The team have already delivered 10 fun-filled and informative pack nights to local groups across Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, with 11 more nights booked for Spring 2024 and an extensive waiting list in operation. Feedback from both participants and leaders has been overwhelming positive, praising the informative but fun experience.
Winner
Rebecca Dewey, Senior Research Fellow - School of Physics and Astronomy
She is nominated for her extensive public engagement activities since her first postdoctoral position, including organising the first two Soapbox Science Nottingham events, online in 2020, and in-person in 2022, the most recent representing a new collaboration between Soapbox Science, the University of Nottingham, and the Speakers’ Corner Trust. She also created Meet a Physicist seminars to enable Girlguides engage with women physicists online in a safeguarded environment. More on her work below:
Shortlisted
Daniel Jolley, Assistant Professor - School of Psychology
He is nominated for his extensive portfolio of public engagement activity and his clear passion for science communication engaging diverse crowds – from young and older populations to policymakers. Daniel's research focuses on the psychology of conspiracy theories - how they develop and what impact they have. In 2022, he led an innovation that brought to life how to define a ‘conspiracy theory’ through an exhibit called The Conspiracy Kitchen. He also curated short video explainers to summarise his newly publicised research on conspiracy theories. He has been on several panels and given a number of notable public talks bringing arts and psychology together. He now regularly incorporates this infographic into his public talks. Audiences are then offered the opportunity to take home postcards of the infographic as a keepsake of the talk. To date, he has 560k reads on The Conversation. More on his work below:
Lauren Eglen, Research Fellow - Rights Lab
She is nominated for her work with the survivor-led anti-trafficking organisation, Azadi Kenya, to build skills and capacity in photography and storytelling through a series of participatory workshops. She also led the deployment of this method in the UK, working with anti-slavery NGO City Hearts. Lauren has worked with Azadi and City Hearts to disseminate survivors’ artistic work in Kenya and the UK, partnering with established organisations to hold online and in-person exhibitions and host survivors’ stories on the World Reader platform. Over 500 people attended in-person exhibitions at Azadi’s Nairobi Resource Centre, University of Liverpool’s Centre for the Study of International Slavery, and Hull’s annual Freedom Festival. These activities are part of a wider engagement agenda for Lauren, which includes working with Karma Nirvana’s Survivor Advisory Panel on a new definition of Honour Based Abuse (being adopted by the government this year), a presentation of findings to the APPG on HBA, and a public talk in Leicester Cathedral. More on her work below:
Joint winners: Dr Claudio Di Lorito and Dr Lara Bianchi
- Dr Lara Bianchi is an Assistant Professor of Business and Society at the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, Nottingham University Business School. She is nominated for developing a public engagement tool entitled Moral Capability Assessment Tool (MCAT) under her recent UoN GCRF-funded Project 2020-2021): I am my dignity: Women’s rights in fragile contexts. The tool puts women’s voice and agency at the centre of meaningful engagement for sustainable development and peace. With this online participatory tool, she has embarked on a broad range of outreach activities and collaborations with non-academic actors, including community-based organisations operating in Pakistan, and the conflict-affected territories of Mindanao and working with marginalised indigenous women in Ata Manobo and Muslim women in Marawi. She has presented to MCAT tookit to over 500 expert stakeholders in different countries. Please click on this link to see more of Lara's work.
- Dr Claudio Di Lorito is a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences. He is nominated for his commitment to improving representativeness, equality and inclusion in research of members of the public that have been often underserved in research and service provision. These include, among others, the LGBT community, BAME groups and people living with dementia. He has experimented and furthered the practice of a particular type of partient and public involvement (PPI), co-research, where members of the public with lived experience share equal power in all stages of research with the academic team. The real-world experience of co-research has proven extremely successful. He was the co-creator and organiser of a successful photo exhibition at the Institute of Mental Health entitled “Dementia: a day in the life” on people with dementia living in rural areas. Please click on this link an award-winning publication by Claudio.
Winner
Dr Ulrike Kuchner (School of Physics and Astronomy), for their work engaging the public with astronomy in creative ways, both locally and internationally.
Shortlist
Special commendation
Shortlisted
Winner
Dr Sarah Cassidy (School of Psychology), for their work with autistic people and their allies to prevent suicide among people with autism
Shortlist
- Dr Vengadeshvaran Sarma (Nottingham University Business School, UNM), nomatined for their work to engage wider audiences on educational inequality in Sri Lanka
- Dr Alison Tidy (School of Biosciences), nominated for engaging children with sciences through her picture book, "Off to work with Mummy the Plant Scientist"