Research and Enterprise Excellence Awards

Research and Enterprise Excellence Award Winners 2016/2017

Impact

The Impact Excellence Award is awarded for outstanding and significant impact arising from research and/or enterprise activities.

Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour and Jo Wilding
Nominated by: Professor Marc Cowling
For: Whose Best Interests? Exploring Unaccompanied Minors’ Rights through the Lens of Migration and Asylum Processes (MinAs)

This work examined the treatment of unaccompanied children seeking asylum in the UK, in the asylum, care, education and other systems, considering the extent to which their best interests were implemented, as required by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The resulting national report concluded that the UK was failing unaccompanied children in certain important respects. The report advocated a system for responsibility for unaccompanied children to be shared more evenly across the UK. Such a system has been implemented since the publication of the report, called the National Transfer Scheme.

The data mapping the distribution of unaccompanied children was requested by organisations including the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and the Children’s Society. Academic outputs include a co-authored paper in Critical Social Policy (2016) and a forthcoming paper in International Journal of Refugee Law and a forthcoming chapter in a Routledge volume.

Based on the UK national report, Jo Wilding responded to a call for evidence from the House of Lords subcommittee for its enquiry on unaccompanied children in the EU. She submitted two responses, one from the UK and a joint one from the MinAs project. The responses were published on the House of Lords website and were quoted in the briefing to committee members prior to their questioning of MEPs in Brussels. Both the UK and the joint MinAs response were extensively quoted in the House of Lords subcommittee’s report, Children in Crisis, with recommendations to the government. The response and report were also referred to in the House of Commons debate briefing.

Jo Wilding attended an invitation-only meeting at the House of Lords in September 2016 which aimed to develop policy and practice on unaccompanied children. She also contributed evidence to a dossier for presentation to the UN Committee Against Torture regarding inhuman and degrading conditions in the camps and police brutality, following a visit to the camps at Calais and Dunkirk. The report was extensively cited in Precarious Citizenship, a report by Migrant Children’s Legal Unit report on children and young people without leave to remain in the UK. Wilding was invited to the launch event.

Media attention has been significant with Wilding giving interviews to the Guardian, the Observer, BBC News and BBC Five Live as well as BBC Radio Sussex, Nottingham and Kent, amongst others. Her article in The Conversation was reproduced in the New Statesman with over 18,000 reads. In addition, Wilding and Dembour have participated in events aimed at engaging the general public with their findings.

Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour, Professor Tara Dean and Jo Wilding

Watch our Research and Enterprise Impact Excellence award winners discuss their project

Partnership

The Partnership Excellence Award is awarded for innovation in collaborations with new or existing partners.

Dr Ailsa Grant Ferguson
Nominated by: Dr Kate Aughterson
For: The Shakespeare Hut: A story of performance, memory and identity

Dr Ailsa Grant Ferguson's research on the Shakespeare Hut, a forgotten building in London for soldiers on leave during the First World War, has involved multiple partnerships. The Hut contained a purpose-built theatre, providing a stage for the greatest actors of the day and managed by prominent suffragists. It was built under the auspices of the YMCA in 1916 to commemorate the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death and was particularly dedicated for the use of New Zealand soldiers. Ailsa’s rediscovery of the Hut was a result of working as a postdoctoral researcher on an Australian Research Council funded project, ‘Monumental Shakespeares’, a collaboration between King’s College London and the University of Western Australia (2010-2013) and led by Professors Gordon McMullan (KCL) and Philip Mead (UWA), which made a comparative study of the Shakespeare tercentenary in London and Sydney. The resulting co-authored book, Antipodal Shakespeare, London: Bloomsbury, the Arden Shakespeare, is in press and will be published later this year.

After this project ended, Ailsa continued her research on the Shakespeare Hut as an Associate of the National Theatre (2013) and received the Society for Theatre Research Award for her work on the Hut’s performance history (2013-2014). She has a monograph on the Shakespeare Hut in progress (following a University of Brighton sabbatical for work on the project) and has published four scholarly articles, given many invited public lectures for the National Theatre, YMCA and Shakespeare Birthplace Trust among others, and been invited to speak on the topic for both BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4.

Throughout her research, Ailsa has identified diverse heritage stakeholders and focused energy on engaging and bringing together these different organisations, groups, individuals and even nations, to explore the intersection of heritage represented by the site and its history. During 2016, Ailsa worked closely with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), which stands on the Shakespeare Hut site in Bloomsbury, to reconstruct its opening for a major event, with an installation based on the Hut designed by Digital Drama, bringing representatives from the LSHTM together with those from the New Zealand High Commission (NZHC) and YMCA. She has also worked with the NZHC to bring the Hut back into national Anzac heritage; the YMCA to explore the significance of the Hut for their World War One work; the National Theatre, who owned the Hut site as the first planned site for the theatre; the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, who are interested in the links between the Hut and Stratford’s Shakespeare work during the War and Camden Library and Archive, who are interested in the local history of the site. In Autumn 2016, she collaborated with theatre company Scary Little Girls and the School of Advanced Study, University of London on an interactive performance walking tour focused on the Shakespeare Hut, for the Being Human Festival. She is currently working with a Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) actress who is constructing a project on the Hut’s significance in the history of women’s Shakespeare performance.

The Shakespeare Hut has garnered extensive local, national and international media interest and has been covered in The Guardian, the Evening Standard, BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3, as well as generating social media interest in the UK and Antipodes. The New Zealand High Commissioner gave a public address at the commemoration of the Shakespeare Hut’s centenary at the London School of Hygiene (2016) in which he publicly thanked Ailsa personally for revealing the Shakespeare Hut to the nation of New Zealand for whom it is significant national heritage which had been lost from public memory. The NZHC have since used social media to attempt to gather accounts of the Shakespeare Hut from descendants of Anzac soldiers who stayed there and continue to support the project. Ailsa has paid particular attention to the Shakespeare Hut project’s pathways to impact and has worked with both the School of Advanced Study and the London School of Hygiene to gather feedback from members of the public engaging with the work.

Dr Ailsa Grant Ferguson

Early Career Researcher

The Early Career Researcher Excellence Award is awarded for the production of high quality research and/or enterprise within five years of completing a PhD or starting a first academic post.

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou
Nominated by: Helen Kennedy
For: Digital culture, emerging technologies and social change

This work focuses on critical aspects of digital culture, emerging technologies and social change. Before joining Brighton, Fotopoulou completed highly prestigious postdoctoral fellowships at Goldsmiths, University of London and also at the University of Sussex, where she received her PhD in Media and Cultural Studies. In the five academic years after receiving her PhD (part of which was also maternity leave), and within less than two years at the University of Brighton, Fotopoulou has excelled in terms of publications, funding and professional development.

The level of publishing productivity is remarkable for an early career researcher. Fotopoulou has published one research monograph and 20 peer-reviewed journal articles and scientific reports, including highly selective, high impact journals in the field, such as New Media and Society and the British Journal of Sociology.  Fotopoulou’s monograph – Feminist Activism and Digital Networks (2017, Palgrave Macmillan) has been downloaded 424 times within three months of its publication, and has been endorsed by high profile academics in her field Professor Nick Couldry (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK), Professor Rosalind Gill (City, University of London, UK) and Professor Carol Stabile (University of Oregon, USA). The book was been described as “highly recommended” and deemed as “required reading for social justice classrooms.” The book sheds new light on how digital technologies have become inextricably linked to culture, economy and politics and how they have transformed feminist and queer activism.

Fotopoulou has also successfully secured funding for research in digital health start-ups, the quantified self and cultural understandings of data, which she undertook as a Visiting Scholar at the Science and Justice Research Center, University of California Santa Cruz, funded by RCUK New Economic Models in the Digital Economy (NEMODE). She has also secured funding as co-investigator on the EPSRC-funded project – Susnet: Sustaining networked knowledge: expertise, feminist media production, art and activism (RCUK Digital Economy ‘Communities and Culture’ Network+). She brought together feminist cultural production, art and activist practices and enabled exchanges between different researchers, activists, artists and community. Outputs included a web platform for critical engagement, a research conference an edited special issue on Queer Feminist Media Praxis in Ada: Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology.

She is the Chair of the Digital Culture and Communication Section of the European Communications Research and Education Association (ECREA), reviews manuscripts for several leading journals in her field and is member of the AHRC Peer Review College and the ESRC Review panel.

Since 2015, Fotopoulou has been invited to give nine fully-funded keynotes, talks and expert panels and has presented at over 30 international and national conferences since 2012. She was interviewed about digital health technologies and gender for the podcast series Digital Health/Digital Capitalism, published in the online discussion platform Open Democracy and been invited to write for The Conversation. Her research blog has had 30,226 views since 2011.

Fotopoulou has been selected for this year’s Research Leadership Training at the University of Brighton and is currently completing the programme. Furthermore, Fotopoulou has secured a funded PhD student and has taken on the Course Leadership for the MA Creative Media and is leading the Curriculum Review, title change and re-launch of the course.

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou and Professor Tara Dean

Leadership in Research

The Leadership in Research Excellence Award is awarded for publications or activities that have made an outstanding contribution to an academic field or discipline.

Professor Sergei Sazhin
Nominated by: Professor Morgan Heikal
For: Leadership in mathematical modelling of sprays

Professor Sergei Sazhin joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University in 1996 and founded the modelling group within the Heat Transfer Research Unit which then became part of the current Advanced Engineering Centre (AEC). His work added huge strength to that of the experimental team headed up by Professor Morgan Heikal. It is widely acknowledged that one of the main strengths of AEC is that its research programme is based on close collaboration between experimenters and modellers; his modelling work lies at the interface between engineering, physics, applied mathematics and chemistry. Professor Sazhin’s team has very quickly established itself as the leading group in the field of sprays. His standing in the community is recognised by colleagues in over 20 universities worldwide and he has made a significant contribution to the modelling group at Ricardo which enhanced the AEC collaboration with this strategic industrial partner.

He supervised fourteen successful PhD completions during the period from 2000 to 2016. His international reputation is exemplified by the number and geographical spread of his external examination of PhDs, including the UK, France, Sweden, Estonia, Israel, India and Russia.

Professor Sazhin is the author of more than 500 publications, including three monographs and 224 papers in international refereed journals. Current ISI Web of Science (Google Scholar) citation index is 29 (40). The quality and impact of Professor Sazhin’s work can best be demonstrated by 13 EPSRC and a number of other grants he has been awarded. He is a member of the editorial advisory boards for a staggering number of academic and industry journals, including  International Journal of Engineering Systems Modelling and Simulation (2007–present), Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Systems Engineering (2012-present), Oil & Gas Research (2015–present), Austin Journal of Irrigation (2015–present) an Associate Editor of Journal of Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Sciences (JAMES) (2015– present). He is regularly invited to referee EPSRC proposals and papers submitted to over 40 journals and numerous conference proceedings.

Professor Tara Dean and Professor Sergei Sazhin

Research and Enterprise Project

The Research and Enterprise Project Excellence Award is awarded for the generation of outstanding new knowledge, know-how or capacity.

Dr James Cole
Nominated by: Professor David Nash
For: Assessing the calorific significance of episodes of human cannibalism in the Palaeolithic

The body of work nominated encompasses a project undertaken by James as sole investigator, and independent of RCUK funding. The research is an important contribution to knowledge in understanding the motivations of prehistoric hominins (for example, Neanderthals, Homo erectus, Homo antecessor) and why they engaged with the practice of cannibalism. The main resulting publication in the prestigious journal Nature Scientific Reports demonstrates that our ancestors were more human-like in their behaviours than has previously been realised by researchers in the field of Human Origins.

The project provides, for the first time, a calorific estimate for the human body, so that episodes of prehistoric cannibalism can be assessed from a calorific perspective when compared to other major fauna exploited by our hominin ancestors. Results show that humans have a comparable nutritional value to those fauna that match our typical body weight, but significantly lower than a range of fauna found in association with anthropogenically modified hominin remains. This suggests that the motivations for cannibalism may not have been purely nutritionally motivated. Instead it is proposed that the comparatively low nutritional value of hominin cannibalism episodes support more socially or culturally driven narratives to explain anthropophagy.

The project is brilliant in its simplicity. It starts with a fundamental question – “why did our human ancestors engage in cannibalism?” – and painstakingly assembles the necessary data to provide an answer. The resulting paper will be first on the reference list for any future work on prehistoric cannibalism, the mark of an award-winning study. Despite only being published on 6 April 2017, the research has achieved global reach, and has already had a major impact on the public understanding of science.

Public engagement and interest in the Scientific Reports paper, and a linked think-piece in The Conversation authored by James, has been extremely high. Since its publication, the Scientific Reports paper has achieved one of the highest ever Altmetric scores in the University, and achieved over 8400 downloads; the attention scores are outstanding for such a young publication. Stand out articles in this list include interview-based features in The Guardian, National Geographic, The Washington Post, TIME magazine, ABC news (with a video about the research), PBS and NPR. Following on from the release of the publication, James has been asked to comment on more recent publications by Newsweek, further enhancing his public engagement profile and the international recognition of the University.

Dr James Cole and Professor Tara Dean

Research and Enterprise Support

The Research and Enterprise Support Excellence Award is awarded for an outstanding contribution in support of research and/or enterprise activities.

Graham Spacey
Nominated by: Professor Marina Novelli and Professor Andrew Church
For: Support in the development and management of Football4Peace International and the school's social and community engagement and widening participation portfolio

Football4Peace (F4P) is a multi-dimensional research, education and social engagement platform that utilises sport innovatively to deliver generic and bespoke 'values-based' training and coaching programmes designed in and for areas suffering from high levels of cross-community conflict and various forms of political disorder and social disintegration. The emphasis is on a grassroots, bottom-up and sustainable approach to peace building and conflict resolution.

Graham Spacey has contributed to the refinement of the programme and its roll-out into Israel, Jordan, Palestine and Northern Ireland. While the distinctive F4P model evolved using football alone and against a background of ethno-religious conflict, Graham has helped with innovative adaptations, proving that the methodology can be applied to multiple sporting practices and in different cultural socio-political contexts. He led the research and development of the Rugby4Peace curricula and ensured that the F4P model in Gambia addressed a number of related development and cross-community goals. Graham played a pivotal role in drafting the outstanding Impact Case Study for the Research Excellence Framework 2014 and monitors and evaluates F4P initiatives leading to published outputs.

Graham couples his Football4Peace role with his role as Project Officer at the School of Sport and Service Management, where he lectures on sport for development and peace. He also manages the School's social and community engagement and widening participation portfolio, including Kickstart and Fidget dance companies, Dance Rivals, Chelsea Children's Camp and Peer2Peer International. He has developed a self-funding model guaranteeing the long-term sustainabilirty of these initiatives.

Graham's knowledge, skills and engagement mean that he can perform above and beyond expectations and his contribution to the work of the University is significant and inspiring.

Professor Tara Dean and Graham Spacey

Excellence Award Nominees 2016/2017