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Philip Leverhulme Prizes 2021

Classics

Dr Tom Geue
University of St Andrews

Dr Theodora Jim
University of Nottingham

Dr Giuseppe Pezzini
University of Oxford

Dr Henry Stead
University of St Andrews

Dr Kathryn Stevens
University of Oxford

Earth Sciences

Dr Nicolas Brantut
University College London

Dr Andrea Burke
University of St Andrews

Dr Paula Koelemeijer
Royal Holloway, University of London

Dr Erin Saupe
University of Oxford

Dr Nem Vaughan
University of East Anglia

Physics

Dr Jayne Birkby
University of Oxford

Dr Radha Boya
University of Manchester

Dr Denis Martynov
University of Birmingham

Dr Jonathan Matthews
University of Bristol

Dr Sam Stranks
University of Cambridge

Politics and International Relations

Professor Teresa Bejan
University of Oxford

Dr Christopher Claassen
University of Glasgow

Dr Graham Denyer Willis
University of Cambridge

Dr Janina Dill
University of Oxford

Dr Inken von Borzyskowski
University College London

Psychology

Dr Jennifer Cook
University of Birmingham

Dr Jim A.C. Everett
University of Kent 

Dr Tobias Hauser
University College London

Dr Patricia Lockwood
University of Birmingham

Dr Netta Weinstein
University of Reading

Visual and Performing Arts

Dr Jennifer Coates
University of Sheffield

Dr Mohamad Hafeda
Leeds Beckett University 

Dr Lonán Ó Briain
University of Nottingham

Dr Martin O’Brien
Queen Mary, University of London 

Dr Annebella Pollen
University of Brighton

2021 citations

Gala Dinner Programme

Classics
 

Dr Tom Geue
School of Classics, University of St Andrews

Tom Geue’s work in Latin literature stands out for its freshness of approach and its theoretical rigour. His two monographs, Juvenal and the Poetics of Anonymity (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and The Power of Anonymity in Ancient Rome (Harvard University Press, 2019), explore the paradoxical power of anonymity, the first in relation to the self-concealing strategies of the satirist Juvenal, the second in relation to a range of self-consciously anonymous texts (this work is already inspiring international conferences). Another strand in his work (the application of Marxist theory to Latin literature) is represented by an equally agenda-setting Journal of Roman Studies article on the poetics of slavery and imperialism in Virgil’s Georgics. Dr Geue is also a dynamic collaborator, working with colleagues to organise stimulating and theoretically engaged conferences and (with Dr Elena Giusti) co-editing an impressively international volume on the politics of absence in Latin literature. A visible and energetic presence in the field, he is always a key participant in the most interesting conversations taking place in Latin literary studies.
 

Dr Theodora Jim
Department of Classics and Archaeology, University of Nottingham

Since finishing her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of Oxford, Theodora Jim has established herself as a brilliant and distinctive voice in the study of ancient Greek religion. In her first monograph, Sharing with the Gods (Oxford University Press, 2014), through a clutch of important, related articles and in her current work on the concept of ‘salvation’, she has brought to life the lived experience of everyday worship in the Greek world, moving beyond the stark choice of ritual or belief that has often characterised previous scholarship. Her work is notable for its meticulous detail – drawing on the widest range of literary, epigraphic and material evidence – but also, increasingly, for its pioneering use of comparative data. By setting Classical and Hellenistic Greek religion alongside the rich evidence for Chinese polytheism and not only modern Christianity, Dr Jim’s work has the potential not only to shed new light on old questions within Greek religion, but also to serve as a beacon for further comparative study.
 

Dr Giuseppe Pezzini
Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford

Over the last 10 years, Giuseppe Pezzini has emerged as an extraordinarily wide-ranging scholar of Latin language and literature, remarkable for the combination of linguistic philology and technical skills in linguistics, metre, textual criticism and digital humanities, alongside theoretically informed and culturally sensitive literary criticism. His first book, Terence and the Verb ‘To Be’ in Latin (Oxford University Press, 2015), is anything but a dry account, as its title might suggest, of a fundamental but extremely familiar verb; rather, it is a highly engaging and original discussion of how this core element of the language functioned in the cognitive experience of its native speakers. A second book is an edition of, and commentary on, one of the plays of Terence, while at the other end of the chronological spectrum is a group of publications on Tolkien’s reception of Classics. A further area of interest is theories of fiction and of comedy. A new project combining language, philosophy and cultural interaction will explore the relationship between the Roman Republic and the Kingdom of Pergamon.
 

Dr Henry Stead
School of Classics, University of St Andrews

Since obtaining his PhD in 2011, Henry Stead has established himself as a leading figure in classical reception studies, both in his published research and through his industry and energy in forging connections among scholars and students in this and related fields in the UK and beyond. Since the publication of his first monograph, A Cockney Catullus: The Reception of Catullus in Romantic Britain, 1795–1821 (Oxford University Press, 2015), he has produced a series of fascinating and revealing novel studies that pioneer new approaches to the place of Classics in British working-class culture, the appropriation of Classics by leftist intellectuals and classical influences on the twentieth-century Scottish literary Renaissance. His jointly authored study with Edith Hall, A People’s History of Classics: Class and Greco-Roman Antiquity in Britain and Ireland 1689 to 1939 (Routledge, 2020), is a monumental achievement and a landmark in the discipline.
 

Dr Kathryn Stevens
Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford

Kathryn Stevens’ first article after her PhD in 2013, ‘Secrets in the library’, won a prize from the International Association of Assyriology. She has subsequently led international projects to consider ancient celestial scholarship as demonstrated in astronomical diaries and chronography, developing in the process a powerful range of philological and critical skills. Her monograph, Between Greece and Babylonia: Hellenistic Intellectual History in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2019), nominated for an award by the American Society of Overseas Research, has changed the field. Dr Stevens illuminates the period after Alexander the Great to show how the political pressures of this new world of monarchies affected not just knowledge transmission, but knowledge production, in the various parts of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Having shown how Babylonia can be understood as part of the Hellenistic intellectual world, she now intends to extend her analysis to include Egypt and Judaea.

 

Earth Sciences
 

Dr Nicolas Brantut
Earth Sciences, University College London

Nicolas Brantut is a rock physicist who studies coupled physico-chemical processes during brittle and ductile deformation to understand deformation in the Earth’s crust. His early work, using a novel high-velocity deformation apparatus, established that dehydration and other metamorphic reactions could significantly reduce friction during seismic rupture, without the need for frictional melting. He continues to refine this work, having developed criteria for when fluid pressurisation can dominate over runaway frictional heating. At the other extreme in strain rate, his work on the thermodynamics of chemical reactions at crack tips in evolving deformation zones has transformed our understanding of stress corrosion and crack healing in rocks, and of the processes leading to the initiation of faulting. These studies typify the way that Dr Brantut combines careful experimental observations with a rigorous understanding of the underlying physics, which has allowed him to make these, and several other, groundbreaking contributions in just 10 years since completing his PhD.
 

Dr Andrea Burke
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of St Andrews

Andrea Burke is a geochemist who uses isotope ratios to study earth system processes. Her early work used the ratio of radioactive carbon-14 to carbon-12 to demonstrate, for the first time, changes in Southern Ocean circulation in response to deglaciation 20,000 years ago. Since moving to the University of St Andrews, she has transferred her focus to the sulfur isotope system. Sulfur’s stable isotopes are unusual in that they can undergo mass-independent fractionation due to interactions with ultraviolet radiation. This provides a means to identify past volcanic eruptions large enough to penetrate the stratosphere. To realise this potential, Dr Burke has pioneered the use of new mass spectrometric methods to precisely measure sulfur isotopes in ice cores stretching back 100,000 years. Her work has not only identified hitherto unknown giant eruptions, but also has linked their climatic consequences to major archaeological events.
 

Dr Paula Koelemeijer
Department of Earth Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London

Paula Koelemeijer is a geophysicist who has made major advances in constraining the structure and dynamics of the deepest mantle, integrating seismology with mineral physics and geodynamics. She made the first unequivocal observations of Stoneley modes, a type of normal modes, or standing oscillations of the Earth, excited by large earthquakes. Her robust constraints have revealed that the large low-seismic-velocity regions at the base of the mantle (termed LLVPs) are lighter than the surrounding mantle, with any dense material restricted to a thin basal layer. Her three-dimensional (3D) model of seismic velocities for the whole mantle, being more strongly constrained than other models, is routinely compared with simulations of mantle geodynamics. Her involvement in public outreach and citizen science includes study of the worldwide reduction of seismic noise due to COVID-19 lockdowns and providing open source software for portraying scalar fields of the Earth and planets using 3D printing.
 

Dr Erin Saupe
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford

Erin Saupe is a highly productive and internationally recognised scientist who investigates interactions between life and its physical environment on long geological timescales, addressing fundamental questions about the origin and maintenance of biodiversity. Crossing seamlessly between contemporary ecology and earth sciences, she applies a range of research tools including ecological niche modelling – a field to which she has contributed important methodological insights and in which she has demonstrated the phenomenon of phylogenetic niche conservatism on a timescale of tens of millions of years. Her research is helping to define the emerging field of conservation palaeobiology, whereby information from the past is deployed to inform present-day conservation strategy. Dr Saupe plans to use the prize to address the significance of anthropogenic environmental change for marine phytoplankton biodiversity and ecosystem function, and its implications for our pelagic food resources.
 

Dr Nem Vaughan
School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia

Nem Vaughan is a climate change scientist with world-leading expertise in climate change mitigation and greenhouse gas removal methods in the context of net zero emissions targets. Her early work provided the first robust assessment of the effectiveness of geoengineering and carbon dioxide removal methods, highlighting the need for more complete and holistic assessments. Subsequently, Dr Vaughan has led critical evaluations of mitigation plans centred around the use of technology called Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), pioneering multistakeholder approaches that cross boundaries between academia, industry, policy and civil society. The insights from her research have been highly influential, both through citations in the IPCC special reports and through stimulating new research to understand the real-world feasibility of carbon removal through largescale afforestation and BECCS. Her work is highly interdisciplinary, vitally important for policymakers and stands to stimulate a paradigm shift in understanding and communicating the role of greenhouse gas removal within future emission scenarios.
 

Physics
 

Dr Jayne Birkby
Astrophysics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford

Jayne Birkby has played a key role in the emerging science of exoplanet studies. She led the study that showed the first clear detection of water in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. To enable this, she produced a novel technique to analyse high-resolution spectra, which relies on the Doppler shift in the spectral features of the planet against the more stable background from the host star and the atmosphere of the Earth. She later extended the technique to measure the day length on a young exoplanet, thus opening the potential for a study into how exoplanets gain their angular momentum during their formation. Dr Birkby’s observations of planetary atmospheres, when coupled with upcoming large observing facilities, will be used to perform in-depth studies of formation, migration, surface structure and weather on a range of exoplanetary systems, as well as to search for biosignature gases on the most nearby rocky exoplanets.
 

Dr Radha Boya
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester

Radha Boya’s expertise is in nanofabrication of molecular-scale capillaries and their use in studying confined fluids. Her method and measurement techniques are original and unique, and have led to unparalleled measurements relating to the flow and confinement properties of water and hydrated ions. In particular, recent pioneering measurements demonstrated controlled transport of water through capillaries so thin that hydrated ions are excluded. Such measurements may provide the basis for future technologies based on atomic-precision filtration of gases and liquids. Filtration is crucial for several environmental challenges, such as water desalination and carbon dioxide capture. Dr Boya has demonstrated that by tuning the surface chemistry as well as the pore size, filtration based on chemical affinity and geometry can be adapted for different needs.
 

Dr Denis Martynov
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham

Denis Martynov played a key role in the commissioning of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Livingston, Louisiana, making it the most sensitive interferometer in the world and enabling the discovery of gravitational waves in 2015, arguably the scientific discovery of the century. In this complex and challenging task, he demonstrated an exceptional combination of theoretical knowledge and experimental creativity. The sensitivity of modern measurements is limited by quantum noise and Dr Martynov’s expertise in the application of quantum measurement techniques places him in a particularly strong position to design and develop new technologies for future gravitational wave and dark matter detectors. In this context, the prize will support his projects on quantum amplification, to explore active optical resonators to improve the signal-to-noise ratio using a novel approach and to perform theoretical investigations towards an optimal quantum amplifier.
 

Dr Jonathan Matthews
School of Physics, University of Bristol

Jonathan Matthews works on quantum photonics and is co-Director of the University of Bristol’s Quantum Engineering Technology laboratories. He developed the transfer of quantum photonic devices from optical tables to optical chips that could be manufactured at scale, thereby establishing a new field of integrated quantum photonics. He demonstrated the first programmable control of quantum light on a chip and realised a fully universal two-qubit quantum processor capable of implementing proof-of-principle quantum algorithms. This work has provided the base technology for several quantum technology start-ups. Dr Matthews has made many other outstanding contributions to quantum photonics, including the development of the world’s fastest quantum light detector. He will use the prize to work on quantum sensing and on extending the limits of what is possible with quantum metrology.
 

Dr Samuel Stranks
Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge

Energy materials is an intensely competitive research area, with good reason: it not only holds potential for enormous business growth but will drive future technologies that may help to avert climate catastrophe. By training, Sam Stranks defies categorisation, but his trajectory was set when he commenced his doctoral work in 2008 at Oxford in organic solar cells. Since then, he has gained national and global recognition for his pioneering research in perovskite materials. His groundbreaking publications have led to deep new understanding based on his blend of materials fabrication, characterisation and photophysics, leading to enormous interest across the globe in the promise of a new generation of efficient solar cells. Not content with that, he is intent on using the novel materials to develop single-photon emitters, which would open a further range of applications for his remarkable work.
 

Politics and International Relations
 

Professor Teresa Bejan
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford

Teresa Bejan has established herself as an internationally leading scholar on toleration, freedom of expression and calls for ‘civility’ in politics. Her book, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration (Harvard University Press, 2017), is a sophisticated and erudite examination of ideas of civility in the work of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Roger Williams, and a defence of Williams’ approach in particular. Professor Bejan convincingly shows how studying these thinkers’ arguments can illuminate the contemporary debates about the nature and value of freedom of speech and what norms should govern the way we engage with each other. More generally, her research shows an extraordinary breadth, including debates in contemporary political theory as well as a wide range of earlier political thinkers.
 

Dr Christopher Claassen
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow

Christopher Claassen has established himself as a leading scholar on the links between the attitudes and opinions of the public and macro-scale forces of demographic and institutional change. He has made important contributions to how to best combine survey data across time and space and generate more reliable estimates for smaller sub-groups. His work shows that popular support can sustain democratic systems but does not by itself help bring about transitions to democracy. He finds evidence of thermostatic effects in support for democracy, where threats to roll back democratic institutions increase public support, while counter-majoritarian changes to protect minority rights can produce a popular backlash. He will use the prize funds to extend his work on support for democracy to how political trust influences institutional stability and change, drawing on both new and existing data in countries that have seen democratic backsliding.
 

Dr Graham Denyer Willis
Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge

Graham Denyer Willis astutely deploys exacting political ethnography to examine the interaction between state and society in the megacities of the global south. By conducting extended ethnographic work amongst the homicide police and the population of gang-controlled areas in Latin America’s largest city, São Paulo, Brazil, his work documents how violence shapes the lives of the city’s marginalised populations. He then uses these rich empirical insights to examine how states transformed by the ‘third wave’ of democratisation have sought to control their populations in the face of rapid urbanisation. The result is a powerful and original work of political science, which forces us to rethink how we understand the state’s relationship to violence based as it is on the ‘practice of abandonment as a form of rule, in which direct violence is made possible, logical and uncontestable’. The work of Dr Denyer Willis is original and innovative social science.
 

Dr Janina Dill
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford

Janina Dill’s work on the issues raised within the broad field of just war theory brings a set of distinct and original perspectives to bear on the central questions of whether and how far law and morality can act as effective checks on the conduct of war. As her published works have ably demonstrated, she brings to the inquiry perspectives from international law, ethical philosophy and international relations theory, backed by a scrupulous attention to empirical evidence, to establish the ways in which the use of force has been conceived and organised in particular contexts. In doing so, she has developed some novel and unexpected insights into the decision-making involved in the conduct of war and also into the attitudes of the non-combatants who are on the receiving end of the violence that is the consequence of these decisions. Dr Dill will use the prize to take these aspects of her work further, thereby helping to investigate the many implications of the normative and psychological facets of the conduct of war for civilians and soldiers alike.
 

Dr Inken von Borzyskowski
Department of Political Science, University College London

Inken von Borzyskowski has an outstanding record of research in international relations, specifically the study of international organisations. Her work on international democracy assistance is groundbreaking and the topic of her book, The Credibility Challenge: How Democracy Aid Influences Election Violence (Cornell University Press, 2019). Her conclusion that international election observation is not uniformly a good idea, as outside observers can exacerbate post-election violence when they criticise election quality, has profound implications for policy and governance. Dr von Borzyskowski has an exceptional publication record in a wide range of esteemed journals. Her work is characterised by excellent use of advanced methods and the collection of original data. Her future research plans build on these achievements and promise more innovation in connecting the work of international organisations to decision-making in US legislative politics.
 

Psychology
 

Dr Jennifer Cook
School of Psychology, University of Birmingham

Jennifer Cook is dedicated to conducting world-class research in sociability. In her PhD, she noticed and then rigorously investigated autistic adults’ distinctive patterns of movement, which impact upon their social interaction. These impacts are better understood as arising from social mismatch than from a ‘deficit’, as is usually attributed to the autistic individual alone. This significant advance led to the award of the Frith Prize by the Experimental Psychology Society, for exceptional doctoral work. In later research, she showed that social learning does not involve different neurocognitive processes from those involved in other kinds of learning. Given this, why do people differ in their social ability? Dr Cook is now exploring the origins and mechanisms of sociability in humans and other species, examining social networks in which some are well-connected ‘nodes’ and others more isolated. She uses neuroimaging, behavioural, psychopharmacological and comparative studies, for example, collaborating with others who study the basis of social networks in bees. Her research programme is exciting, original and important.
 

Dr Jim A.C. Everett
School of Psychology, University of Kent

Since completing his DPhil in 2017, Jim Everett has established himself as an internationally outstanding researcher in experimental social psychology. Drawing on a wide range of methods from behavioural economics and philosophy as well as psychology, he has developed a radically new perspective on moral and political psychology. For example, his highly influential two-dimensional model of the psychology of utilitarianism distinguishes between being prepared to harm others for the greater good and being willing to make personal sacrifices to maximise fairness and general well-being. Individuals have different attitudes along these dimensions and are perceived accordingly. This and many other strands of Dr Everett’s work have wide implications not just for theoretical understanding but for the success, failure and consequences of different political leadership strategies. His work has been recognised by Fulbright and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowships, as well as by his receipt of several awards including the 2018 Wegner Theoretical Innovation Prize.
 

Dr Tobias Hauser
Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging and Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, University College London

Since gaining his PhD in 2014, Tobias Hauser has established himself as an acknowledged expert on human decision-making. His research investigates how humans make decisions and why their decision-making is inconsistent. Even when faced with exactly the same options, people’s decisions are often inconsistent. Dr Hauser combines computational modelling, multimodal neuroimaging and pharmacological manipulations to study the neurocognitive mechanisms that drive these inconsistencies. Another feature of his research is that he combines work on healthy individuals with research on patients with mental health disorders, shedding light on psychiatric problems. His research output has been published in leading journals and has already attracted prestigious awards and significant external funding.
 

Dr Patricia Lockwood
School of Psychology, University of Birmingham

Patricia Lockwood is an incredibly talented social cognitive neuroscientist working at the intersection of psychological sciences, computational cognitive neuroscience and philosophy. Her research is best characterised as a theory-driven quest to uncover the neural mechanisms of what makes us effective prosocial beings. She was one of the first to show, in children with antisocial behaviour, the specific neurobiological correlates of processing others’ pain, contributing substantially to the recognition of conduct disorders as neurodevelopmental. More recently, she has been developing paradigms to uncover the neural mechanisms of how we learn to help each other. This work has allowed researchers from around the world to move away from questionnaire-type methods in prosocial research and to rely more on neurocognitive methods. Dr Lockwood has an outstanding publication record in top-quality international scientific journals and is at the heart of major international collaborations, ensuring that her work is widely read and has maximum scientific impact.
 

Dr Netta Weinstein
School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading

Netta Weinstein is a prolific and influential researcher, making distinctive contributions to the academic discipline, the relevance and timeliness of which has attracted the attention of both media and policymakers, so changing policy and practice. She completed her PhD at the University of Rochester and, after a one-year postdoc in Hamburg, rose rapidly through the UK academic ranks of Lecturer and Senior Lecturer to become Associate Professor at the University of Reading. Her research in experimental social psychology uses a range of methodologies, including experimental, longitudinal, diary methodologies and big data. Her current research is exploring the balance between solitude and sociability and how time alone contributes to well-being. However, her research interests are broad, looking at issues of social motivation in a wide range of contexts, including education, parenting, prejudice and biases in the workplace. She has a correspondingly wide range of collaborative partners, including non-academic stakeholders.
 

Visual and Performing Arts
 

Dr Jennifer Coates
School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield

Since her 2014 PhD at SOAS University of London, Jennifer Coates has deservedly established a highly impressive international reputation with prizes and fellowships awarded in Australia, Japan, the UK and the US for her cutting edge interdisciplinary research on Japanese visual and performing arts. Her monograph, Making Icons: Repetition and the Female Image in Japanese Cinema 1945–1964 (Hong Kong University Press, 2016), is widely acknowledged as having broken new ground in its art-historical approach to the study of the representation of women in a peak period of film-making and artistic innovation. Her new book (out in 2022) will also innovate with its, as yet rare, focus on questions of Japanese cultural spectatorship. Alongside her prodigious record of high-quality scholarly publications, she has also contributed enormously to wider forms of research life and public culture in her organisation of key conferences, symposia and exhibitions, as well as in her production of a significant documentary film on Japanese cinema. Her exciting new project, on the creation of public personae in Japan, will take her and the field in further new directions.
 

Dr Mohamad Hafeda
Leeds School of Architecture, Leeds Beckett University

Mohamad Hafeda is an internationally recognised artist, writer and academic whose interdisciplinary, socially engaged practice explores the politics of urban space, with particular attention to issues of borders, displacement and representation. Working between London and Beirut, he collaborates with communities to explore their lived experience of displacement as a counterpoint to political metanarratives, resulting in urban interventions, art installations, films and writings. With his art collective Febrik, Dr Hafeda develops projects around the topic of ‘play’, negotiating the dynamics and politics of urban space for under-represented groups. He has previously been commissioned by the UN to develop public spaces in camps in North Lebanon and Jordan and has worked with the Serpentine and South London Galleries. His latest book, Negotiating Conflict in Lebanon: Bordering Practices in a Divided Beirut (Bloomsbury, 2019), and his future research both question how time is used to control space and the movement of displaced communities in Lebanon and the UK and also how it might be mobilised as a form of tactical resistance.
 

Dr Lonán Ó Briain
Department of Music, University of Nottingham

Lonán Ó Briain works primarily on the music of minority cultures in South East Asia, notably Vietnam. His work has contributed to a wider understanding of the ways in which marginalised people use their cultural heritage to maintain community and identity. Dr Ó Briain has also looked at the impact that media and technology make on such cultures and ways in which media can change the cultural, social and political landscape in countries outside the Anglophone world. His research has worldwide reach and significance in examining the interface between inherited culture, modern technological developments and the future of marginalised peoples. Based on ethnographic field research in the Lower Mekong Basin, his future plans will seek to identify how minority communities are coping with environmental challenges, social upheaval and climate change in a world where societal values are more and more under pressure. This project will involve collaboration with NGOs, artists, policymakers and higher education institutions locally in facilitating a cross-border study of cultures, communities and the environment.
 

Dr Martin O’Brien
School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London

Martin O’Brien is a highly original practice-based research and autoethnographic writer on performance and illness, who also has an impressive track record of live art practice research. Performance and medicine is an emerging field of enquiry, vast in scope and perforce interdisciplinary. Dr O’Brien’s position in this emergence is informed by excellent scholarship, creative imagination and personal experience. Due to their diligent and unique outputs to date, they have rightly earned accolades from both academics and the artistic community. Their planned project builds on a body of work in performance and writing, inflected by the experience of living with illness and, specifically now, shielding during the COVID-19 pandemic, together with the political implications of this pandemic and how it has affected community formation. Combining new live performance, a book and conference papers, this is research of strength, integrity and contemporary significance, informed by personal experience, but never solipsistic. Rather, it opens and expands understanding of the overlaps between medicine, performance and disability in culture today.
 

Dr Annebella Pollen
Centre for Design History, University of Brighton

Annebella Pollen is one of the most exciting historians of the visual arts of her generation. She has reached a wide international audience through her monographs, The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift (Donlon Books, 2015) – also interpreted as the exhibition Intellectual Barbarians with Nayia Yiakoumaki at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015–16) – and Mass Photography: Collective Histories of Everyday Life (Routledge, 2015). Her new books, Nudism in a Cold Climate: The Visual Culture of Naturists in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain (Atelier Éditions, 2021) and Art without Frontiers (2022), on the British Council’s art and design collection and its contribution to international cultural relations, will continue Dr Pollen’s valuable approach, which explains how cultural practices affect social change, expressing hope for a better world. Her proposed project on Children’s Photography: A Cultural History from Below will have similarly wide public appeal, focusing as it does on children as photographers, revealing a child’s-eye view of the world to shift our conceptualisation of childhood and its histories.

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