“Good news for ageing research, Alan Walker wins the first ever Impact Champion of the Year Award bringing the value of public engagement with our multidisciplinary field centre stage”
Sheila Peace, May 14th 2013:
For the first time the ESRC have decided to award an annual prize to recognise and reward the successes of ESRC-funded researchers who they feel that achieved outstanding economic or societal impacts. The prize celebrates success in collaborative working, partnerships, engagement and knowledge exchange activities that have led to significant impact.
At the awards ceremony Broadcaster Ewan Davies managed the presentations and a short 5 minute video relating to each winner was shown. The piece regarding Alan spoke of his significant track record in knowledge exchange, and supporting and enabling impact particularly through funded research programme. In talking about the NDA reference was made by Dr. Andrew Newman, Newcastle University to his work on ‘Contemporary visual art and identity construction – wellbeing amongst older people’ as an example showing the breadth of impact from the programme.
Nominations were requested by ESRC and 68 teams/people applied. The judging panel were:
- Mr David Walker, writer and broadcaster specialising in public policy and management. Chair of the Celebrating Impact Prize panel and member of the ESRC Council.
- Dr. Fiona Armstrong, Deputy Director of Policy, resources and Communications, ESRC
- Mr Neil Serougi, independent health informatics research and policy consultant. Member of the Methods and Infrastructure Committee, ESRC
- Professor Clare Wallace, professor of Sociology and Vice-Principal for Research and Knowledge Exchange at University of Aberdeen, member of the ESRC Research Committee
- Mr Graeme Nicol, SME Consultant and former ESRC Research Council member
- Dr. Karen Bultitude, lecturer in Science Communication and Director of Research in the department of Science and technology Studies in UCL.
A prize of £10,000 is awarded to the winners of each entry and £10,000 to the department with the Impact Champion of the Year, with second prizes of £5000 for each runner up. The prize is to be spent on furthering knowledge exchange, public engagement or other communications activities to promote the economic and social impact of research.
The awards were for:
- Outstanding Impact in Society
- Outstanding International Impact
- Outstanding Impact in Public Policy
- Outstanding Impact in Business
- Outstanding Early Career Impact
- Impact Champion of the Year