Congratulations to the winners of the Vice Chancellor's Outreach Awards! In total 13 award nominations were received, and the judging panel had great difficulty selecting the final winner for each award.
Winners were announced by the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Ian White at a celebration event last week. It was great to see people from across the University gather together to celebrate outreach, get to know others in the University who are involved with outreach, and to eat cake!
The winners and runners up in each of the five categories are:
Engage
James Scobie - winner 
James has run the University of Bath engineering summer school, collaborating with the Smallpiece Trust to improve the programme and provide funding. The atmosphere and level of engagement during each session has been remarkable and the feedback from the students has been overwhelmingly positive. James’s passion and commitment will have far reaching impacts on the lives of hundreds of students.
Sanjae King – runner up 
Sanjae has delivered activities for students from varied backgrounds to get acquainted with electronics principles, helping them to discover their interests, hone in on relevant skills, and create a sense of belonging. Sanjae has also launched the Bath Black Engineering and Science Society and has represented the University of Bath at Imperial’s “Black to the Future” event.
Reach out
Yvonne Jewkes - winner 
Yvonne runs creative writing workshops at HMP Grendon, a high-security therapeutic prison. The workshops foreground life writing and the aim is to make those who are excluded and inaudible feel included and audible. At the end of the residency, they will produce an anthology (co-edited with one of Grendon’s prisoners). This will tangibly show participants that their voice and experience matter, and that they have a place in society.
Paloma Rodriguez Santana – runner up 
As a tutor on Pathway to Bath Paloma has gone above and beyond to innovate in her teaching and learning, continuously improving the subject experience for students. Mechanical Engineering now stands as an exemplar subject in Pathway to Bath, with highly scaffolded and engaging resources that directly address WP students' gaps in subject knowledge and academic skills.
Support
Oli Schofield - winner
Oli has supported Doctoral students to present in a research roadshow held at the Bath Medical museum. Oli built a relationship with the museum staff, and recognised that the students’ research would be a good fit with the museum’s existing wellbeing programme. Oli secured funding to provide bespoke public speaking training for students and organised a peer mentoring process so students had support and received feedback from their peers.
Jessica Ohern – runner up 
Jess has given the AAPS CDT public engagement team support for their first outreach activity at Somerscience by setting up meetings, taking minutes, highlighting actions, and supporting the application process. On the day Jess provided additional support, making sure all the activities arrived and were set up, everyone knew what we were doing and where to go, and supporting the team during the event.
Impact
Touseef Mir - winner 
As a journalist and activist in Indian controlled Kashmir, Touseef got involved in understanding popular experiences under precarious circumstances and realised the positive impact education and awareness could play. Touseef commenced Pe’nd Online in April 2020. It is considered among the most credible education and awareness spaces in Kashmir. It played a pivotal role during the covid-19 pandemic in generating awareness and bringing the lessons learned to the people directly.
Dedication
Vibhor Mathur - winner
Alongside researching the WorkFREE project in India - a Universal Basic Income 'Plus' pilot, Vibhor has engaged in extensive outreach across South Asia and Europe to create connections with bureaucrats, politicians, civil society actors, media and academics globally. Vibhor co-founded the India Basic Income Coalition, which hosted the first national conference on UBI. Vibhor is working closely with the Welsh Government on their basic income pilot for care leavers.
Kit Yates – runner up
Kit has a rich history of leadership in engaging the wider public and policy makers with science and mathematics. Kit has 67,000 twitter(X) followers and he has written for the Guardian, the Times, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Mail, Scientific American and more as well authoring several popular maths books. Kit has appeared on national television, radio and YouTube as an expert. He is also a member of multi-disciplinary science collective Independent SAGE.
The Vice-Chancellors Outreach Awards will run every two years, and will return in 2026. Find out more about the categories on the Outreach Awards webpage.
If you are engaged in outreach work or interested to find out more then you can join our Outreach Network, where lots of like minded people gather and support each other with outreach work across the University.
