Celebrating Excellence: Vice-Chancellor’s Awards Honour Outstanding Achievements in SoGE
The Vice-Chancellor’s Awards are a testament to excellence and innovation, and are a University-wide celebration of outstanding people. They recognise the achievements and celebrate success across the collegiate University, from academics and researchers to professional, technical and support staff.
A Showcase of the shortlisted nominations took place at the Weston Library, and the winners were announced at a special ceremony hosted by the Vice-Chancellor in the Sheldonian Theatre on Wednesday 8 May.
'REACH: improving water security for vulnerable people in Africa and Asia,' won the Research Engagement Award for enriching their research through engaging with those outside the University, for the benefits of wider society. Since 2015, Oxford has led a global programme of research with partners in governments, universities, civil society organisations and UNICEF to improve water security for 10 million poor people by 2024. Through respectful and inclusive partnerships, major advances have been achieved in delivering safe and reliable drinking water for communities, health clinics and schools, understanding and responding to floods and droughts in East Africa and Bangladesh, and addressing river water pollution in Ethiopia.
From left to right: Dr Sonia Hoque, Prof Simon Dadson, Catherine Grasham, Prof Rob Hope, Prof Katrina Charles, Professor Paul Whitehead, Dr Ellen Dyer, Professor Irene Tracey, Alice Chautard, Dr Saskia Nowicki
Global Youth climate training won the Environmental Sustainability Award, for furthering work to support the University’s Environmental Sustainability strategic goals and commitments. Global Youth Climate Training is a partnership between the Smith School of Enterprise, the School of Geography and the Environment and their partners, Global Youth Coalition. Through 13 free fortnightly training sessions, the team educated 4,500 activists under the age of 35 from over 177 countries. The training empowered young people around the world with the knowledge and skills to navigate and engage effectively with climate change. There were more than 10,000 applications for the free training, the majority of whom were from areas most impacted by climate change.
From left to right: Gaia Campanelli, Alexis McGivern, Professor Irene Tracey, Liliana Resende, Liz Smith
Alexis McGiven, Net Zero Standards Manager, said “we are absolutely delighted to have won the VC Award for Environmental Sustainability. This project represents our deep commitment to ensuring that young people are given the technical expertise to engage on climate policy. We loved working with the dynamic and inspiring Global Youth Coalition, who were incredible partners and friends. We deeply appreciate our collaboration with Eco Interpreters, who made the course available in four languages! We are hopeful that with the right funder we can run this programme again, as our huge number of attendees demonstrates a deep need for more climate training!”
Catherine Grasham with Laura Picot were highly commended for the Research Culture Award, for their work Developing an Ethical Fieldwork Code of Conduct for the University of Oxford. Driven by anti-racist activism by a collective of graduate students in the School of Geography and the Environment the Ethical Fieldwork Code of Conduct provides a framework for helping fieldworkers across disciplines, methods, country context, and career stages improve equity in their fieldwork processes.
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Congratulations all!
The Vice-Chancellor’s Awards are a testament to excellence and innovation, and are a University-wide celebration of outstanding people. They recognise the achievements and celebrate success across the collegiate University, from academics and researchers to professional, technical and support staff.
