We’re thrilled to share that Professor Olympia Palikara, has been awarded the Excellent Supervision Award for Social Sciences at the Warwick Research Celebration 2025.

Professor Palikara’s mentorship blends professional excellence with unwavering personal support. She has guided her students to co-author peer-reviewed publications, present at international conferences and influence policy and practice. Her dedication to growth, resilience and integrity has profoundly shaped her students' academic journeys. Her impact extends beyond academia, inspiring her students to thrive both professionally and personally.

Congratulations, Professor Palikara!

Workshop, Friday December 2

Co-organised by:
The Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM) - University of Warwick
Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) - University of Warwick
University of the Arts, London

Societal acceptance of driverless technology is a key objective of today’s innovation drive. Most current research in this area, however, relies on a limited set of methods, namely survey research, user studies and behaviourial analysis. Creative methods like design research and issue mapping can complement these existing approaches by bringing to light still hidden social implications of innovation in a participatory way. As driverless cars have the potential to transform society – and indeed the very relations between innovation, government and public life - it becomes crucial that we investigate these less obvious, latent social implications. To enable public understanding and facilitate societal engagement with driverless futures, we need creative methods.

This one-day event at the University of Warwick will bring to bring together a small group of social scientists, design researchers, engineers and policy makers in order to develop research agendas for public engagement and societal acceptance of driverless cars using creative methods. The workshop has been organised by Dr. Noortje Marres (CIM), Dr. Rebecca Cain (WMG) and Dr. Lucy Kimbell (Univeristy of the Arts London) with Dr. Ana Gross (CIM) and Mr. Arun Ulahannan (WMG).

Professor Peter Elias, CBE, of IER has been conferred as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. This Fellowship is a huge accolade. Fellows are drawn from academics, practitioners and policymakers, marking the impact of their work through the use of social science for public benefit.

Professor Chris Warhurst, Director of IER said:

‘It is another indication of the very high esteem with which Peter is held for his work on, amongst other things over the past thirty years, occupational classification schemes in the UK and internationally and, more recently, developing protocols for the use of Big data for the OECD countries.’