Departmental news

Many congratulations to graduate Sara Akhavan-Malayeri, the Maxine Berg Prize winner of 2024! Her dissertation entitled "The Fight over the Five ‘Soviet-born Wives of British Subjects’: the Impact of Anglo-Soviet Marriages in Early Cold War Britain” was awarded Best Dissertation in the Field of Global History. Sara was also awarded the Final Year Undergraduate Iain Smith Single-Honours Prize set up by a bequest from Emeritus Reader Iain Smith.

The other 2024 prize winners are:

• Jacob McVaddy - Final Year Undergraduate Felix Dennis Dissertation Prize
• Richard Gregory - Final Year Undergraduate Roger Magraw History Joint-Honours prize
• Jade McFarlane - Final Year Undergraduate Year Abroad Reflective Assignment Prize.

A massive congratulations to the other prize winners and all Warwick History graduates 2024!

Find full details of the History prizes awarded at the end of each year here.

Professor JE Smyth's upcoming publication is featured in an article by the Guardian about Mary C McCall Jr, the female screenwriter airbrushed from Hollywood history.

Professor Smyth's new book, "Mary C McCall Jr: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Most Powerful Screenwriter", will be published in September and aims to restore Mary C McCall Jr’s reputation as one of the film industry’s most important figures.

Read the article in full.

University of Warwick researcher Dr Lory Barile is passionate about reaching new audiences with her work on understanding the barriers to improving the energy efficiency of our homes, so when the chance came up to promote her Retrofit Rocks project at Coventry’s Godiva Festival she didn’t hesitate.

Dr Barile and her team took a stall in the Your Coventry tent alongside community groups from across Coventry to meet festivalgoers and speak with them about her work.

She explains: “We decided to attend Godiva as we wanted to promote the Retrofit Rocks project to the public, particularly to schools in Coventry.

“The Godiva festival attracts enormous audiences – typically around 70,000 people – so we thought it was a great opportunity both to promote the project, which is ongoing, and to raise awareness of housing retrofitting schemes.

“Some Coventry residents may be eligible for financial support to improve the energy efficiency of their homes so also we wanted to let people know about this and help the Council to increase uptake of the schemes.”

As part of the Retrofit Rocks project Dr Barile and her team have worked with pupils, parents and staff at St Augustine’s Catholic Primary School in Radford, Coventry. The pupils carried out scientific experiments measuring the insulation properties of various materials and worked with local artists to design their own 3D models of well-insulated homes.

The project team will draw up a toolkit and a policy briefing to share the lessons which emerged during the workshops about why people don’t take advantage of retrofitting and other insulation schemes.

Despite competing for attention with headline acts including Eurovision star Sam Ryder, Richard Ashcroft and Beverly Knight, Dr Barile found that festival-goers were interested in the project and happy to hear more.

She said: “It was a great experience We spoke with at least 600 people, handed out our flyers with information on how to get in touch with us, and promoted our survey.

“People living in our communities are the recipients of policies made by policymakers, so it is crucial to understand the problems they face if we are to design policies that can truly be effective.

“It was really rewarding to see people engaging with the project and sharing their experiences with housing retrofitting. It was especially inspiring to see the children at St Augustine’s school asking for more workshops and activities to help save the planet. I loved every second of this project and I am sure my team did as well.”

• The survey is still open and Dr Barile is keen to hear from Coventry residents – access it at this link.

Two infectious disease experts have been selected to be Policy Fellows as part of a Japan-UK collaboration led by Professor Chris Dowson to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR). AMR is a major threat to global health, with overuse of drugs, including antibiotics, leading to so-called ‘superbugs’ that have become more resistant to medicine.
Press Release (9 July 2024).

Maria Brigida Brunetti and Andy Chappell (Postdoctoral Research Assistants) in the Elementary Particle Physics (EPP) group have been part of the organising committee for the 2024 Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition.

The British Academy is inviting proposals from early career researchers in the humanities and social sciences wishing to pursue an independent research project, towards the completion of a significant piece of publishable research.

Applicants must be researchers from the humanities and social sciences and be based at an eligible university or research organisation for the duration of the Fellowship.

Applicants must be of Early Career Status, meaning they must apply within three years from the date of their successful viva voce examination. For this round of competition, applicants are expected to have completed their viva voce between 1 April 2022 and 1 April 2025.

For more information and how to apply click hereLink opens in a new window

Dr Michael Hope wins prestigious EPSRC Open Fellowship award, worth £1.4 million, helping him drive the transition to clean renewable energy.

We congratulate Dr Lory Barile for being part of the winning Designing Together Team who have been recognised for excellence in running a collaborative project which brought together staff and students with expertise in design thinking from across the Higher Education sector to reimagine student roles in academic development.

The winning team consisted of staff and students with expertise in design thinking from across Warwick: Dr Lory Barile (Economics), Dr Bo Kelestyn (WBS), Jess Humphreys (Deputy Director of Warwick International Higher Education Academy), and two former students of Warwick: Inca Hide-Wright (BSc Psychology and MASc Community, Engagement and Belonging) and Nikita Asnani (BSc Economics and MSc Humanitarian Engineering with Sustainability).

In recent Masterclass Designing Together, the team described design thinking as 'a human-centred framework for understanding challenges, generating creative ideas, and developing solutions collaboratively' which forms 'a crucial capability for modern university leadership to embrace new possibilities for enhancing the student experience.'

Working collaboratively with HE colleagues from across the UK and beyond (Service Design in Higher Education Network, University of Lancaster, University of Leeds and University of Hull in the UK, as well as Helsinki Metropolitan University of Applied Sciences), the winning team developed a programme of events including coaching meetings, asynchronous resources and a symposium.

Student voice was key to the success of the project, and the student project officers were instrumental in engaging with the wider group of project participants through a series of focus groups (called facilitated conversations). The key outcomes of the project were:

• Developing resources form the meetings and the symposium.
• Setting up a community of practice on LinkedIn - Designing Together
• A podcast series created by the student officers - Designing Together Diaries
• A deck of cards as a resource to stimulate discussion, ideas and reflections on the design thinking process.

The Collaborative Awards category of the Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (WATE) aims to highlight the work of teams and groups of people who create teaching excellence and have a positive impact on student learning and the learning experience, and whose approach to collaborative working as well as their practices, behaviours and values are excellent. The winning Designing Together team were judged the top team in this category based on two criteria: excellence in the team's collaborative approach and excellence in the impact of their collaborative working.

Asked about the award, Dr Lory Barile commented:

"We're very proud of our work and extremely pleased that our project has been recognised by the WATE judges. What I find most valuable about our work is that the project has created a sustainable community of practice and started a series of collaborations between its participants. Together, we were able to critically evaluate design thinking approaches in relation to the learner experience and to highlight the benefits of collaboration within the community of practice. It has also given us a chance to achieve impact beyond Warwick."

We congratulate Dr Lory Barile and her colleagues from the Designing Together Team, and wish then further successes in the future.

Related content

The podcast Designing Together Diaries can be accessed via Spotify via this link

The Designing Together Group can be accessed via LinkedIn Group 

WATE Awards Winners 2024