Student Awards

Undergraduate Award

Rebecca Briggs

Rebecca Briggs is a final year medical student with a keen interest in public health and social prescribing. She is the Student Lead for Memory Lane Café, which provides a safe space for people with dementia and memory loss to be able to connect, support each other and escape from the normal routines of life. Rebecca played a key role in setting up the weekly Memory Café at the Syndi Centre in Leamington Spa, taking responsibility for the café’s logistics and Community Engagement. For Rebecca, Community Engagement is essential when social prescribing as it brings other members of the local community into the conversation. Rebecca increased visibility of the café by building relationships with Warwickshire Dementia networks, NHS Dementia services and local GPs, to build a community of regular attendees to the café.

Professor Kate Owen, Director of Medical Studies, says that “The work Rebecca has achieved setting up Memory Lane café aligns with the university’s strategic regional goals and has represented the university in a very positive light in the community’ including a great appearance on Midlands Today. The engagement work Rebecca has pioneered will allow future Warwick medical students to engage with the local community in a meaningful way.

Fariya Maryam

Health and Medical Sciences undergraduate Fariya Maryam’s has a deep passion for social justice, mental health, art, and education. As such, the primary goal of her engagement activities has been to foster inclusivity and promote social justice both locally and internationally. She achieved this through involvement in several voluntary positions. As part of Student Action for Refugees (STAR), Fariya teaches English to asylum seekers, directly enhancing their communication skills. She has broadened access to learning resources by translating educational videos into Urdu for Education Saves Lives. Fariya also founded Ayka India Trust, an organization that envisions an India where every child has access to holistic education, students have equal academic and extracurricular opportunities and dreams aren’t limited by social-economic constraints. She is also co-founder of Project Inclusion, a movement that aims to destigmatise neurodiversity through weekly support groups, online campaigns and live sessions.

Fariya supports others on their public and community engagement journeys through mentoring, various workshops and sharing good practise on LinkedIn. These efforts ensure that more people are equipped to engage meaningfully with the public, fostering a research culture of active participation and impactful community change.

Vanshika Singhania

Warwick Business School undergraduate Vanshika Singhania has, for the past year, served as the President of Enactus Warwick, leading initiatives that foster sustainability, social change, and entrepreneurship. Vanshika has managed four social enterprises which have overseen numerous pro-bono consulting projects. One notable project is ‘Food Intercept’, which worked with Mum’s Kitchen, an initiative that uses women’s culinary skills to increase social integration and eliminate isolation. Vanshika’s involvement saw the group generate £145 in revenue which was reinvested into the community. By combining her entrepreneurial skills with community engagement, Vanshika has helped foster a culture of engagement within Warwick Business School. By including fellow students, local buisnesses, non-profits and community members, she has fostered collaborative problem solving to address pressing social issues such as food waste, Women Empowerment and the integration of refugees into local communities.

Staff Awards

Outstanding Public Engagement

Dr Martha McGill

Martha McGill is a historian of supernatural beliefs in the early modern period (c.1500-1800). She is interested in exploring fresh ways to tell fascinating stories from the past to generate positive social impact in the present. By developing events and resources for schools, local communities in Coventry, and online, Martha has been able to reach people from a range of backgrounds. Her card game, Witch Hunt 1649 (2022), developed with support from a team of students, explores how community tensions have historically erupted into violence. Martha has also led student groups to create two shadow puppetry performances: ‘Enlightenment Shadows: Supernatural Stories from the Age of Reason’, and ‘Invisible Worlds: Humans and the Supernatural in Enlightenment Britain’, as well as a play: ‘Ghosts, Fairies and a Wombful of Rabbits: Weird and Wondrous Stories from Early Modern Women’. ‘Stars, Sieves and Stories: an interactive exhibition about early modern divination’ was hosted at Coventry Central Library in March 2022. Developing others is integrated throughout Martha’s engagement practice, as she encourages students to get involved in the planning and delivery of her activities.

Martha’s numerous engagement events offer exciting ways to explore the past and examine the causes of social discord, as well as examining why society prioritises some stories over others. By running local events, Martha is becoming a leader in regional public engagement. Furthermore, inclusion and innovation are at the heart of what she does, often reaching audiences who have never previously attended university events.

Team Awards

Staff Team Award

Coding with Sophie

Rebecca Nealon is a Stephen Hawking Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Astronomy and Astrophysics group. The underrepresentation of women and other minorities in her field of research led her to design Coding with Sophie, an outreach program designed to teach children coding fundamentals. The delivery team includes Gareth Jones, Mairi O'Brien, Geraldine Anis, Amena Faruqi, Yoshi Eschen, Taf Zivave, David O'Neill, Omar Adesida, Kendall Ackley, Marina Larfaga Magro and Rebecca Meadowcroft.

The program is designed with an astrophysics theme; children must collect the different parts of a rocket, construct it, launch it into space, navigate through the asteroid belt and gas giants and decode an alien message! The program aims to motivate students to consider a future in STEM and to increase their coding skills through science based games. A core theme of Coding with Sophie is effectively measuring impact, which is done by quizzing school students at the beginning and end of the program. This has allowed the team to assess both the skills improvement of the school students and how their motivation changes throughout the program.

Staff Team Award

The Warwick Graduate Training Programme

The HR – Leadership and Management Development team designed and delivered the pioneering University of Warwick Graduate Scheme. The purpose of the scheme is to genuinely go beyond the “Warwick bubble” and place Graduate Management Trainees on projects which bring meaningful change. The team wanted to engage with local SME’S and charities, as well as working in partnership with other local organisations. Each internal placement has enabled knowledge sharing with many charities, community groups and local bodies like the NHS and Councils, MPs and schools. This gives the Graduate Management Trainees a holistic experience, develops their networks and brings benefits beyond Warwick. Placement highlights include youth engagement, at Youth Centres and church venues in Canley, a placement that saw the development of the Resonate Festival and supporting the Regional Team’s local engagement strategy in Leamington Spa. External placements saw Graduate Management Trainees at the West Midlands Health Wellbeing Incubator, Coventry Food Network and other local enterprises.

Huge congratulations to Claire Nicholls, Mike Hudman, Anna Chapman, Katie Villiers and Josie Knowles for their work on the Programme and to the Graduate Trainees: Beth Russell, Jamie King, Michelle Watson and Siân Bolton.

Student Team Award

CyberWomen@Warwick

CyberWomen@Warwick was started in 2022 by 6 undergraduate students and staff in WMG studying BSc Cyber Security, and has now evolved into a 12-strong team across all levels of higher education, with two graduates from the original team forming a nationwide collective of university branches under CyberWomen Groups C.I.C. The current team includes Rosie Marlton, Sarah Tipper, Anahitha Vijay, Raffi Rizzo, Maria Motter, Niki Billa-Patel, Oula Mardawi, Shreya Pathak, Keerthana Tharuvara-Kallottil, Imogen Bartin and Izzy Clarke. The academic lead for the team is Dr. Elisabeth Titis. Through school outreach programmes, a national, open-to-all conference and competitions, CyberWomen@Warwick aims to inspire women and non-binary individuals to pursue a path into technology. The team regularly contribute to engagement events hosted by WMG, such as ‘Industry Day’, ‘The Resonate Festival of Science and Technology’ and ‘CyberFirst Mega Event’. They also run immersive detective-style sessions for Year 8 and 9 female students that explore cybersecurity concepts such as Caesar ciphers, steganography, and OSINT. All of these activities have resulted in considerable and long-term gains in knowledge, appreciation, attitude, interest, and participation from all involved.