Winners of the Sociology Public Engagement Prize announced

Penny Tinkler at the Teenage Kicks exhibition (l) and Torik Holmes and Helen Holmes from the One Bin project (r)

Research engagement comes in shapes and sizes, and this year judges of the annual Sociology Prize for Public Engagement, Philip Drake (Director of Social Responsibility, School of Social Sciences) and Hilary Pilkington (Research Director, Sociology) awarded joint first prize in the staff category to two worthy, but very different, projects. Helen Holmes and Torik Holmes share first prize this year with Penny Tinkler.

Helen and Torik won for sharing their plastic recycling research with policymakers and consumers. They organised recycling pop-up events, produced reports for households and policymakers, contributed to government and business consultations and achieved extensive media coverage of their One Bin

Penny Tinkler won for her Teenage Kicks exhibition at Glasgow Women’s Library, which also included intergenerational workshops exploring how gender shapes teenage experiences and later life. Teenage Kicks shares the stories of eight women who were all teenagers in the 1960s.

Luciana Lang was highly commended in the staff category for a series of knowledge exchange events, at a local mosque, church and temple, researching the role of faith spaces in healthy ageing. The events led to co-produced policy and practice recommendations and a report on the role of faith spaces as social infrastructure.

We also awarded prizes in our PhD candidate category. Daniela Fazio Vargas , with Carlos Pineda Ramos (University of Bristol) won first prize in this category for an innovative essay for the British Council Cultural Relations Collection. In it they explored how artists, from filmmakers to painters, can contribute to peacebuilding, using Colombia and Northern Ireland as their cases. Their essay led to them being invited to take part in further British Council international collaborations on the role of the arts in transitional justice.

Manuela Latchoumaya was highly commended in the PhD candidate category for sharing her work exploring identity and belonging for French citizens of South Asian descent through online and in-person events and as a podcast guest.