Spotlight on Success - July 2019
Friday, 26 July 2019
Each month we publish a selection of key Teaching & Learning and Research achievements and developments. See July’s news below:
Awards & Prizes
- Our new University Teaching Fellows have been announced! The Fellowship is a prestigious and competitive award for staff who demonstrate individual excellence and dedication to the development of teaching and learning within the University and beyond. Find a full list of winners here.
- The EMA Programme Team have won an award for ‘Outstanding Student Learning Experience’ at the recent SITS/Tribal conference, celebrating their success at integrating students’ Blackboard marks with our RISIS system. This level of integration is often referred to as the ‘holy grail’ of systems integration within the UK education system.
- Professor Susanne Clausen and Dr Anna Kontopolou (Art) have been awarded Reading Place of Culture Great Places Scheme funding to run a Young People's Mental Health Pilot project with artists Ultra Red as part of Reading International.
- Dr Rodney Jones and Dr Sylvia Jaworska (Modern Languages & Linguistics) have secured funding for the second phase of their EIT Food-funded project Developing a Digital Toolkit to enhance the communication of scientific health claims - a partnership with FoodMaestro and the Technische Universität München, and colleagues from Applied Linguistics, Food Science and Typography.
- Three out of four University of Reading applications for Weather and Climate Science for Service Partnership (WCSSP) India grants totalling nearly £0.5 million were recently granted to Dr Andy Turner and Dr Nick Klingaman, to improve understanding and forecasting of the Indian monsoon.
- Dr Alice Baderin (Politics and International Relations) has been awarded £48,000 Independent Social Research Foundation funding for an Early Career Fellowship on Anticipatory Justice.
See all recent research grants and awards.
News
- Dr Rohan Deb Roy (History) has been appointed to British Council on the History of Science and as Associate Review Editor for the journal American Historical Review.
- Professor Jonathan Bignell (FTT) has been appointed Associate Editor of the Oxford University Press journal Adaptation.
- Professor Susanne Clausen's (Art) Reading International arts programme has been awarded 'Best Cultural Organisation of the Year’, as part of the Reading Cultural Awards.
- Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow Dr Karen Dempsey (History), whose project HERSTORY looks at medieval history from a feminist perspective, recently took part in a successful Reddit Ask Me Anything session, answering 261 questions from the general public about medieval castles and clocking up 630,960 views, 69,100 clicks and 4,100 votes.
- Sue Walker (Typography) has an AHRC-funded exhibition ‘Marie Neurath: Picturing Science for Children’ at the House of Illustration in London from 19 July to 3 November, showcasing the graphic design from the 1940s onwards of Marie Neurath and the Isotype Institute held in Reading’s Typography Collections.
- A campaign to support the University’s work on animal research was run by the corporate communications team in July, involving publication of our 2018 statistics to coincide with the Home Office national statistics and highlighting ways in which our research with animals is tackling health and environmental issues.
- CQSD ran a hugely successful T&L event, ‘GlobalFest 2019’. Dr David Killick, Emeritus Fellow at Leeds Beckett University, delivered the plenary session and facilitated an interactive workshop in the afternoon, and a series of Lightning Talks showcasing good practice was delivered by colleagues from across the University. See the full agenda here.
- The University achieved a significant year-on-year increase in the response rate for the National Student Survey, as follows:
- NSS: 70.37% (up from 66.45% in 2018, and 3.87% ahead of the national average)