ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize

Contents

Winners and finalists: 2014

Winners

Outstanding impact in business

Winner: Professor Neil Wrigley, University of Southampton

Project: Breathing life into town centres

Research by Professor Neil Wrigley and colleagues has helped transform thinking on food retail development, its role in sustaining viable town centres and the future of UK high streets.

Outstanding impact in society

Winner: Professor Debra Myhill

Project: Improving literacy with grammar methods

A decade of research into the development of writing in school-aged children led by Professor Debra Myhill has shaped policy, improved children’s writing abilities and changed classroom practice.

Outstanding impact in public policy

Winner: Dr Clifford Stott, University of Leeds

Project: Policing crowds without force

New approaches to crowd psychology, based on research by Dr Clifford Stott, are helping police manage the potential for conflict in crowds while allowing people’s rights to protest.

Outstanding international impact

Winner: Dr Sabina Alkire, University of Oxford

Project: Reducing poverty

An innovative method for measuring poverty, developed by Dr Sabina Alkire and colleagues, is helping governments and organisations to design effective poverty-reduction programmes.

Outstanding early career impact

Winner: Hannah Lambie-Mumford, The University of Sheffield

Project: Food banks: emergency food provision and food poverty in the UK

Hannah Lambie-Mumford’s research on emergency food provision has provided policymakers, the charitable sector and media with evidence to inform the food poverty debate.

Lifetime achievement award

Winner: Professor Sir David Hendry, University of Oxford

Project: Celebrating a career of impact

Over five decades, Professor Hendry has developed macroeconomic models capturing how economies work, which are now embedded in software widely used by policymakers and decision-makers.

Finalists

Outstanding impact in society

Finalist: Dr Lorna Warren, The University of Sheffield

Project: Challenging ageism and sexism

Dr Lorna Warren developed a pioneering project in which older women explored their experience of ageing through art, providing the impetus for a campaign challenging ageism and sexism through a range of policy and school-based initiatives.

Outstanding impact in public policy

Finalist: Professor Shadd Maruna, Queen’s University Belfast

Project: Helping prisoners back into society

Professor Shadd Maruna and the team behind the Desistance Knowledge Exchange (DesKE) are building upon pioneering research into how offenders move away from crime, transforming the practice of offender rehabilitation in the UK and beyond.

Outstanding international impact

Finalist: Dr Stuart Basten, University of Oxford

Project: Predicting global population trends

In-depth research by Dr Stuart Basten into Asian fertility helped convince the United Nations to revise its influential forecasts on future population trends, with particularly large effects for Pacific Asian economies.

Outstanding early career impact

Finalist: Olivia Maynard, University of Bristol

Project: The science of plain tobacco packaging

Moves to impose plain packaging for cigarettes, including Australia’s 2012 legislation on standardised packaging and the recent UK commitment to do the same, have been strongly influenced by Olivia Maynard’s research into tobacco packaging.

Last updated: 27 July 2023

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