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2019 Beacon Bursaries awarded

UCL Culture is delighted to announce the awardees in the latest round of Beacon Bursary public engagement funding.

The aim of this scheme is to advance the practice and culture of public and community engagement within UCL by enabling UCL staff and postgraduate students to:

  • Explore mutually beneficial engagement between communities and UCL research and teaching.
  • Be innovative in their engagement.
  • Evaluate, learn from and share their engagement activities.

The Beacon Bursary funding scheme supports UCL’s Public Engagement Strategy which aims to embed public engagement as a normal, valued activity for UCL staff and students
We have funded eight projects in this round, three of which involve communities and local organisations in east London.

The projects are:

Julia Bailey – Primary Care and Population Health

Contraception Choices.
Contraception choices will offer a series of outreach workshops and an International Women's Day public engagement event to engage a range of audiences in discussions about contraception. This project will reach communities such as the queer, trans and non-binary communities, homeless people and migrant women, working with groups including Open Doors in Hackney and Queer Newham. It will facilitate discussions to find more about the contraception needs of these 'hard-to-reach' communities, and to set agendas for future research.


Dr Julia Bailey is an associate professor in Primary Care at the UCL eHealth Unit, and a specialty doctor in community sexual health in South East London

Ellie Buckley and Ali Northcott – Centre for Research in Education and Autism (CRAE)

Embodying Difference – A multi-platform event exploring neurodiversity and creativity.
Embodying Difference will be a one-off event creating a public dialogue between artistic and scientific disciplines and modes of research. The event will explore new ways to generate knowledge from different perspectives - highlighting the strengths of the neurodivergent art practitioners, showcasing their insights, and highlighting how their neurodiversity and co-existing conditions such as autism, dyspraxia, ADHD, dyslexia and synaesthesia enhance and inform their creativity and artistic practice.


Ellie Buckley is a current PhD student in the Centre for Research in Autism and Education. Ali Northcott is the Artist-in-Residence and Honorary Researcher for the Centre for Research in Autism and Education

Rachel Frost –  Primary Care and Population Health

Upping our game: achieving meaningful patient and public collaboration in primary care research and teaching across the whole department.
Upping our game will further develop PCPH’s existing project-level patient and public involvement to transform and embed long term public and patient involvement through all aspects of Departmental strategy (research, teaching, impact and patient involvement).


Dr Rachael Frost is a Research Associate in the Department of Primary Care and Population Health.

Valentina Giordano – Bartlett School of Planning

Place Alliance: Child-centred urban planning.
This will involve children in a design workshop to explore the question: What would child-centred urban planning look like? Students from Gainsborough Primary School, near UCL East, will be involved through an assembly, co-design workshops and the chance to share their work through public exhibitions.


Valentina Giordano is a Research Fellow at the Bartlett School of Planning where she manages the Place Alliance.

Ezra Horbury – English Language and Literature

Writing Trans Lives
Writing Trans Lives builds on the ‘Trans Studies, Trans lives symposium’ to bring together aspiring trans/non-binary writers with established trans/non-binary writers through three workshops, a public reading and potential publication. The established writers will provide practical advice and develop aspiring writers’ expertise and experience at writing their own narratives.


Dr Ezra Horbury is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English Language and Literature.

Jaqueline McDermott – UCL Cancer Institute

Visible Vulvas – Artistic Explorations of Living with Vulval Disease.
Visible Vulvas will involve the delivery of three workshops around vulval health awareness leading to an art exhibition co-produced by scientists, women living with vulval disease, and artists and, hopefully, taking place in the Vagina Museum in Camden. The project will increase awareness and understanding of vulval disease amongst the general public and the medical profession.


Dr Jackie McDermott is an Academic Gynaecological Pathology Consultant at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Naaheed Mukadam – Faculty of Brain Sciences

Re-framing the dementia narrative in east London.
Re-framing will co-develop and run four art based workshops to raise awareness of dementia risk factors and the benefits of dementia diagnosis in the South Asian community in east London. Working with community groups such as the Sonali Gardens Day Centre and Kobi Nazrul Community Centre, it will gather the communities’ input regarding research priorities from this group.


Dr Naaheed Mukadam is a Senior Clinical Research Fellow Consultant in the Division of Psychiatry

Melanie Ramdarshan Bold – Department of Information Studies

The Green Room play and workshop, Theatre Peckham
This project will provide opportunities and a platform for authors of colour; Drawing on UCL research, the project will increase the awareness of theatre audiences of the experiences of authors of colour in the British publishing industry. To achieve this the project will co-create a reciprocal dialogue and partnership between academia and community stakeholders (Words of Colour and Theatre Peckham) and create a longer and larger-scale project.


Dr Melanie Ramdarshan Bold is a Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in the Department of Information Studies.

 

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