Achievements of our 2023-24 Library and Information Studies cohort

As our 2023-24 Library and Information Studies students celebrate their graduations this week, we want to celebrate some of the amazing things that our 2023-24 cohort have been up to since graduating.

Firstly, we have the winners of the LIS prizes, which are departmental prizes for academic achievement in library and information studies.  The Sir John MacAlister Medal for 2024, for distinguished academic achievement in library and information studies, has been awarded to Sae Matsuno.  The Cowley prize, for achievement in library and information studies has been awarded to Lucy Dodge and Sarah Pipkin.  The Piggott prize, awarded for academic excellence in cataloguing and classification, was awarded jointly to Isabel Evans, Simone Monti, Tessa Roynon and Cadence Ware.  Massive congratulations to all the prize winners!

We are also excited to announce two national prize winners as well.  Mansi Dhokia was awarded the 2024 Sherif prize (https://www.sherif.ac.uk/prize.html), which is awarded for an outstanding research project in e-resources.  The prize was awarded for Mansi’s dissertation on folksonomies and knowledge organisation for fan fiction.  Richard Douglas was awarded the 2024 E.T. Bryant Memorial Prize (https://iaml-uk-irl.org/awards/e-t-bryant-memorial-prize/) , which is awarded for a significant contribution to the literature of music information.  This prize was awarded for Richards’s dissertation on singing and embodied information literacy.  Congratulations to both on this fantastic achievement!

Our 2023-24 graduates have been sharing their research and other LIS work in many different fora.  We were delighted that four UCL graduates are speaking at the Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference (CALC- https://sites.google.com/view/calcconference) this week.   Louise Savage, Heather Barr, Sae Matsuno and Naoise Standing are giving talks on topics including the information behaviour of survivors of sexual assault, the safety of female library workers, coloniality/decolonisation and health information literacy.  Three of our graduates presented at the 2025 LILAC conference (Information literacy conference -- https://www.lilacconference.com/lilac-2025) in April (Richard Douglas, Lucy Dodge and Amelia Haire).  Amelia Haire has also given talks at the ALISS disability champions (Disability Champions Forum|) and Neurodivergent library and information staff network (Neurodivergent Library and Information Staff Network), about her research on information literacy as an autistic person in the library workplace.  Tessa Roynon gave a history of libraries seminar in December 2024 on  "Libraries' Collecting and Self-Presentation since Black Lives Matter: A US-UK Comparison” https://www.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/libraries-collecting-self-presentation-black-lives-matter-us-uk-comparison. This is just a small selection of what some of our graduates have been up to since they finished their MA at UCL.

Congratulations to all our 2023-24 graduates! Enjoy your graduation and we look forward to hearing about all the exciting things you will do in the future.

Dr. Deborah Lee