Prizes for Masters students

UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS) awards prizes for outstanding work in our postgraduate programmes and HPSC modules. We're proud of our students, and shout about their successes.

We award prizes for outstanding student work in specific modules, such as research projects, and for overall performance across a year or the whole degree. Our Faculty (UCL Faculty of Mathematics and Physical Sciences) offers other prizes, and we enthusiastically put students forward when suitable.

Recognizing Outstanding Work

STS awards several prizes in our postgraduate programmes. Sometimes, these are awarded jointly.

Postgraduate-taught level	Criteria	Amount
STS Kathleen Lonsdale Prize	Top overall performance in each STS postgraduate taught degree	3x£100
STS Best Dissertation (MSc)	Top scoring dissertation or research project in each degree (HPSC0097 and HPSC0155), judged by the project report or dissertation	3x£100
STS Alumni Prize	Outstanding contributions to the life of the department	up to 2x£50

STS Kathleen Lonsdale Prize

2025: Capri Huffman (STS), Natalia Valenzuela (SciComm), Kaelo Molefe (HPS)
2024: Tara Sarangi (STS), Martha King (SciCom) and Holly Frostwick (HPS)
2023: Rose Powell (STS), Matilda King (SciComm) and Thomas Cohen (HPS)
2022: Thomas Kohler (STS) and Viktor Heegaard (HPS)
2021: Maymana Arefin (STS) and Sarah Revell (HPS)
2020: Rokia Ballo (STS) and Cathy Lucas (HPS)
2019: Matias Gaggiotti (STS) and Kathryn Shaw (HPS)
2018: Sophie Wang (STS) and James Clark (HPS)
2017: Lauren Collee (STS) and Ilan Goodman (HPS)
2016: jointly Gregory Bridgman and Brian Kantor, who excelled across both the taught and research components of their degrees.
2015: Hannah Wills
2014: Edward Bankes
2013: Vi Le

STS Best Dissertation Prize

2025 Capri Huffman (STS): ‘Solarpunk: Engineering Futures for the Digital Age’
2025 Mykyta Osadychi (SciComm): ‘A story of one British river - The River Wye’
2025 Kaelo Molefe (HPS): ‘Practices of “interventional looking” in the 19th and 20th century diamond fields of South Africa’
2024 Ammara Yasin (STS): ‘Embedded SIM Cards and Telecommunication Shutdowns: How Alternative Network Access Demonstrates an Enduring Coloniality with the Palestinian Digital Border - A Case Study’
2024 Martha King (SciComm): Helping people to make ‘informed and responsible choices’: A policy-as-discourse analysis of UK sexual health policy’
2024 Anna Dawson (HPS): ‘John Abercrombie’s Every Man His Own Gardener as Reflection and Promotion of Public Participation in Science’
2023 Rose Powell (STS): ‘Oxemorons: Oxevision and the Collaborative Making of the Valuable Incarcerated “Biocitizen” ’
2023 Annabel Bourne (SciComm): ‘Coexistence in the City - A Graphic Novel on Peregrine Falcons in London’
2023 Thomas Cohen (HPS): ‘You can’t be that screwed if you’ve got a phone: Technology, Use and Assemblages of Homelessness’
2022: Simon Piggott (HPS): ‘The Teaching of Science in English Public Schools 1870-1890: A Contributor to the Decline in Britain’s So-called Industrial Spirit?
2022: Hania Tayara (STS): ‘Health and Humanitarianism: Colonial Manifestations of Violence in the Palestinian Body’
2021: Maymana Arefin (STS): ‘Mapping Alternative Futures through Fungi: The Usefulness of Mycorrhizal Networks as a Metaphor for Mutual Aid’
2021: Sarah Revell (HPS): ‘Marrying Chemistry to Mr Photography: Women Photographers in the 1850s’
2020: Rokia Ballo (STS): ‘Science Advice for Policy and Equality: A Critical Analysis of the Relationship Between the UK’s COVID-19 Science Advice and Social Inequality’
2020: Antonia Belli (HPS): ‘Dark Matter and Pretty Pictures: How the Bullet Cluster Won the Debate Over Contemporary Cosmology’
2020: Cathy Lucas (HPS): ‘An Infinity of Timbres: Sound Synthesis, Instruments and the History of Sonic Possibility’
2019: Philipp Spillmann (HPS): ‘The Argument of the Missing Subject Reviewed’
2019: Kathryn Shaw (HPS): ‘Education, Entertainment and Welfare on the Railways: The New Swindon Mechanics’ Institute, 1845-1900’
2019: Matias Gaggiotti (STS): ‘Diversity as a Technology of “Engaging” Publics: Media Sovereignty, Social Justice, and Classifactory Struggle in BBC Science Programming’
2018: Jennifer Knight (STS): ‘Forest vs Afforestation: Identifying Forest Futures from Definitions and Values’
2018: Sophie Perry (STS): ‘To What Extent are Nature Reserves a Socially Inclusive Informal Science Learning Environment?’
2018: James Clark (HPS): ‘How Iodine Changed Its Meaning: Lessons for Classification in Nutrition Science’
2017: Lauren Collee (STS): ‘A deeply weird place’: fragile stories and disobedient bodies on the St Kilda archipelago’
2017: Joseph Shuttleworth (HPS): ‘Can Machines believe?’
2016: Brian Kantor: ‘Performing “the Authoritative Account”: How the BBC’s Horizon Produces Knowledge’
2016: Emma O’Sullivan: ‘Who’s In and Who’s Out: The State of the Field of the UK Maker Movement’
2016: Mathis Overkamp - ‘Concepts of the Gene and Precision Medicine: Exercises in Making Nature Intelligible’
2015: Peter Lincoln: ‘Identity, Patronage and Civic Pride: Science in Ipswich, 1841-1861’.
2014: Edward Bankes: ‘Oh, well, with a name like “Miss Information” she must know something: Getting the Science Wrong in South Park’.
2013: Vi Le: ‘Sowing Seeds in Wittgenstein’s Soil: The Creation of a Philosophical Genius by Bertrand Russell and the Vienna Circle’
2013: Joshua Bowers: ‘Technological expectations and military acquisition’
2013: Adrian Deen: ‘AIDS Is An Equal Opportunity Disease: A Visual and Textual Analysis of Racial Codes and Stereotypes in US AIDS Campaign Posters’

STS Alumni Prize

A prize of £50 for outstanding contributions to the academic life of the department.

2025: Natalia Jordan Valenzuela (SciComm), Capri Huffman (STS), Catherine Hetherington (SciComm), and Fabricio Ribeiro Sousa De Carvalho (HPS)
2024: Gabriel Revon (STS)
2023: Megan Thomas (SciComm) and Mariana Monica Barosa (HPS)
2022: Heloise Chapuis (STS), Archie Elliot (HPS) and Hania Tayara (STS)
2021: Zara Christmas (HPS), Keer Li (STS) and Nayim Patel (STS)
2020: Louise Durand Dit Lennad (STS) and Assia Wirth (STS)
2019: Philipp Spillmann (HPS) and Natasha Boyd (STS)
2018: Sophie Wang (STS)
2017: Georgia Haire (HPS) and Saskia Little (HPS)

Prizewinners pre-2014

(From the London Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology MSc programme, in which STS was a partner.)

Prizes were awarded for MSc dissertations to honour the very best work of the year.

Dissertation Prize: a prize of £250 to the best MSc dissertation of the year in any subject.
Friends Prize: a prize was awarded for the best dissertation of the year with relevance to the history of medicine; it was awarded on behalf of the Friends of the Wellcome Library and Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL (WTCHOM) Prize Endowment. The last Friends Prize was awarded in 2011.

2013: Hamdoud, Samir. 2013. Creating Racially Responsible Parents of the Future: Eugenics, Sex-Hygiene and Education in Early Twentieth Century Britain (Dissertation Prize)
2012: Wainman, Ruth. 2012. ‘Engineering in Miniature’: Promoting Engineering and Invention in Toy Construction Sets 1901-1936. (Dissertation Prize)
2011: Subramanian, Kapil. 2011. (Dissertation Prize)
2011: Mueller, Lucas. 2011. Becoming Halothane (nominated for Friends Prize)
2010: Rietmann, Felix. 2010. The foundation of clinical thermometry: an explorative study in integrated history and philosophy of science (Dissertation Prize - jointly awarded)
2010: O’Sullivan, Kate. 2010. The Fossil Case: Thomas Hawkins and the metamorphosis of fossils (Dissertation Prize - jointly awarded)
2009: Weatherburn, Michael. 2009. Arnold T. Wilson, the New Victorians and the Forgotten Technocrats of Inter-War Britain (Dissertation Prize)
2009: Peres, Sara. 2009. Hybrids in a Hybrid World: Defining Human Admixed Embryos and the Human/Non-Human Boundary (Friends Prize)
2008: Watts, Iain. 2008. A Chemical Exhibition: Humphry Davy’s Public Science and the Discovery of Potassium and Sodium (Dissertation Prize)
2008: Steel, Emily. 2008. “ ‘He is no loss’: Robert McCormick and the voyage of the Beagle” (Friends Prize)
2007: Gibson, Susannah. 2007. Robert Edmond Grant, Sea Sponges, and Parisian Philosophical Anatomy (2007 Friends Prize)

Publications

Some dissertations have led to publication in professional journals and elsewhere. For instance:

Kantor, Brian J. 2021. “Performing ‘the authoritative account’: How the BBC’s Horizon produces epistemic authority.” Social Studies of Science 51.3 (2021): 463-483.
Steel, Emily. 2011. He is no loss: Robert McCormick and the voyage of HMS Beagle (London: British Society for the History of Science), 74 pages.
Aicardi, Christine. 2009. The Analytic Spirit and the Paris Institution for the Deaf-Mutes, 1760-1830. History of Science 47:175-221.

UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS)

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