Awardees of Reuben College’s 2024/25 Public Engagement with Research Innovation Fund Grants announced

20 February 2025

Launched by two Reuben Fellows, Janet Stott and Cat Vicente, the Reuben Public Engagement with Research (PER) Innovation fund is currently in its fourth year. With PER as one of the college’s core strategic values, this award seeks to support students in running their own projects centred around public engagement, while also helping them to develop their project management and leadership skills. 

Being a college that focuses on the value that interdisciplinary research can provide for the 21st century, each awardee is encouraged to run their project from a cross-disciplinary angle and is given bespoke support by our Public Engagement with Research, Culture and Heritage (PERCH) Fellows.

We’re delighted to announce the four grant awardees of the 2024/25 PER Innovation Fund below. 

 

Learning Evolution through Card Games

Katherine Faulkner (DPhil in Environmental Research (NERC DTP))

Katherine’s project centres on developing a card game that will teach both families and students about evolution. As part of this, she notes that she’ll be incorporating environmental changes and randomness in order to increase engagement and accessibility around the concept, and clarify misconceptions. 

 

 

Science Communication: A Family Affair

Zoe Wong (DPhil in Biomedical Sciences)

Zoe will be running a contest inviting researchers to explain their work to non-expert family members, who in turn will convey it to patients. Through this, she hopes to foster and increase understanding amongst the public, while also enhancing the communication skills of researchers.

 

 

Building Bridges: Exploring Education's Role in Peacebuilding Across Generations

Abdirashid Ahmed (DPhil in Education)

Abdirashid will be organising workshops for both adult learners and primary school children in Greater Manchester. By combining storytelling and creative activities to build empathy and peacebuilding skills, these sessions will explore the role that education plays in fostering peace. 
 

 

Nuancing Consent: Conversations through Collage

Maria Obrebska (DPhil in Socio-Legal Studies)

Maria’s project proposes interdisciplinary art workshops for young people between the ages of 16-18 in the UK and Poland. During these, participants will be able to use creative exploration to address the complexities of consent, compare cultural and legal perspectives, and foster understanding of personal boundaries and legal rights.
 

In addition the fully funded projects, as part of our commitment to support the development of Reuben students, we’re also providing partial development funds to:

 

Introduction to Bioinformatics: A DataCamp for Arabic-Speaking Students

Raghad Yamani (DPhil in Clinical Medicine)

Together with Atheer Alsayah (DPhil in Biochemistry, St. Cross College), Raghad will be organising a one-day workshop with the goal of introducing Arabic-speaking students in the UK to bioinformatics. As part of this, there will be beginner-friendly sessions, hands-on exercises in Arabic, and networking opportunities, all to make bioinformatics more accessible and inclusive.

 

Advancing Clean and Affordable Energy in Oxford Primary Schools

A profile picture of a young Black man, wearing a tailored brown suit, Nigerian print tie and dark blue shirt. He is wearing round glasses and smiling directly at the camera.

Mercy Masanga (MSc in Energy Systems) and Ayomikun Ayodeji (MSc in Energy Systems)

Mercy and Ayomikun’s grant will provide the initial funds to support the establishment of relationships between their project team and schools in the region, with the aim of exploring sustainable energy practices and which activities would best support this.