The Researcher Development Team have announced the winners of the third iteration of the Images of Research Competition!
We tasked our research community with creating a unique, creative image – a painting, diagram, digital image or a photograph – that captured the essence of their research or an element of it, in an artistic way alongside a 150-word description.
The competition closed at the end of January, and the winners and runners-up were announced and congratulated at the Strategic Research Themes Conference on 29 March 2023.
The winning image
The overall winner was Sally Bashford-Squires from the School of Social Sciences with her entry ‘The Gift of a Sheep’, which also took home the Public Choice award after receiving more than 50% of the votes. Her entry will be featured in the April 2023 issue of LeftLion magazine, which is distributed throughout Nottingham, so make sure to keep an eye out for that! Take a look at Sally's winning image and her abstract:
"This is the joyful moment when Rose received a sheep. The image was taken during my PhD research examining how social enterprise projects impact women's health in rural Uganda. Rose belongs to an indigenous women's group who farm, dance, and sing together. I researched how their performances are used to sensitise the community to issues such as gender-based violence. When a lamb is born, it is gifted to a chosen member of the group. This communitarian ethos, based on Afrocentric values of relationality and reciprocity, can help benefit health and wellbeing through shared knowledge and farming practices. The project not only provides women with a safe space, but it also helps them grow food to share, which in turn enables those affected by HIV to take medication. Rose explains, "We are happy ladies and happy friends. Women can provide so we ask men less and so there is less violence."
On her win, Sally commented:
“As a PhD student, it means the absolute world to me. PhD research can be quite a lonely process, so it gives me options to connect with others, and I’m hoping to connect with others today too who will have seen my winning image and will want to come and speak to me about it. It also inspires me to carry on doing what I’m doing, because it means that people are recognizing my work and that it’s of value.”
The runner-up was Senior Research Fellow Bernadette Devilat from the School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment with her entry ‘Inhabitable Transparency’. Take a look at her image and abstract below:
"The image shows a still from a dwelling affected by the 2010 earthquake in Zúñiga, Chile, rendered from the data captured on-site with a 3D-laser-scanner. The inherent transparency of the 3D point-cloud renders an impossible view: the interior domesticity from an outside perspective. Both the building and its inhabitant are merged into one three-dimensional record, with the light of the scanner illuminating its interior, damaged by the earthquake yet still inhabited. This damaged historical house is at risk of more destruction in forthcoming earthquakes, but the millimetric 3D record obtained could help to retrofit and repair it to mitigate further damage. This is part of the project: 'Sustainable approaches for the conservation of built heritage at risk based on advanced recording technologies', funded the NTU Sustainable Futures Research Talent Fund. Thanks to F.Vargas and F.Carter who help me in the on-site data capture, with equipment lent by D. Ramirez."
Bernadette said:
“It’s Brilliant! It’s amazing and it’s recognising what I have been doing these past three years at NTU. But it’s also a way to connect very complicated things about the research in an easier and a more tangible way, because an image speaks much more than words. So I’m very happy that the image can convey this and can help people to be interested in the research and then potentially create more collaborations in the future.”
We want to say huge congratulations to our award winners, a big thank you to everyone who took part in the competition, and to those who cast their vote for our Public Choice award.
Take a look at all of this year’s entries below.
Header image credit: Jessica Stanley