We are pleased to announce the recipients of the Open Research Awards 2025
This year’s Awardees are listed below. The main entrant for each project is listed first, followed by the names of others involved in the work. We are working with them to develop their submissions into Open Research in Practice case studies, which we aim to publish next academic year.
Dr Sophie Coulombeau, Senior Lecturer, Department of English and Related Literature; Unlocking The Mary Hamilton Papers project team; Katie Crowther, Elinor Bailey, and Caroline Anjali Ritchie (Research Assistants)
An innovative open access edition of the archive of Bluestocking writer Mary Hamilton (1756-1816) was created by the project team to enable digital analysis
A supporting longform blog post addressed the correspondence between Hamilton and George IV, which gained attention including wider media coverage and a feature documentary on BBC Radio 3
The resource was also embedded into open access classroom materials for teaching A-Level English
Funding acknowledged: AHRC Standard Research Grant (REF: AH/S007121/1); Three internships from Placements; YIAF Internal Research and Impact Priming Fund (H0026669) 'MeToo In The Georgian Court'
Chenyu Gao, PhD Student, School of Arts and Creative Technologies; Dr Federico Reuben (Supervisor); Dr Tom Collins (Supervisor)
Addressed a lack of open datasets in studies on music variation generation through use of an algorithm to extract theme-and-variation pairs from arrangements
All the necessary details and material to reproduce results are open-source, with code and documentation shared on Github
A demo page and video also created on Glitch for non-specialists to explore the work
Funding acknowledged: The Viking cluster was used during this project, which is a high performance compute facility provided by the University of York. We are grateful for computational support from the University of York, IT Services and the Research IT team. Chenyu Gao is a PhD student supported jointly by the China Scholarship Council and the University of York.
Louise Bedford, Undergraduate Student, Department of Archaeology; Dr Colleen Morgan (Dissertation Supervisor)
A game set at Avebury Henge, inspired by the Avebury Papers project, which reuses digitised archival materials as part of the core gameplay
Exploring the effectiveness of games to create public engagement for archaeological projects
Creating a space for reflective assessment and community feedback by documenting the project and game development process on social media (145,000 views amassed across 33 YouTube videos)
Dr Zlatomira Ilchovska, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Psychology - as a member of the Feminist Wonderlab Collective (click for external collaborators)
An international ECR-led feminist research group was founded after a hackathon meeting of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science in 2022
The group meets to discuss feminist issues in psychological science and to work on projects that promote open scholarship values and the role of underrepresented researchers in the discipline
Open access project outputs include preprints, conference contributions and a glossary and checklist of feminist practices in psychological science
Funding acknowledged: One of the Hartmann et al. (2023) manuscript's authors (G.H.) position was funded within the Post-DocTrack Programme of the University of Graz. Another author's (H.H.) position was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation. We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Fund of the University of Duisburg - Essen for the submission of our first manuscript.
Joel Adams, PhD student in Fusion Power, School of Physics, Engineering and Technology; Peter Hill; Prof Chris Ridgers (Supervisor)
A collection of three open-source tools, sdf-xarray, epyscan, and epydeck, were developed to streamline workflows in laser-plasma physics
These tools are designed to be modular so researchers can adopt only the components they require; they enhance data extraction, parameter scanning, and input file management for high-performance computing simulations
Package and documentation are shared on GitHub in line with FAIR principles
Aiden Turner, Undergraduate Student, Department of Mathematics and Department of Computer Science
An improved version of JFlap, which is used by computer science for automata and grammar theory but is incompatible with Mac and difficult to use for newcomers
FlippyFlappingTheJ was written in Python for compatibilty across platforms and features a simplified user interface, so it’s more readable and accessible to new programmers first starting out
It was written in Python for compatibility across platforms and is open-source; an iterative development process was employed with student focus groups and assistance from AI tools
Dr Ruth Naughton-Doe, Research Associate, School for Business and Society (Joint Principal Investigator); Dr Beth Casey (Research Associate and Co-investigator), Prof Martin Webber (Joint Principal Investigator)
The project team investigated whether local voluntary sector support can effectively improve the mental health of young parents (project web site)
Open principles were embedded throughout the research design and processes, including participant involvement in co-designing the methods and extensive rounds of feedback on the review protocol
Public engagement workstream has been successful in maximising communication and reach of study findings
The initial work to develop the bid was funded funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Three Schools Mental Health Programme as part of a Fellowship. The current project is funded by the NIHR Research Programme for Social Care
Sophie Cogan, PhD Student, Department of Politics and International Relations
A platform called the Open Fusion Collective was set up to provide an open space for academics and publics to share their perspectives on the social and ethical aspects of fusion energy
Academics are encouraged to make their data, methods and findings available to a public audience via the platform, and to provide plain language summaries of research relating to aspects of fusion
Participation is open to all interested parties
Ecological grief as a crisis in dwelling: Dr Pablo Fernandez Velasco, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Philosophy
Smells like Wikidata: Lucy Moore, Postgraduate Researcher, Department of Archaeology
A quasi-experimental evaluation of the 'Baby Steps' antenatal parenting programme for improving maternal outcomes): Dr Kate Mooney, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Assistant Professor), Department of Health Sciences; Prof Tracey Bywater, Department of Health Sciences; Dr Sara Ahern, Bradford Institute for Health Research; Dr Matthew Walker, Bradford Institute for Health Research; Dacheng Huo, Research Fellow, Centre for Health Economics; Dr Sebastian Hinde, Research Fellow, Centre for Health Economics; Dr Josie Dickerson, Bradford Institute for Health Research; Dr Sarah Blower, Department of Health Sciences
Evidence on the effects of flame retardant substances at ecologically relevant endpoints: a systematic map protocol: Prof Kathryn Arnold, Professor of Ecology, Department of Environment and Geography; Lowenna Jones, University of Sheffield
Our Awards scheme is organised in collaboration between the University Open Research Advocates, Operations and Strategy Groups, with support from Research England Enhancing Research Culture funding. Many thanks to everyone who submitted their work for consideration, and to this year’s judging panel for their assistance (Prof Emma Rand and the Graduate Engagement Leads for Open Research: Luqman Muraina, Yorgos Paschos and Katie Vernon).
The purpose of the York Open Research Awards is to celebrate innovation, advocacy and good practice, whilst addressing and reflecting upon some of the issues and barriers faced by researchers who engage in open research. The scheme also continues to bring about long-term cultural change at the University by showcasing the work of our community and encouraging students and staff to engage in and discuss open research practice as it applies to their discipline.