York Open Research Awards 2026
We are very pleased to announce the winners of this year’s Open Research Awards!
This was the sixth consecutive year of our Awards scheme, celebrating innovation, advocacy and good practice in open research across all disciplines at York. The Awards have evolved over the years, highlighting a diverse range of projects that engage with and reflect upon different aspects of open research and its core principles.
We have continued to recognise the work of students and staff at all levels, with award categories this year including taught students, postgraduate researchers, early career researchers, technicians and mid-career/senior research staff. The judging panel (Prof Emma Rand, Dr Emma James and Open Research Graduate Engagement Leads Luqman Muraina and Katie Vernon) enjoyed reading this year’s submissions, with nine main prizes and four highly commended projects awarded. A summary of awardees is provided below, with the main entrant for each project credited first followed by the names of others involved in the work.
The Open Research Awards are supported by Research England funding for Enhancing Research Culture. The Open Research team are working with each of the awardees to develop their submissions into case studies which will be published next academic year as training and advocacy materials, part of the University’s commitment to developing a culture of active open research practice (Open Research at York).
Arts and Humanities
Postgraduate researcher prize
Promoting Transnational Women's Literature in Europe Through Public Engagement
Alice Flinta, Centre for Women's Studies and Department of English and Related Literature; EUTERPE Project committee; Evangeline Scarpulla, University of Bologna
Alice’s PhD research has been part of the EUTERPE Project (European Literatures and Gender from a Transnational Perspective), promoting transnational women’s literature in Europe and literature in translation and employing literature as a starting point for conversations around feminism, migration and race.
Alice made it a personal challenge to foster interdisciplinary academic collaborations at York and to engage the public in research. A two-day public workshop was held as part of the York Festival of Ideas where participants added their associations with the words ‘feminism’ and ‘migration’ to a creative Wor(l)d Map, which will be exhibited at York Explore Library to mark the ten-year anniversary of York City of Sanctuary.
Other project outputs have included open access publications in White Rose Research Online and interviews conducted with transnational European authors made available through the EUTERPE Podcast Library as valuable resources that can be reused by others.
Funding: EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project
Sciences
Undergraduate/taught postgraduate student prize
Effects of Auditory Noise Type on Inhibitory Control Across ADHD Trait Levels
Georgia Simpson, 3rd year MSci, Department of Psychology; Dr Amanda Hickey, Lecturer, Department of Psychology (Supervisor); Dr David Pitcher, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology (Supervisor)
Georgia’s work investigates brown noise as a focusing aid for individuals with ADHD, an area which has not been studied to the same degree as white or pink noise despite its anecdotal popularity within ADHD communities.
Open research practices, accessibility and transparency were embedded in the project from the outset. Georgia published a detailed study preregistration on the Open Science Framework (OSF) and shared openly-licensed research materials including survey questions, PsychoPy scripts and audio files, which enable others to understand and adapt the code for their own purposes.
Georgia’s submission addressed the benefits of working in an open and transparent way, along with challenges such as the additional time and effort required to make code accessible and interoperable across platforms.
Postgraduate researcher prize
LightFitR: An open-source R package to programme complex light regimes
Gina Vong, Department of Biology; Paul Scott, Senior Horticultural Technician, Department of Biology; Will Claydon, Research Technician, Department of Biology; Jason Daff, Head of Horticulture, Department of Biology; Prof Katherine Denby, Professor of Sustainable Crop Production, Department of Biology (Supervisor); Dr Daphne Ezer, Lecturer in Computational Biology, Department of Biology (Supervisor)
Gina’s PhD explores plant responses to complex light regimes, seeking to create a new tool (where few currently exist) for accurately programming LEDs with combinations of light colours and intensities.
Gina chose to share an open source R package (GitHub) to allow the code to be re-used, scrutinised and improved upon by the community. This led to the development of skills in many aspects of software engineering, including documentation and transparent version control. This knowledge and understanding was shared with colleagues in the department through informal workshops and a written guide in ‘lab book’ format to promote reproducible coding practices.
The project team also wrote a methods paper, shared openly on bioRxiv and accepted for publication in Quantitative Plant Biology. The experience of publishing has provided another learning experience for Gina, around the need for structural changes to enable more effective, open peer review of the code generated as part of biology papers.
ECR/postdoc/technician prize
Co-producing Bradford’s Just Transition to Net Zero: Community Climate Evidence
Kelli Kennedy, Research Associate, Department of Health Sciences; Healthy Livelihoods Team, Department of Health Sciences: Maddie Baxter, Research Assistant; Adam Formby, Policy Fellow; Dr Amy Barnes, Senior Research Fellow
This project was built on the ethical principle that research should be built, shared, and accessible to those most impacted by its findings. Community-based Participatory Research approaches were adopted, ensuring transparency by involving stakeholders with lived experience of the issues being explored.
The research involved co-production of community evidence and reflection sessions with Bradford communities traditionally not consulted or engaged regarding climate issues (York Policy Engine blog post). An open repository is being created for these co-produced climate engagement activities, guidance and team reflections.
Evidence from this work was adopted by Bradford Council in their recent Climate Action Plan (University news post), and a zine co-authored with community researchers will be submitted to academic journals for publication. ECRs in the research team have also led a recent webinar on ethical community research by the Health Determinants Research Collaboration South Tees, offering reflections on barriers to open research and proposed solutions.
Funding: Supported by funding from the Valuing Voices project funded by The Wellcome Trust, Research England Policy Support Funds distributed via The York Policy Engine at the University of York, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research Public Health Research Programme which funds the Bradford Health Determinants Research Collaboration (NIHR151305)
Mid-career and senior research staff prize
Building and sustaining an open research lab culture
Prof Aidan Horner, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology; York Episodic Memory Lab, Department of Psychology
The York Episodic Memory Lab, led by Aidan, has a central commitment to open research through an active process of encouraging its members to develop their skills and discuss open research practices such as preregistration, data and code sharing, and planning replication studies. This commitment to open research has been written into their lab manual, which includes their wider approach to open research and establishes minimum standards for openness that are both achievable and open to extension (since setting this standard, most lab members have gone further in enabling further analysis and reuse of their work).
Lab members are encouraged to engage with ECR-led open research groups, such as the ReproducibiliTea journal club, of which some have taken active leadership and organisational roles. Aidan has also created and chaired the Psychology Open Science Interest Group in 2018, a forum for discussion and learning in the department.
These steps have led to a culture where open research is the default. Aidan has tried to create a virtuous cycle, where all lab members, including himself, are supported and encouraged to do their best research in as open and supportive an environment as possible.
Social Sciences
Undergraduate/taught postgraduate student prize
7 days attempting to change my practice: unveiling gendered vulnerability at the piano
Irene Palencia Mora, MA in Gender and Women's Studies, Centre for Women's Studies; Dr Rachel Alsop, Director, Centre for Women’s Studies (Main Supervisor); Dr Cristina Gamberi, University of Bologna (Support Supervisor)
Irene’s creative video-performance (YouTube link) presents a radical departure from traditional music rehearsal standards, which are deeply embedded in patriarchal codes that discipline the gendered body. Rather than looking for the "polished" success required by conservatory standards, Irene intentionally shares the problematic realities of daily practice in non-normative bodies.
The video documentation captures non-hegemonic movements and diverse facial gestures, out-loud reflections recorded during play, and intentional "failure" as a subversion of the tacit correctness imposed by masculine norms in the elitist sphere of piano performance. Irene addressed the challenges of overcoming the disciplined self and internalised standards as a classical pianist, facing up to the daunting process of opening up a work-in-progress to critique.
The video serves as a foundational 'open dataset' of gestural subversion and the beginning of an ongoing deconstructive process. It also serves as a creative artifact of the final dissertation for the Erasmus Mundus Master’s in Gender and Women's Studies (GEMMA), which was awarded the Centre for Women's Studies Adventurous Academic Prize.
Postgraduate researcher prize
Why Does the Exploitation of Migrant Workers in Fast Fashion Manufacturing in the UK Persist?
Susannah Williams, Department of Politics and International Relations; Melissa Williams, Postgraduate Researcher, Department of Politics and International Relations
Susy's PhD research has been made open and accessible wherever possible, which has been greatly beneficial in building trust with those directly affected by the research topic (migrant garment workers), but has also raised challenges due to the commitments involved and balancing the competing demands of different collaborators.
The research has been made accessible through different formats including a long-read article for the Labour Behind the Label organisation, animated videos on migrant worker rights in the UK, and activities delivered as part of the York Family Fringe Festival (reflective paper).
Susy also co-founded the annual 'Race' and Socially Engaged Research conference through the York Anti-Racism Working Group, a crucial 'safe' and accessible space for knowledge exchange for racially minoritised PGRs and ECRs, as well as those who work on race in a socially engaged manner. The Group received the 2023 Vice Chancellor's Inclusivity Award and 2022-23 Athena Swan Initiative Award, and has grown beyond York across different regions of the UK and several Higher Education institutions.
Funding: PhD funded by the White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership
ECR/postdoc/technician prize
The Accessing Disability Library (ADLib)
Kayleigh Doyle, ADLib Research Associate, Department of Education; Finn McLellan, Research Software Engineer, IT Services; Prof Kathryn Asbury, Professor of Psychology in Education, Department of Education (Principal Investigator); Dr Laura Fox, Lecturer in Psychology in Education, Department of Education (Co-Investigator); Dr Philip Harrison, Research Software Engineer Team Lead, IT Services; Dr David Shaw, Research Software Engineer Team Lead, IT Services
The Accessing Disability Library (ADLib) was developed by researchers in collaboration with research software engineers, Mencap, a speech and language therapist, and staff and students at a local special school. ADLib is a co-produced, public, openly accessible, crowd-sourced, and quality-appraised repository of resources and guidance for research (repository link). It is designed to be a single source of materials for working with learning disabled children and young people (CYP), making it easier and quicker to design genuinely inclusive and accessible research projects and to share good practice.
Challenges addressed whilst embedding open research practices included copyright barriers, and ensuring the repository was user-friendly for researchers while remaining accessible to learning disabled individuals
ADLib ensures that CYP who communicate in a variety of traditional and non-traditional ways have more opportunities to participate in research that affects or interests them - if they want to. Through co-producing ADLib, the team has learned that open research in this context is both practical and iterative. It requires careful attention to intellectual property, usability, and ethical considerations, alongside ongoing dialogue with the people who will use and benefit from the resources.
Funding: ESRC Data and Infrastructure, ESRC Impact Acceleration Accounts
Additional prizes
The judging panel acknowledged that the following initiative is cross-institutional in scope, and awarded it an additional prize outside the above categories:
Research Coding Club
Dr David Shaw, Research Software Engineer Team Lead, IT Services; Dr Peter Hill, Research Software Engineer Fellow, School of Physics, Engineering and Technology; Dr Philip Harrison, Research Software Engineer Team Lead, IT Services; Liam Pattinson, Research Software Engineer, School of Physics, Engineering and Technology; Dr Stuart Lacy, Senior Research Software Engineer, IT Services; Killian Murphy, Senior Research Software Engineer, IT Services; Dr Ed Higgins, Research Software Engineer, IT Services; Dr Phil Hasnip, Research Software Engineer Fellow, School of Physics, Engineering and Technology; Ava Dean, Research Software Engineer, School of Physics, Engineering and Technology
Research Coding Club (RCC) is a volunteer-led support and training network for anybody at the University who works with research software, from undergraduates to professors, from Philosophy to Physics. It has been running since 2017 and has delivered a wide range of material in different formats, in addition to regular "Code Clinic" sessions.
In 2025, RCC re-engineered the open FAIR²4RS course developed by the University of Sheffield, building upon the expertise of our volunteers and pre-existing training materials to help people develop better software for better research. The Research Coding Course supports researchers in applying FAIR principles and open research practices such as reproducibility to their research software, and teaching software development practices beyond just learning how to code.
All of the course materials are openly available, including recordings of sessions where this has been available.
Highly commended
Cell-Free Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output for Future Wireless Networks: Dr Saeed Mohammad Zadeh, Research Associate, Department of Electronics
Global China Studies Early Career Researcher Network: An Open Research Initiative for Cross-Institutional Knowledge Exchange: Tonghua Li, Postgraduate Researcher, Department of Politics and International Relations
Photochemistry of Aerosol Clusters using Laser-interfaced Mass Spectrometry: Pongpanot Pongworasuwanna, Postgraduate Researcher, Department of Chemistry
The Political Economy of Nuclear Fusion Governance: The Role of Interests, Ideas and Institutions in the United Kingdom and the United States: Eugenia Obeng-Akrofi, Postgraduate Researcher, Department of Politics and International Relations
Copyright notice
York Open Research Awards entrants retain all copyright ownership and intellectual property rights to their work. Project summaries are provided with permission from entrants, based on their written submissions. No further copying is permitted without permission from the researchers except where allowed under the terms of a public reuse licence where indicated at source, or as permitted by legal exception.