Success for the School of Social Sciences in the Research Staff Excellence Awards
Celebrating the success of our School of Social Sciences researchers at the Research Staff Excellence Awards and highlighting the research that led to this achievement.
It was a successful night for the talented researchers in the School of Social Sciences with three of our researchers receiving Research Staff Excellence Awards for their outstanding contributions.
At the Future-Ready Postdoc event, part of The University of Manchester鈥檚 Postdoc Appreciation Week (PAW), presented the winners with the awards in their respective categories, here they share more about the impactful research in their respective fields which led to their awards:
- Outstanding contribution to research impact
Dr. Luciana Lang, alongside a team of researchers from The University of Manchester, spent 18 months examining how faith spaces in Greater 91直播 support different groups of older people within their communities.
investigated the support that faith spaces provide for the diverse ageing population in Greater 91直播, a region facing high levels of inequality in health, income and access to services.
Luciana shared her thoughts on the project:
The Faith Spaces and Older People project brought together researchers at the University of Manchester, older people from different faiths, Age-Friendly 91直播 at the 91直播 City Council, and a number of partners to discuss faith spaces in age-friendly cities. This proved to be a nurturing and fruitful collaboration at many levels.
Over the course of 18 months, the research revealed a fascinating picture about the work that goes on within faith spaces, often done by older people themselves. In particular, the research highlighted the crucial role faith spaces play for first- and second-generation migrants, and as a self-sustaining form of social infrastructure in the wider community.
- Outstanding research output
Dr. James Fletcher鈥檚 research led to the publication of his book , which explores the relationship between dementia studies, and it鈥檚 growing public profile and corresponding research economy.
The research had led to James being invited to international conferences, demonstrating his commitment to mentoring and supporting the wider research community.
The book argues that a neuropsychiatric biopolitics of dementia positions dementia as a syndrome of cognitive decline, caused by discrete brain diseases, distinct from ageing, widely misunderstood by the public, that will one day be overcome through technoscience.
This biopolitics generates dementia鈥檚 public profile and is implicated in several problems, including the failure of drug discovery, the spread of stigma, the perpetuation of social inequalities and the lack of support that is available to people affected by dementia.
Through a failure to critically engage with neuropsychiatric biopolitics, much dementia studies is complicit in these problems. James explores these problems and the relations between them, making the case for more biopolitically engaged "neurocritical" dementia studies in able to best support people with the condition and improve research outputs.
- Research Staff of the Year
Patricia, working closely with public health experts at the University of Glasgow and medical clinicians at the University of Leicester, conducted a global review of over 200 million study participants, identifying the level of ethnic inequalities in COVID-19 infection, hospital admission, and mortality.
They found that Black people were twice as likely to get infected, South Asian people were three times as likely, Mixed ethnicity people were 1.6 times as likely, and Other ethnic groups were 1.4 times more likely (compared to the White majority). They also found that some ethnic groups were more likely to end up in the hospital or even die from COVID-19.
Their findings were published in a medical journal called .
Patricia shared more about the impact of the research and where it had led her today:
I was asked to share the research findings to World Health Organization (WHO) experts, focused on COVID-19 mortality. Because of this, we were asked by WHO to produce a health policy paper, working with experts from around the world, outlining evidence regarding ethnic inequalities in COVID-19 health outcomes, and recommendations for future pandemic preparedness. You can find the report in The Lancet eClinicalMedicine.
Now, I'm building on this research, through my Simon Research Fellowship, to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the mental health of different ethnic groups.