DPIR’s Professor Jane Green and Dr Mihail Chiru named winners in Department’s Impact Awards
Professor Jane Green and Dr Mihail Chiru have been announced as this year’s winners of the DPIR Impact Awards.
The Awards, launched in 2021, celebrate how research in Politics and International Relations make a difference beyond academia. Two prize categories recognise ‘Impact Leaders’ and ‘Achieving Impact’.
Professor Green is the winner of the Impact Leader Award, which recognises a significant track record of achieving impact or a commitment to collaboration and engaged research.
Her economic insecurity and electoral behaviour research (with Roosmarijn de Geus, University of Reading) changed polling practice, political research and strategy, and charity policy development. She devised a large module in the British Election Study (BES - in 2018 and 2022), leading to high-impact novel insights, building on earlier research. The impact strategy involved extensive activities over three years, helped by relationship building and profile as BES Co-Director over ten years.
I’m delighted to be supported by DPIR through this award. I think it’s incumbent on academics to reveal patterns and trends that may otherwise go overlooked, particularly when such insights are central to the political decisions that affect us all.
The British Election Study has been a wonderful opportunity to measure concepts in new ways. It’s gratifying when analysis of BES data leads to changes in political decision-making, polling and in the policy-making world.
Dr Chiru is the winner of the Achieving Impact Award, which recognises and rewards research that has achieved, or is currently achieving, demonstrable policy, economic, societal, or cultural impacts.
At the request of the European Parliament's Special Committee on the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Chiru’s research assessed the variation, correlates, and best practices of parliamentary oversight during the COVID-19 pandemic in the 27 European Union Member States and four other consolidated democracies: Canada, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. The study’s conclusions have been incorporated in the draft report that will be debated when the European Parliament adopts a resolution on the matter in the summer.
I am very pleased to receive this award and to have the impact of my research recognised by the Department. It is good to know that the contributions of fixed term staff do not go unnoticed. I will use the prize fund to continue my research on this topic.
The biennial awards are part of the Department’s efforts to profile impact and recognise the investment of researchers in impact activities, with each category prize fund totalling £1,000.
Applications were reviewed by the Research Facilitation Team, Research Director, Head of Department and three other reviewers.
