The Barbara Bagilhole Memorial Award is a School-wide prize, founded by Professor Line Nyhagen in 2017 to celebrate students’ work in Equality and Diversity. It is named after Professor Barbara Bagilhole, a Professor of Social Policy and Equal Opportunities at Loughborough University. She conducted ground-breaking EDI-related research on gender inequalities in the construction industry.
The Dean of the School, Professor Lisanne Gibson, and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education and Student Experience), Professor Rachel Thomson, led the ceremony.
New for this year, the prize was split into two categories: Best Student Paper and Best Other Academic Coursework.
The two winners of the Best Student Paper were:
- Georgina Bryant – ‘Climate Change, Migration, and Injustice’
- Tosin Asaye – ‘What are the most significant ways in which slavery and its legacy have impacted the lives of people of the African diaspora in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries?’
The panel said both essays were extremely well-researched and stood out due to the nuance and complexity of their arguments, as well as the quality of presentation.
Allegra Oduah won the Best Other Academic Coursework for their blog entry ‘Growing up mixed race’. The judges described it as a reflective, well-researched and critical analysis of pervasive racism that interweaves personal experiences with insights from academic literature.
The judging panel were impressed by the quality of submissions received this year and the breadth of EDI-related topics addressed.