Dr Bethan Fisk, Senior Lecturer in Colonial Latin American History from the Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, Dr Laura Monk, Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow in the School of Mathematics, and Dr Rob Gruijters, Associate Professor in the School of Education are among 30 recipients from across the UK who will each receive £100,000 to further their research.
Awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, Philip Leverhulme Prizes are designed to recognise and facilitate the work of outstanding research scholars of proven achievement, who have made and are continuing to make original and significant contributions to knowledge in their particular field.
Dr Bethan Fisk’s research explores slavery, cultural geographies, and the production of knowledge by people of African descent in Colombia and the Greater Caribbean and has been awarded the prize in the discipline of History.
This award will allow Dr Fisk to research about understandings and experiences of the night in the Caribbean. While many experiences of the night are universal, the Caribbean’s collision of cultures and early, violent route to modernity presents unique offerings to how its inhabitants lived after dark, including but not limited to astronomy, ritual, race, politics, silence, storytelling, sex, criminality, technology, and death.
Dr Fisk, a member of the Centre for Black Humanities, said: “I am beyond delighted to have been awarded the prize and have been pretty stunned since receiving the news. The award will support me doing the archival research for and writing a book, titled A History of the Night in the Greater Caribbean, which will examine how indigenous, black, and European peoples attributed significance to, feared, and transformed the night in the British, French, and Spanish Antilles and the circum-Caribbean, from before the arrival of Europeans to the advent of electricity, c.1480-1900.”
“So much is shared across the Caribbean, yet this can be obscured by former empire and language, so the award ensures I can research across the region and look beyond these typical boundaries.”
Dr Laura Monk's research explores the geometric and spectral properties of random hyperbolic surfaces. This research topic has been popularised by Fields medallist Maryam Mirzakhani and allows the use of probabilistic methods in an otherwise very abstract field of mathematics.
This award will enable Dr Monk to grow her research team, encourage young researchers to enter the field and organise an extended workshop to showcase the new exciting developments and create new collaboration opportunities.
Dr Monk said: "I am immensely grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for the recognition of my work and the amazing opportunities this prize will create for my career."
Dr Gruijters is a quantitative educational sociologist, whose empirical work looks at educational inequality and its implications for life outcomes in a variety of global contexts and he has been awarded the prize in the discipline of Sociology / Social Policy.
Dr Gruijters's recent research has addressed the highly debated question of whether Millennials are economically worse off than their parents’ generation, the Baby Boomers. He argues that this framing is misleading because it overlooks the vast and increasing inequalities within generations. These insights have attracted a lot of attention in international media and led to lively discussions on social media.
Dr Gruijters, a member of the Centre for Childhoods and Social Justice, said: “I am absolutely thrilled and grateful to receive this award, which will enable me to develop a new research agenda on graduate outcomes and returns to higher education around the world. This research will speak directly to contemporary concerns about the rise in graduate unemployment, the declining value of a university degree, and the threat of AI-driven displacement of graduate-level jobs.”
Professor William Browne, Head of the School of Education, commented: “The School of Education is thrilled that Dr Gruijters's work has been recognised with a Philip Leverhulme Prize. Rob uses advanced quantitative methods and innovative visual displays to gain new insights into interesting and topical questions within education and the social sciences more broadly. The prize will allow Rob dedicate more time to his research endeavours and continue on his excellent research trajectory."
The annual scheme commemorates the contribution to the work of the Leverhulme Trust made by Philip, Third Viscount Leverhulme and grandson of William Lever, the founder of the Trust. This year prizes were awarded across a range of academic disciplines, including Classics, Earth Sciences, Physics, Politics and International Relations, Psychology and Visual and Performing Arts.
Professor Anna Vignoles, Director of the Leverhulme Trust, said: “This year marks the twenty-fifth year of the Philip Leverhulme Prizes. For a quarter of a century, this scheme has attracted extraordinarily high-calibre researchers, and selecting only thirty winners is always challenging. We are immensely grateful to the reviewers and panel members who help us in our decision making, and we are extremely proud to support these researchers through the next stage of their careers.”
“The array of topics covered by their work is striking, from hyperbolic geometry to the philosophy of physics, educational stratification to the evolution of plant mutualism.”