Each year, the University of Bristol awards prizes recognising the best doctoral theses across its faculties, celebrating the quality, originality and breadth of research undertaken by postgraduate researchers (PGRs).
From this year’s faculty prize winners, Dr Fergus Baker was selected as the overall recipient of the Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Best Doctoral Thesis for his thesis, General relativistic effects in black hole X-ray coronal models.
Supervised by Dr Andrew Young and Dr Sotiria Fotopoulou, Fergus’s research impressed his examiners, who highlighted both its novel physical insights and the mathematical and computational techniques he developed.
His examiners said:
“It is not an exaggeration to say that the novel physical insights and mathematical and computational techniques developed by Fergus, along with the software package that he has released to enable their use by the community, have the potential to lead to major advances in the field.”
Celebrating outstanding doctoral research
Fergus is joined by eight fellow prize winners whose theses demonstrate the breadth and diversity of doctoral research taking place across the University.
Arts, Law and Social Sciences
Dr Maggie Fannon
Decent Sex Work: The Possibilities and Limits of the Law
Supervisors: Professor Joanne Conaghan and Dr Katie Cruz
Dr Simon Hill
Housing our Humanity: a journey through philosophy and policy to illuminate the possibilities of housing ethics
Supervisors: Professor Martin Parker and Dr Harry Pitts
Dr Rebecca Tyson
Sailing to Conquest: Maritime activity and identity in eleventh-century Normandy
Supervisors: Professor Benjamin Pohl and Dr Marianna Dudley
Health and Life Sciences
Dr Bushra Farooq
The association between adverse childhood experiences and mental health
Supervisors: Dr Becky Mars, Professor Laura Howe and Dr Abby Russell
Dr Katy Fleming
Investigations of neutrophil development in health and disease
Supervisors: Dr Borko Amulic and Dr Emma Vincent
Dr Benjamin Woolf
Using Mendelian randomization to assess the causal effects of familial environmental tobacco smoke exposure
Supervisors: Dr Hannah Sallis, Professor Marcus Munafò and Dr Stephen Burgess
Science and Engineering
Dr Fergus Baker
General relativistic effects in black hole X-ray coronal models
Supervisors: Dr Andrew Young and Dr Sotiria Fotopoulou
Dr Ellie Prosser
Interactive Agents for Online Child Safety
Supervisors: Dr Matthew Edwards and Dr Claudia Peersman
Dr Yuming Liu
The evolution of insect wing shapes: from the morphological and functional perspective
Supervisors: Professor Philip Donoghue and Professor Emily Rayfield