Dr Noreen Masud, Associate Professor in Creative and Critical Writing from the Department of English is among 30 recipients from across the UK who will each receive £100,000.
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 Noreen Masud is an award-winning expert in twentieth-century literature, an acclaimed writer of creative non-fiction, and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker.
This award will allow Dr Masud to research faceblindness (also known as prosopasgnosia): a neural condition making it difficult or impossible to recognise faces. With over 240 million people worldwide thought to have prosopagnosia, and many more undiagnosed, faceblindness can cause significant difficulty at work or in social situations, contributing to anxiety and isolation.
Dr Masud said: “I am so stunned and so grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for this life-changing award - I keep reading and rereading the award email, sure I’ve made a mistake! The award will support me to write a creative non-fiction book, titled Blank Face, about how faceblind writers and artists see and organise the world – and how a better understanding of faceblindness might reframe our sense of beauty, environment and relationship.’
Professor Alison Donnell, Head of the School of Humanities, commented: “The School of Humanities is delighted that the exceptional contribution made by Dr Noreen Masud’s critical and creative work on aphorism and flatness has been recognised with a Philip Leverhulme Prize. Her new book on face blindness, supported by this prize, promises to continue her work revealing unacknowledged interior landscapes with artistic grace and humanistic integrity."
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 Archaeology, Chemistry, Economics, Engineering, Geography and Languages and Literatures.
Professor Anna Vignoles, Director of the Leverhulme Trust, said: “We continue our centenary celebrations with the announcement of this year’s prize winners. The Trust is delighted to support them through the next stage of their careers. The breadth of topics covered by their research is impressive, from landscape archaeology to biomolecular mass spectrometry, applied microeconomics to adaptable wearable robotics, and pyrogeography to critical applied linguistics.”
“Selecting the winners becomes increasingly challenging year-on-year due to the extraordinarily high calibre of those nominated. We are immensely grateful to the reviewers and panel members who help us in our decision-making.”