AOUG Chancellor Lord Asa Briggs Award for Arts

Awarded in 2022 to Anne Wetherilt

Anne was nominated by her supervisors Dr Alex tickell and Professor David Johnson. In the recommendation from her supervisors, Anne was identified as an expectional PhD student both for her exceptional academic achievements and her collegiality towards both her fellow OU PhD students and the OU English research community in general.

Her thesis is provisionally entitled ‘Decolonisation and the Middlebrow Novel’ from which she has published in ‘The Rain my Drink’ and ‘The Flying Fox’. In her thesis she examines the work of women writers who witnessed the end of British rule in India, Mayaya and Eat Africa, a key focus being how women writers used narrative features of the middlebrow novel to engage metropolitan readers in a debate on the politics of decolonisation. 

Awarded in 2021 to Freya Wise

Carbon Reduction and Heritage Retention in Residential Heritage Buildings

I’m investigating ways to reduce carbon from residential heritage buildings while retaining their heritage values. My research explores residents’ opinions, heritage values and energy behaviours, while creating energy models of buildings, investigating different modelling tools and assessing the carbon reduction potential of various retrofit measures and their impact on heritage.