Faculty of Social Sciences news

The Sussex Researcher School is proud to announce the winners of the 2025 Adam Weiler Impact Awards, recognising four exceptional postgraduate researchers (PGRs) who demonstrate the potential to make lasting, positive changes across diverse fields.

These awards are made possible by a generous donation to the University in memory of former student Adam Weiler, and celebrate postgraduate researchers whose work exemplifies creativity, rigour, and real-world relevance.

The awards are granted across four discipline-based categories — Media, Arts and Humanities; Sciences; Social Sciences; and Clinical Projects. Each winner will receive £1,000 towards their ongoing research. 

Our 2025 recipients are:

• Tiffany Murphy (Media, Arts and Humanities): Tiffany’s project, On the Mend: engaging with sexual and gendered trauma through feminist performance, examines the role of theatre in processing trauma. Using a queer feminist framework, her research explores how live performance can serve as a site of collective care and ethical witnessing for survivors of gendered violence.
  
  
• Guy Edwards (Social Sciences – Global Studies): Guy’s research analyses Colombia’s historic energy transition under the Petro administration — the first major fossil fuel-producing country in the Global South to halt new oil and gas licenses. His interdisciplinary methodology maps the power dynamics and political contestations that shape this transition, offering valuable insights into global climate governance.
  
  
• Marianne Glascott (Sciences – Life Sciences): Marianne’s innovative work on kelp spore motility offers a non-vertebrate, early-warning approach to ecotoxicology. Her methods allow for the detection of sub-lethal pollutant effects in marine ecosystems and present a more ethical, scalable alternative to traditional testing models, with implications for marine conservation policy.
  
  
• Christina Niki Kampoureli (Clinical Projects – Brighton and Sussex Medical School): Christina’s research focuses on real-time fMRI neurofeedback for adults with ADHD. Her study optimises brain-training protocols and demonstrates cognitive improvements in attention and memory, offering crucial insights into the design of neurofeedback interventions for clinical populations.

The awards will be presented at the Sussex Awards ceremony in May, and our winners will share their research and its impact in a dedicated panel session during the Summer of Research Three Minute Thesis final on Friday 20 June.

For further information: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/internal/sussex-researcher-school/researcherdev/yourcareer/funding-awards/doctoralimpact

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