Effimia Panagiotaki and Seda Öztürk Jointly Awarded MCR Collingwood Prize

Every year, the MCR come together in the summer for the Collingwood Banquet, a great opportunity for our postgraduate students to celebrate together the academic year just gone. As is tradition, the Collingwood Prize is presented at the banquet to an MCR student who has shown incredible academic achievement. This year, the prize was jointly awarded to Effimia Panagiotaki (2021, DPhil Engineering Science) and Seda Öztürk (2021, DPhil Asian and Middle Eastern Studies). Below, they reflect on their time at Pembroke and what being part of our MCR community means to them.

Effimia

"Some of my best and most memorable fieldwork happened at -10°C in the Scottish Highlands, in the middle of a snowstorm, at night, just two months into my DPhil. Pembroke made very sure I was warm and well-equipped for that trip, and that was just the beginning.

My research focuses on robot perception for reliable navigation: making robots see, understand, and interact with their environment safely across different settings. My work has taken me from cycling around Oxford to off-road driving in Scotland, to the Queen’s Anniversary Prize investiture at Buckingham Palace, and to conferences in Japan, China, Austria, and the UK. Pembroke supported me throughout, from the Dean of Graduate Funds, which enabled me to travel and conduct fieldwork, to the Senior Studentship, which connected me with academics I deeply admire and whose work has shaped my thinking and inspired my research. Now, as my DPhil comes to an end, I am delighted to be receiving the Collingwood Prize for Academic Achievement, together with Seda Öztürk.

But Pembroke's support has gone far beyond conferences and fieldwork. More than anything, the College gave me a home. It is where I met friends I will keep for life, and its community carried me through the hardest stretches of my DPhil. I remember dinners in Hall where the conversation went from robotics to zoology to history, and left me thinking for days; and the Porters always welcoming me back to Rokos Quad with a smile at 5 am after a long evening in the office writing papers. That sense of community is truly unique, and I am incredibly grateful to have been part of it.

Thank you, Pembroke - it has been an honour."

Seda

"I arrived at Pembroke in 2021, joining a welcoming and wonderful graduate community. Living in Old Quad as a graduate student, right next to the MCR and close to my department, was fantastic. When I first arrived, I immediately felt what a great choice I had made in picking Pembroke. The years that followed were just as exciting and fulfilling, even if extremely fast-paced.

Throughout my time here, I was involved in various student and college committees; my primary motivation was always to give back to the community that gave me so much. I am deeply grateful for two Dean of Graduates awards, which helped fund my conference travel and fieldwork, as well as the Robert Baldick Travel Prize, which I will be using for my research trip to France this September.

My thesis focuses on a puzzle in Azerbaijani grammar: how the language expresses causation, i.e. causing someone to do something. I show that patterns long dismissed as irregular or exceptional follow an underlying predictable system, offering new insight into how languages structure meaning at a fundamental level. I collected data through fieldwork and online linguistics experiments, and have presented this work internationally — from the USA to Austria to Sri Lanka — as well as across the UK, including Oxford, Edinburgh, and Ipswich.

Being recognised for my academic work with the Collingwood Prize has been a tremendous honour, particularly towards the end of my DPhil. Research is rarely straightforward—there are always ups and downs, and it can be easy to lose sight of the value of what we do. Awards such as this serve as an encouraging reminder that our work matters and is valued.

Thank you, Pembroke—it has been a true privilege to be a Pembrokian."

Many congratulations to Seda and Effimia on their hard work and excellent academic achievement, and for being valued members of the MCR community.