Innovative Research at Pembroke Recognised by Vice Chancellor's Awards

NEWS |

Dr Annette Idler of the Changing Character of War Centre (CCW) and The Quill Project have both been celebrated by the Vice Chancellor’s Innovation Awards 2020 for their leadership in research.  CCW and Quill are based at Pembroke and their teams play an active part in College life, bringing expertise, debate and new ideas to our community. 

Dr Annette Idler was the winner in the Early Career Innovator Category for her work on rethinking conflict to build peace, and was also Highly Commended in the Inspiring Leadership category. Annette leads the interdisciplinary Conflict Platform project that brings together various techniques to provide evidence-based guidance on the directions and pace of change in conflict. Her collaborative approach has enabled the development of the Changing Character of Conflict Tool, interactive online visualizations, data analysis software, podcasts, UN training curriculum modules and civil society Best Practices guidelines. She also leads CONPEACE – From Conflict Actors to Architects of Peace –  through which she innovates peacebuilding efforts. Bringing together Colombian stakeholders from power centres and marginalized communities narrowed the gap between their respective understandings of security needs.

The Quill Project, a digital humanities research group led by Dr Nicholas Cole, was highly commended in the Teamwork category. One of Quill’s key innovations has been around multi-user editing and the creation of an environment in which undergraduate students collaborate with each other and academic mentors in order to make a substantive contribution to an on-going research project. A small-scale partnership with Utah Valley University (UVU) has grown into a sustained, years-long archival research project, involving multiple institutions and covering the history of several American states, that would be impossible to manage from Oxford in any other way. It is particularly noteworthy that many of the students involved come from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds, reflecting the open-enrolment nature of UVU.  You can read more about the Quill Project at www.quill.pmb.ox.ac.uk.