Rewrite the Headlines: A final thank you

As our Rewrite the Headlines competition draws to a close, we would like to take this opportunity to thank the individuals and groups who helped to make the initiative such a success. Working with schools and universities throughout Scotland, the Rewrite the Headlines competition aimed to help young people better understand what research is, how it gets translated from specialised areas to popular media, and then how they might translate it back. And it wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the following…

Firstly, we would like to thank the British Academy for funding the initiative under their Rising Star Engagement Award scheme. The support received allowed us to develop and launch the competition for this first year. We are also grateful to the University of Strathclyde who provided additional funding to support the competition.

We would like to thank the host institutions of our Research the Headlines Co-Chairs who coordinated the competition, Dr Sinead Rhodes, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, School of Psychological Sciences and Health at the University of Strathclyde, and Dr Alan Gow, Associate Professor in Psychology in the School of Life Sciences at Heriot-Watt University. Colleagues from the Knowledge Exchange and Media teams at both institutions provided valuable support in disseminating the competition across the country.

The initiative was run by the academics and researchers behind Research the Headlines, our blog which discusses research and the media, created by members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy of Scotland. We are therefore grateful to our Research the Headlines contributors and colleagues in the Young Academy of Scotland, including Marie Montondo and Lesley Campbell, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh for their input at various stages in securing funding, developing materials and disseminating details of the competition to schools and universities across Scotland.

We would also like to thank Education Scotland who helped us to contact every primary school in the country ensuring that everyone had an opportunity to participate, and similarly all of Scotland’s universities who shared the competition details with their undergraduate students.

In the school competition, our Research the Headlines contributors, members of the Young Academy of Scotland and colleagues from other institutions went into classes to run workshops. We are very grateful to the following people, many of whom travelled great distances to ensure the competition was truly Scotland-wide:

Biserka Anderson, Samuel Chapman, Lisa DeBruine, Mirela Delibegovic, Ineke De Moortel, Duncan Forgan, Alan Gow, Stuart Gray, Erin Hardee, Catherine Heymans, Lorraine Izzett, Monica Kim, Kristina Harrison, Stuart Reid, Sinead Rhodes, Claire Rollie, Kirsten Russell, Kate Saunders, Ian Simpson, Stewart Smith, Jane Stanley, Nicola Stanley-Wall, Job Thijssen, Annie Tindley, Patrick Thomson, Ria Vaportzis, Jurgen Zech.

As a competition, all the entries had to be judged. Again we are indebted to colleagues from Research the Headlines and the Young Academy of Scotland who gave their time to provide expert feedback on both the school and undergraduate entries. Our judges were:

Sharon Ashbrook, Des Balmforth, Christine Caldwell, Stella Chan, Lisa DeBruine, Sophie Ellison, Ashleigh Fletcher, Duncan Forgan, Alan Gow, Gareth Harrison, Olga Kozlova, Cait MacPhee, Victoria Martin, Sinead Rhodes, Kate Saunders, Daniela Sime, Nicola Stanley-Wall, Job Thijssen, Annie Tindley.

Colleagues in the Young Academy of Scotland also sourced some excellent prizes for the competition through their host institutions or professional networks. We are very grateful to the following organisations who provided prizes for the competition, with our Young Academy of Scotland colleagues named to show our thanks to them for securing that support.

Prizes were supported by the British Academy, the University of Strathclyde (Sinead Rhodes), the School of Chemistry at the University of St. Andrews (Sharon Ashbrook), the School of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Strathclyde (Daniela Sime), the University of Dundee School of Life Sciences (Nicola Stanley-Wall), the Particle Physics Experiment Research Group at the University of Edinburgh (Victoria Martin), the Social Research Association (Sophie Ellison), the Scottish History Society (Annie Tindley), and Palgrave Macmillan (Alan Gow).

Of course, we must also thank the schools who participated and the teachers who took their classes through the competition, and the undergraduates who submitted entries. Without the enthusiasm of our entrants, there would have been no Rewrite the Headlines!

The winners were announced at an event hosted by Dynamic Earth with special guest Dr Bunhead at the end of January, and we are grateful to the venue and Dr Bunhead for making it such a memorable day.

Finally, we need to thank our Project Manager, Vivienne Macdonald, for her tireless commitment over the past few months. Vivienne regularly went well beyond what was expected of her to ensure the competition ran smoothly, and we are extremely grateful for that. It is fair to say we don’t think the competition would have been half as successful without Vivienne.

You can view the full list of winners here with links to the top entries in the school and undergraduate categories. There are also some excellent pictures from the prize giving event on our Facebook page.

The competition materials for both the school and undergraduate categories will remain on our website for others to use. If you use any of the materials from Rewrite the Headlines we would be delighted to hear from you.

A final thank you to all those who ensured Rewrite the Headlines ran so successfully. Whatever role you played, it was very much appreciated. We hope to run the competition again in the future; in the meantime, do please continue to follow and share our work at Research the Headlines.