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Doctoral College Thesis Prize

Recognition of outstanding academic research achievement and excellence

The Doctoral College Thesis Prize recognises academic research achievement and excellence, as well as outstanding contributions to a research area or discipline. It celebrates researchers whose work demonstrates originality, rigour, and influence, and acknowledges the impact our research students make on our global research presence and profile.

The prize, awarded in the form of an engraved medal, may be given for a doctoral degree completed by thesis or for a doctoral submission based on published work.

Nomination Process

Examiners will be responsible for nominating a student for a prize following their examination of a thesis/by published work submission. Doctoral students from all three Faculties are eligible for nomination.

Information on the Doctoral Thesis Prize is provided to appointed Doctoral Examiners when they are sent the thesis for examination. The Doctoral College will provide the relevant Graduate School with an information sheet which will be sent out to Examiners along with the nomination form. The Joint Report form also contains a reference to the Doctoral Thesis Prize and a link to the guidance and nomination form.

If Examiners wish to nominate a student for a Doctoral Thesis Prize, they must provide a completed nomination form outlining the justification for their nomination based on the Doctoral Thesis Prize criteria (below) to the relevant Graduate School.

Nominations should be submitted for consideration in May and October each year.

Selection Criteria

The Examiners would nominate a student for a Doctoral Thesis Prize where they agree that the student meets the following criteria:

  • Evidence of outstanding quality of the student’s academic achievement as demonstrated in the content and presentation of the thesis.
  • Evidence of a significant level of originality shown in the thesis and the thesis makes a significant contribution to the research area or discipline/s.
  • Evidence that the candidate has excelled in the design and implementation of their research project, e.g., the. candidate has excelled in the use of research methods or analysis of results.
  • Evidence of current or future impact of the thesis, e.g. on society, economy, etc.

All nominations will be considered by a Faculty Panel who will award prizes to outstanding students whose thesis have impressed the examiners and fulfilled the criteria for the prize. 

Prize Winners 2024

May 2024

A number of nominations were made for the Doctoral College Thesis Prize and those awarded were:-

  • Liam Lachs (SENG): Corals and climate change: exploring heat tolerance and adaptation potential across ecological scales
  • Rebecca Louise McIntyre (PHSI): Exploring the impact of school food policy on 11–12-year-olds diets in Northumberland in 2000, 2010 and 2022: a repeat cross-sectional study
  • Ekaterina Yukhnovich (TCRI): Targeted Sounds for the diagnosis and treatment of tinnitus in humans in conjunction with Newcastle Tinnitus
  • Olga Procenko (NUBI): Affective state and visual decision-making in bumblebees
  • Emily Rosanna Archer Goode (NUBI): Targeting ST6Gal1-mediated sialylation to prevent prostate cancer metastasis and disease progression
  • Claire Boden (GPS): Morality matters: Class relations in the ex-mining villages of County Durham 
  • Mustapha Manga (APL): Mainstreaming Strategic Thinking in Policy Making for new Oil and Gas Frontiers in Nigeria through a transition to Strategic Environmental Assessment


Oct 2024

  • Ben Bowsher (GPS): The Poetics of Posthuman Knowledge-Making: the Inscription of Political. Possibilities and Limits in the Anthropocene
  • Victoria Brocklebank (TCRI): Personalised management of atypical haemolytic uraemic syndrome
  • Josh Bennett (TCRI): The influence of tofacitinib on skeletal muscle in rheumatoid arthritis
  • Mark Adley (PHSI): ‘It’s not what we would class as the front of our priority’: a qualitative, intersectional perspective on LGBTQ+ disadvantage within health and social care service pathways in North East England

Prize Winners 2025

May 2025

A number of nominations were made for the Doctoral College Thesis Prize and those awarded were:-

  • Imogen Franklin (NUBI): Investigating negative selection of pathogenic mitochondrial DNA variants in the blood 
  • Timothy Price (PHSI): "The industry died… the towns went right down”: Structural Violence and Deaths of Despair in North East England
  • Louise Elizabeth Whitehead (PHSI): Bayesian Tools for the Design and Analysis of Clinical Trials in Chronic Aging-Related Diseases
  • Helen Spencer (TCRI): Case Formulation in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Psychosis
  • Sam Hogan (TCRI): CRISPR Screen Multiplexing for Uncharacterised Region function 
  • Lu Wang (TCRI): Ex Situ Heart Perfusion for Donor Heart  Quality Optimisation
  • Madison Milne-Ives (TCRI): Mapping the process of engagement with digital health interventions: an exploratory multiple case study
  • Uri Chae (APL): Confronting the North: Spatial Constructions for Defence in the Park Chung-Hee Administration in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s 
  • Pilar D'Alo (GPS): Colonial Legacies of Knowledge Production: The Political Spirituality of the Green Tide Feminist Movement 
  • Richard Lambeth (GPS): Relating to the Non-Human: An Intellectual History of Natural Capital 
  • Emma Carr (GPS): The response of marine-terminating outlet glaciers in northwestern Greenland to recent and near-future climate change
  • Dafydd Sinden (SELLL): Forms of perception in late modernist British poetry, 1966-2020 
  • Hazel Cooley (SNES): Chronic bee paralysis virus: Spillover to non-honey bee (Apis mellifera) invertebrates and sub-lethal and caste-linked impacts in honey bees 
  • Karoline Leiberg (COMP): Multivariate and Multiscale Computational Approaches for Quantifying Brain Shape in Health and Disease
  • Duaa Alqattan (COMP): Security of Distributed and Federated Deep Learning Systems 
  • Jonathan James Horsley (COMP): From Imaging to Insight: Quantitative Analysis of Multimodal Brain Abnormalities in Epilepsy 
  • Bin Zhang (SENG): Investigating sand inelasticity and breakage alongside their role in enhancing rail adhesions
  • Chao Zhang (SENG): Investigating the mechanical and electrical behaviour of particulate systems using Discrete Element Method 
  • Ana Coutinho-Dutra (SNES): Exploring Lithium and Sodium Anti-Perovskite Solid Electrolytes for Energy Storage Applications 
  • Marcellino D'Avino (SNES): Synthesis and Characterization of Modified Polysaccharides and their application in Fabric and Home Care 
  • Reece Paterson (SNES): The Design and Optimisation of Poly(Ionic Liquid) Stabilized Metal Nanoparticle Catalysts 

Oct 2025

  • Jing Xuan Lim (NUBI): Determining Previously Undefined Immune Regulatory Networks in Regulatory T Cells and Innate Lymphoid Cells within the Tumour Microenvironment 
  • Chinenye Loveth Ekemezie (PHSI): Deciphering genetic drivers of resistance to clinical inhibitors of protein synthesis 
  • James Rodney Allison (TCRI): The Dispersion, Persistence, and Control of Viral Bioaerosols in Dentistry 
  • Maia Almeida-Amir (SACS): BreadTube: Political praxis and cultural politics on YouTube
  • Juliana Beykirch (SELLL): Monstrosity and Performance on the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Stage
  • Bella Ruth Reichard (SELLL): Does language matter? An exploration of differences between high- and low-scoring REF2014 impact case studies
  • Maxine Cecily Canvin (SNES): Quantifying the contribution of kelp farming to Blue Carbon ecosystem services
  • Oliver Schön (COMP): Correct-by-Design Control of Cyber-Physical Systems: Robustness and Learning under Uncertainty


If you have any queries please contact us at doctoralcollege@ncl.ac.uk