We’re delighted to congratulate Dr Lucy Jones and her project Words We Live By for winning Best Public Engagement Initiative at the 2025 University of Nottingham Policy Impact and Public Engagement Awards. This year’s Best Public Engagement Initiative award was given to two fantastic projects, Dr Jones for Words We Live By and Dr Hongwei Bao (CLAS) for ‘Poetics of Migration’, a project that foregrounds migrant experiences through poetry and participatory arts. “I'm delighted to have received this award for the Words We Live By project,” said Dr Jones, “we tried to create something which would increase understanding around using language inclusively and sensitively to talk about gender and sexuality; this feels so important right now, at a time when LGBTQ+ people face increasing hostility and marginalisation.”
The Policy Impact and Public Engagement Awards recognise and celebrate the work of University of Nottingham researchers in achieving policy impact and engaging the public with current research. The Best Public Engagement Initiative recognises an individual or team for a successful public engagement activity or initiative where public groups have benefited from engagement with the University of Nottingham.
Words We Live By is a British Academy funded project which worked in collaboration with 30 LGBT+ young people to create a colourful guide aimed to help adults better understand the language used by many young LGBTQ+ people to describe their lives, and to support them through their journey into adulthood. The project produced a printed guide which was distributed across 250 organisations, gaining 3,000 online views and engaging over 9,000+ people through social media, and was promoted by a free, public exhibition at the National Justice Museum which was seen by over 11’000 visitors.
The guide is now used in continuous professional development workshops for schools businesses including the National Youth Agency. “I've been delighted with the positive response to the guide,” Dr Jones told us, “which I think underlines the value of taking research outside of academia and into the 'real world'.”
Find out more about the project.
See all the winners of this year's awards.
Posted on Thursday 8th May 2025