GENDER.ED – Announcing the GENDER.ED - EUSA Undergraduate Feminist Trailblazer Awards

GENDER.ED and EUSA are delighted to announce the winners and honourable mentions of the GENDER.ED-EUSA Undergraduate Feminist Trailblazer Awards! Interviews with the winners and honourable mentions will be posted as a GENDER.ED blog series over the coming weeks.  

2024 marks the third year of the GENDER.ED – EUSA Undergraduate Feminist Trailblazer Awards. The awards recognise extraordinary commitments to feminist scholarship and change amongst the undergraduate community on campus. This year, we received numerous nominations from students and staff, which were considered by a panel of judges from GENDER.ED and EUSA. The panel of judges consisted of Dylan Walch (EUSA Vice President Education), Radhika Govinda (Director of GENDER.ED), and Wannes Dupont (Associated Director of GENDER.ED).  

The 2023/2024 winners of the Undergraduate Feminist Trailblazer Awards are: 

1st Prize: Ash Scholz (MA History and Politics, 4th Year) 

Panel comments: The panel of judges commended Ash on their impressive breadth of activity on campus. This includes roles with the Amnesty National Student Team, EUSA, Sex? On Campus! Undergraduate Student Society, and in the Amnesty International Society, as well as a dazzling array of community, support and academic events, conferences, workshops, awareness-raising sessions, campaigns, and LGBTQ+ history month events. 

2nd Prize: Aditi Jain (BSc (Hons) Pharmacology, Graduate) 

Panel comments: The panel of judges recognised Aditi’s strong trajectory as a feminist trailblazer. As the President of Women in STEM Society, she has led the initiative to create a mentorship programme that now counts hundreds of mentors and mentees, thereby fostering a more inclusive community that spans across two Colleges. The panel commended Aditi on what she has managed to achieve under the aegis of the mentorship programme, which will have a lasting impact on the community of women in STEM who are otherwise minoritized in this field. Her activism and leadership have already received both internal and external recognition, including the Student STEMinist of the Year award from Equate Scotland, and the panel agreed that her work deserves to be showcased and celebrated more widely across the University. 

3rd Prize: Kate Wilson (MA Linguistics and English Language, 4th year) and Kirsten Hay (MA French and Italian, 3rd year) 

Panel comments: As co-founders of the grassroots Sex? On Campus! Undergraduate Student Society, the panel of judges commended Kate and Kirsten for pro-actively and passionately working towards drawing urgent attention to the need for more robust institutional structures, policies and procedures to address the issue of gender-based violence and sexual harassment on the University campus, as well as the wider higher education sector.  

Honourable Mention: Ishita Parakh (Politics and Social Sciences, 4th year) and Alina Paczesna (Politics and Social Sciences, 4th year) 

Panel comments: Although Ishita and Alina were nominated separately, the panel of judges decided that they should be considered jointly due to having worked as interns on the same project undertaken as a collaboration between the Vet School and GENDER.ED. Ishita studied gender disparity in publications and Alina studied gender disparity in conference presentations in the field of veterinary sciences. The panel agreed that the striking results of their studies, demonstrating the structural underrepresentation of women in the discipline, will carry significant impact through publication in a peer-reviewed journal and by their presentation at the European College of Veterinary Surgeons Annual Conference this year. The panel also thought that the fact that their studies are being used as the basis for guidelines to be developed for gender equality in conference planning and publication in the field is testament to the significant real-world impact it has already made. 

Honourable Mention: Emily-Rose Coupe (MA Social Anthropology, Graduate) 

Panel comments: The panel of judges recognised how engaged Emily is in cutting-edge research (UG project dissertation), as well as activism and advocacy work, notably through her involvement with G*rl Up Edinburgh. The panel agreed that her work promotes feminist causes on the University campus, in particular, drawing attention to the need for more robust institutional structures, policies and procedures to address the issue of gender-based violence and sexual harassment on campus.  

Congratulations to all the winners and honourable mentions and thank you for all the important work you do on campus!