Stephen Fry Award 2015 shared by Five Million Questions and FIRST team

Published On Mon 12 Jan 2015 by Grant Hill

The University of Dundee's Five Million Questions (5MQ) initiative and the FIRST team led by Alyson Leslie have been named as the joint winners of the Stephen Fry Award for Excellence in Public Engagement with Research 2015.

They received their awards as part of the University’s annual Discovery Days event at the Dalhousie Building, Old Hawkhill on Friday, 9th January.

The FIRST: Fatality Investigation and Review Studies team have created the Ruby Review, a unique system that brings together multiple agencies to review the circumstances of every child’s death. The system, named in memory of a Dundee girl, aims to cut Scotland’s high rate of child deaths by combining expertise to draw from the experience of tragic incidents and stopping them from happening again.

5MQ, launched late in 2012 and led by Professor Chris Whatley and Michael Marra, was underpinned by the belief that the University should play a major role in the Scottish independence referendum by creating a forum in which serious, research-informed discussion about the referendum and the issues it raised could take place.

Stephen Fry, former Rector of the University, congratulated the winners in an audio recording that was played when they received their awards.

He said, “The University received a large number of excellent applications for the award and the judging panel were impressed by the quality of public engagement projects from across the breadth and depth of the University. I would like to thank everyone who applied for this award and to congratulate you on your spirit, energy and commitment.

“This year the University has decided to bestow a second award due to the exceptionally high quality of the applications and it is my great pleasure to tell you that Alyson Leslie and the FIRST team and the 5 Million Questions project are to be awarded the 2015 Stephen Fry Award for Excellence in Public Engagement with Research.

“I am very proud to have my name attached to two such brilliant projects and it’s wonderful for me to see how active and passionate and brilliant Dundee University continues to be. I would like to pass my heartfelt congratulations to these two very worthy winners of the award.”

Almost 400 children die in Scotland each year, a rate higher than in almost all other European countries. Each Ruby Review captures and preserves the story of the child and identifies preventable factors in each child’s death.

The goal of keeping kids alive in Scotland has captured the imagination of politicians, public sector leaders, policy makers and the public. Around 40 stakeholder agencies are now involved, representing thousands of workers across Tayside and beyond – police, ambulance, pathologists, Crown Office, GPs, social work agencies, groups supporting bereaved parents. 

Bringing the agencies together within the University environment exposes them to the vast range of expertise – medical, legal, design, technological, nursing, dental, town planning, social work – within the University and see it operating at its best, making new discoveries and findings and enabling them to be more effective in their work.

Throughout the referendum campaign, 5MQ’s commitment to public engagement has been unstinting. Well over 30 events took place in 20 months, attracting a live audience of almost 10,000 people to the University to hear from Alex Salmond, Alastair Darling, Danny Alexander, Nicola Sturgeon, Patrick Harvie and other politicians along with leading UK academics and political commentators.

In addition, members of the team represented the initiative at panel events and  on panels aimed at young voters and 5MQ sponsored The Scottish Referendum: A Voters Guide, a book for younger and undecided voters that was distributed for free to hundreds of Scottish school students around Scotland.

The project drew on Professor Whatley’s research and reputation as the country’s leading historian of the Union while the work of other Dundee academics was also utilised by 5MQ as part of its critical discussion of Scotland’s political future.

The Stephen Fry Award for Excellence in Public Engagement with Research celebrates the sharing of the world-class research carried out at Dundee with the wider public and is given to the researchers (or team) who have made the greatest contribution to public engagement in the past year.

Last year’s award was won by Dr Christopher Connolly, a neuroscientist who has significantly enhanced our knowledge of the threats faced by the world’s bee populations.

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