Exhibition: OU Research at 50

Recognition & Awards

Many of those who have conducted research at The Open University have been recognised for their achievements – personally and as part of research teams, in their own fields and to more general acclaim, and in many differing categories. Again, we have only been able to include just a few examples on this page, which would otherwise have gone on much longer!

There have been a number of royal honours awarded to Open University researchers over the years. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was awarded her CBE in 1999 while Professor of Physics at the OU – the audio clip on this page features her speaking about the Astrophysics Research Group. She was subsequently appointed President of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Former PVC and Dean of Social Science Professor Andrew Blowers received an OBE in 2000 and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2004. Now an Emeritus Professor, in 2018 he was awarded the Alexander and Ilse Melamid Medal by the American Geographical Society.

In 2013, the Queen created 12 new Regius Professorships, an incredibly rare honour – prior to this only two had been created in the last century, and before that none since the reign of Queen Victoria! The Regius Professorship in Open Education was awarded to Professor Eileen Scanlon of IET, and you can see the official Royal Warrant in the image on this page.

In 2016, the Royal Astronomical Society marked the centenary of the first women Fellows by honouring 21 scientists with photographic portraits. Three of these came from The Open University: Dr Helen Fraser, Professor Monica Grady (also awarded a CBE in 2012), and Dr Carole Haswell.

Notable successes since 2014 have been six Guardian University Awards two Times Higher Education (THE) Awards and one Times Higher Leadership and Management Award. The OpenSTEM Labs, which enables 24-hour access to virtual science labs for teaching and research, won three of these awards, and other research-related winners were the English in Action project, which enables millions of people across Bangladesh to improve their English as a route out of poverty and into work, and research into learning in secure environments. In 2019, the OU was shortlisted for three THE Awards:

• OU Analyse - an innovative tool which produces predictions on a weekly basis as to whether or not students will submit their teacher-marked assignment;
• Open Arts Objects – a project which has used OU research into Art History to broadcast to 13.7 million viewers; and
• Dr Barbara Kunz, a research project officer (technician) in the Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics has been shortlisted in the Outstanding Technician of the Year category.

Since 2018, the OU also recognises its own stand-out research projects through the Research Excellence Awards. In the video clip on this page Dr Ilona Roth, winner of the ‘2018 Outstanding Impact of Research on OU Learning & Teaching, Curriculum and Students Award’, speaks about her research in the field of autism.