Rachel Bedder – Excellence in Public Engagement 2019

Rachel received the Excellence in Public Engagement Award 2019 for her work as an academic lead on the Centre’s Dear World Project.

Dear World Project  is one of the three key strands to our public engagement programme, and works to open up conversations that build complexity into our view of mental health. The project is a collaboration between researchers in the Rutledge Lab, Artists, and Communities. The collaboration consists of pop-up events that will build to a mental health-focussed art exhibition in East London in February 2020.

Combining art and science through a public engagement project makes complete sense for Rachel, who studied Art and Psychology as an undergraduate, and went on to work as Science Curator for AXNS Collective, a science and art organisation. Currently, Rachel is a PhD candidate studying the computational nature of mood disorders; where her passion for art, science and engagement has helped to realise Dear World Project. The project has in turn offered public engagement opportunities to many of her fellow researchers in the lab, significantly building our Centre’s programme, and making Rachel a worthy winner of the £250 prize.

On winning, Rachel says

“I was really pleased to win the award, especially as there have been so many cool new projects this year, with lots of individuals working really hard towards developing ways for their research to be communicated in an accessible and interactive way!”

We are looking forward to working more with Rachel over the time that Dear World Project develops, which will include planning the Dear World Project exhibition set to take place in February 2020, as well as running a number of pop-up events at Latitude, Walthamstow Garden Party and Bloomsbury Festival’s ‘The Asylum’.

Visit Rachel’s website here.

Awarded March 2019