Students and Staff at St Mary’s Awarded for Research

Postgraduate students and members of academic staff at St Mary’s University, Twickenham have been awarded for their research during an annual conference and awards ceremony. Research at St Mary’s has developed rapidly in the past few years and the fourth annual Research Students Conference, which was held on Friday 11^th July, provided an opportunity for students and staff to present and discuss their research ideas in a friendly and supportive environment. The day culminated with an awards ceremony, which saw the University’s Vice-Chancellor (Designate) award prizes to staff and students. After presenting their work to a judging panel, Sport Science Lecturer Jessica Hill was named as winner of the Student Research category for her paper, ‘The variation in pressures exerted by commercially available compression garments’. The work aimed to identify the levels of compression pressure exerted by commercially available compression garments and concluded that a large number of individuals may not be experiencing an adequate compression pressure from compression garments. Elizabeth Bent was also Highly Commended for her research, ‘Surface studies of conventional glass-ionomer cements’, which aimed to measure surface composition of glass-ionomer cements and ascertain how the application of surface treatments affect the physical properties of it. St Mary’s Director of Academic Affairs Prof Lesley Haig said, “We are delighted to provide an opportunity for a vibrant group of St Mary’s researchers to come together to share and develop knowledge across a range of disciplines. The standard of the research student presentation has been excellent this year, and the vitality and dedication of our students is clear to all attendees.” During the celebration event, two staff prizes were also awarded, with the Early Career Researcher Title awarded to History Lecturer Dr Eugenia Russell with her book, Literature and Culture in Late Byzantine Thessalonica (Bloomsbury, 2013). The publication is the only book that deals with the early modern city in the English language and sets out the political and commercial landscape of Thessalonica between 1303 and 1430. St Mary’s Academic Director Dr Glenn Richardson was named as winner of the Experience Researcher category with his publication, The Field of Cloth of Gold (Yale University Press, 2013), which describes and explains a meeting between King Henry VIII of England and King Francis I of France that took place near Calais in June 1520. The book, which has been well received in the national press, explains the reasons for the meeting, considers the major logistical effort required to assemble the 12,000 guests and recounts its series of tournaments, banquets and festivities which astonished the rest of Europe. Lecturer Dr Nicola Brown also received the Experienced Researcher Highly Commended prize for her work, ‘The experience of breast pain (mastalgia) in female runners of the 2012 London Marathon and its effect on exercise behaviour’. The large-scale study of 1,285 female marathon runners, which was conducted with the University of Portsmouth’s Research Group in Breast Health, found that a third of women experienced breast pain and was found to be related to breast size which had previously been unreported. St Mary’s Vice-Chancellor (designate) Francis Campbell, who presented the awards said, “Research at St Mary’s has developed apace over recent years and we are fully committed to supporting and strengthening the research community at the institution. Research is simply a vital element of University life.”