The winners of a new competition organised by Liverpool Hope University’s Centre for Education and Policy Analysis (CEPA) have been announced.
The Centre for Education and Policy Analysis (CEPA) supports and enhances research activities within the areas of educational research, policy, and practice at the University.
In June CEPA asked postgraduate students to submit a ‘Policy Brief’ based on their research, focusing particularly on education and/or social policy.
And now the winners of the CEPA Policy Brief competition have been unveiled, with first prize - and a free iPad Mini worth £300 - awarded to Kathryn Fusco, who is studying for a Masters in Education.
Kathryn’s policy brief was titled, ‘The Dissolution of citizenship education as a separate subject in secondary schools’.
It tackled the thorny issue of citizenship, and how educating children about it needs to be incorporated into traditional subject areas - not taught as a separate entity - in order to deal with the subject in a more substantive way.
Meanwhile the runner-up prize - and £100 to be used towards research support - was awarded to Savandie Abeyratna, a PhD candidate studying Social Work and Social Policy.
Savandie’s brief, ‘Imagining the post-Covid world: Building safe, resilient and sustainable communities in Sri Lanka’, was presented as a YouTube video, which you can watch here.
She said: “I am extremely grateful for the CEPA competition as it has enabled the development of my creative communication skills.
“This competition has also motivated me in my PhD journey so far and now also enabled me to apply it in my work on the ground.”
Savandie is using her CEPA prize to organise a public engagement competition in Sri Lanka focused on waste management, with an aim to identify and develop the hidden human resources in the local community.
Dr Catherine O’Connell is a Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at Hope, Co-director of CEPA, and organiser of the competition.
Speaking about the ethos of the project, she explained: “This CEPA competition encourages postgraduate students to develop their public engagement skills.
“Writing a policy brief can help build an audience for the research and identify potential research partners.
“Depending on the stage of research, the purpose of the brief can be to highlight a research need or identify policy implications related to the research.
“Policy briefs can be addressed to a variety of policy actors - for example, to policy makers or to broader communities affected by current policies.
“And the Judges were impressed by these entries in the way students articulated the policy relevance of the research in a compelling way, identified a clear target audience and presented robust research evidence.”
The CEPA awards have been running for three years, and will be repeated again in 2021.
For more information about CEPA, head here.