Best Doctoral thesis prizes announced

16 November 2010

Six Bristol postgraduates have been awarded prizes for the exceptional quality of their research degree (Doctoral) theses, submitted during the academic year 2009/2010.

One prize winner was selected from each academic faculty by members of the Research Degrees Examination Board, which oversees the exam process for research awards. The successful graduates, listed below, each receive a cheque for £500 and a certificate of commendation.

The subjects covered by the winning theses range from the health needs of women who sell sex on the street and a detailed study of ways to improve the teaching of physics in schools to the development of Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang) rule on the disputed island of Taiwan.

The winners are:

Faculty of Arts: Tehyun Ma (Department of Historical Studies): ‘Total mobilization: Party, state and citizen on Taiwan under Chinese Nationalist rule, 1944-55’.

Faculty of Engineering: Alberto Politi (Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering): ‘Integrated Quantum Photonics’.

Faculty of Medical and Veterinary Sciences: Kara Van Aelst (School of Biochemistry): ‘A new Logic for Directional Long-range Communication on DNA’.

Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry: Nicola Jeal (School of Social and Community Medicine): ‘The Health Needs and Service Use of Women Selling Sex in Bristol’.

Faculty of Science: David Attewell (Department of Experimental Psychology): ‘The Natural Reflectance Signal and its Implications for Vision and Behaviour’.

Faculty of Social Sciences and Law: Lawrence Cattermole (Graduate School of Education): ‘Teachers, Students and Ideas Caught in the Tangled Webs of School Physics Knowledge’.

Full details and citations of these prize-winning theses are available in pdf format (PDF, 331kB).