Karin Seeber, an MA student in Garden History, has won the 2011 Garden History Society essay prize. She impressed the judges with her essay ‘Ye Making of ye Mount’ (on the Mount at New College, Oxford), for which she went back to original sources, re-examined and reinterpreted them, and discovered new pieces of information. The essay challenges accepted theories and presents a new interpretation of the New College Mount.

Sam Mathew Lynn, who graduated in Pathology and Microbiology at Bristol and is now enrolled on the graduate-entry medical course in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, has won an essay competition run by the Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine subject centre of the Higher Education Academy, a nationwide initiative supported by the four higher education funding councils in order to enhance the student learning experience.  His reflective essay, ‘The unknown patient’, describes his first experience of a cardiac arrest and the learning points that resulted.