Dr Josie Gill, Associate Professor in Black British Writing from the Department of English, Dr Bryan Bzdek, Proleptic Senior Lecturer from the School of Chemistry and Dr Anita Ganesan, Associate Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences are among 30 academics from across the UK who will each receive £100,000. 

Awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, Philip Leverhulme Prizes are designed to recognise and facilitate the work of outstanding research scholars of proven achievement, who have made and are continuing to make original and significant contributions to knowledge in their particular field. 

Dr Josie Gill’s research breaks new ground in combining the study of contemporary black and minority ethnic writing with an analysis of the relationship between the sciences and the humanities. 

At a time of protracted debate over the meaning and significance of race, her research offers an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to understanding how racial ideas form and circulate through scientific and literary narratives. 

Her prize-winning monograph Biofictions (2020) explored these intersections and has been described as an ‘outstanding study’, ‘lucidly written, and politically urgent’ and ‘a major contribution in the field’. 

Dr Gill’s interdisciplinary approach has led her to bring together a number of research teams. As Principal Investigator of the AHRC funded Literary Archaeology project, she led a team of archaeological scientists and creative writers to investigate how literature and bioarchaeological data, derived from the remains of enslaved people, might shape one another. 

More recently, the project Black Health and the Humanities (2020-22), funded by the Wellcome Trust, has created a national network of early career researchers, and considers the role of the humanities in illuminating black experiences of illness.  

This research focus has driven Dr Gill’s outstanding intellectual leadership at the University of Bristol. She co-founded and (for two years) directed the Centre for Black Humanities, which has built an international reputation for world-leading research around the artistic and intellectual work of people of African descent.   

Dr Gill said: “It is an honour to be recognised by the Leverhulme Trust in this way and I am very grateful to them for this very generous award. The funds will allow me to begin work on a new book about my experience of working in higher education, which I will bring into conversation with fictional and non-fictional writing about black people’s experiences of education in the UK.

“The book, entitled Black Lecturer, will connect personal reflection with literary, disciplinary and institutional analysis, bringing to light the ways in which black academics move through university life while exploring race in literary studies and the research cultures that characterise 21st century UK academia.” 

Dr Bryan Bzdek and his research group explore the physical and analytical chemistry of aerosols, with particular focus on major global challenges in atmospheric science and disease transmission. These expertise have proven vital during the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing climate crisis.

Dr Bzdek’s group has made pioneering contributions to identify the surface composition of microscopic droplets, furthering understanding of how cloud droplets form in the atmosphere.

They have also been at the forefront of characterising respiratory aerosols generated by singing, playing musical instruments, exercising, and performing medical procedures, which led directly to changes in UK Government Guidance during the pandemic as well as changes in NHS guidelines for aerosol generating medical procedures.

The prize funds will help the group advance an exciting collaborative project using a novel combination of unique aerosol and spectroscopy tools to explore light-induced chemistry in aerosols. Unravelling these processes is crucial to assessing aerosol climate and health impacts. Light-induced processes driving chemical and biological phenomena in aerosols have been largely ignored but can play key roles in pollutant transformation, reaction rates and products, as well as pathogen survival.

Dr Bzdek said: "I am thrilled to receive the Philip Leverhulme Prize, which will catalyse an exciting area of research for my group: exploring how light-induced reactions proceed in microscopic aerosols and how these reactions differ from those occurring in a beaker.

“Aerosols are central to our lives, representing the largest uncertainty in human-induced climate change estimates and an important contributor to air pollution. Chemical reactions can proceed differently in aerosols due to their tiny size. If we can understand what makes chemistry in aerosols unique, we may better understand how pollutants transform in our atmosphere."

Dr Anita Ganesan’s research employs the fusion of measurements and models to quantify sources and sinks of atmospheric gases. The atmosphere is composed of many trace substances, which, despite their very small abundances, influence Earth’s climate and the ozone layer. These trace components include greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, which have a complex mixture of natural and human sources, and human-made substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which also destroy stratospheric ozone.

Her research focuses on improving both experimental methods and numerical modelling with the goal of expanding measurements globally and advancing the methods needed for their interpretation.

Highlights from Dr Ganesan’s group include the development of a data assimilation method that better quantifies uncertainties in emissions. One notable example employing this methane was in the quantification of the emissions associated with new production of the globally banned CFC-11.

Dr Ganesan has also led the atmospheric methane community in assessing the next decade of targets in methane science, developed methods to use satellite data to quantify emissions at country-scale, and used atmospheric data to learn about emissions from the ocean. Currently, she focuses on developing new programmes to expand measurements in parts of the world where atmospheric gases are not well-observed.

Dr Ganesan said: “I am very grateful to Leverhulme for awarding me this prize. The funds will be used to expand our understanding of Arctic methane emissions, including piloting some new measurements in the region.

“One of my main research interests is in improving our understanding, through observations, of areas that are difficult to access and that we currently know little about.  This prize will help me to start making progress toward that goal.”