14 Nov 08

Dr William Whyte has been awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize for his work integrating architecture and the built environment into cultural and intellectual history.

Four Oxford academics have been awarded Philip Leverhulme Prizes. The annual prizes are awarded to outstanding young scholars who have made a substantial and recognised contribution to their particular field of study, are recognised at an international level, and whose future contributions are held to be of correspondingly high promise.

The broad fields of research covered by the 2008 awards were Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences; History of Art; Medieval, Early Modern, And Modern History; Mathematics and Statistics and Zoology. The winners from Oxford were among 27 academics who each received a £70,000 prize from the Leverhulme Trust.

Dr Rosalind Rickaby, from the Department of Earth Sciences and Hertford College, has been recognised as ‘one of the most dynamic and innovative of the new generation of scientists working on the topical and important field of palaeoclimatology’. The trust lists some of her recent innovations, including developing a new method to use the remains from one group of microscopic plankton to diagnose the concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide millions of years in the past.

Dr Hannah Smith, from St Hilda’s College and the History Faculty, also received a prize. The Leverhulme Trust described Dr Smith’s first book, 'Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture 1714-60', as ‘meticulously researched’ and said it ‘not only breathed new life into the history of the first two Georges by restoring them to their essential continental context, but also offered a cogent and persuasive challenge to recent theses about the nature of British identity and the idea of a Protestant monarchy in Britain’.

Also from the History Faculty, Dr William Whyte, a Fellow at St John’s College, was given an award for his work integrating architecture and the built environment into cultural and intellectual history. His work explores the relationship between architecture, education and social identities, with a particular focus on the architectural history of modern British universities, looking at why the buildings were built, how they were used and how these institutions developed, offering a new view of modern universities and modern Britain.

Dr Tommaso Pizzari is a member of the Department of Zoology and St Catherine’s College. The trust selected him for this prize because his work is at the forefront of research on sexual selection, investigating the behavioural strategies females use in mate choice, and the benefits they gain from being choosey, as well as the selection pressures acting on sperm and their evolutionary consequences.

The Prizes commemorate the contribution to the work of the Trust made by Philip Leverhulme, the Third Viscount Leverhulme and grandson of the Founder.

Professor Steward West, a 2006 Philip Leverhulme prizewinner for his pioneering research on the evolution of co-operative behaviour, is moving to Oxford University’s Department of Zoology.