2021 Perse Rouse Awards winners announced
The winners of the 2021 Perse Rouse Awards have been praised for the excellence of their research projects.
The Rouse Awards programme is an internally-assessed independent research programme for Lower Sixth students in which subject specialist teachers help to guide their investigations.
Shortlisted entries were assessed by a panel featuring Perse Governor Professor Alex Oliver and other leading academics, including Professor Liz Harper, Dr Alex Loktionov (OP, 2011), Dr Fran Henson, Professor Wolfgang Emmerich and Dr Matthew Kenzie (OP, 2005), who came together in-person and online to decide on the winners.
This year’s four winners are:
• Charlie Toff (winner of the Essay Award) – Which Changes in Pre-hospital Patient Care Have Been Most Instrumental in Improving Survival Rates in The Afghanistan War?
• Lucy Collier (winner of the Artefact Award) – An exploration of the narrative style of Jane Austen.
• Elizabeth Follows (winner of the Essay Award) – What can be learned from the previous Indonesian transmigration programmes and how can this knowledge promote success in the 2020 scheme?
• Tom Davies (winner of the Artefact Award) – How can effective use of smart road studs reduce the risk of road traffic accidents in developing countries?
We were blown away were by the detailed research, eloquent writing and independent thinking apparent in all of the shortlisted projects
Dr Matthew Kenzie (2005), Rouse Awards judge
Speaking on behalf of the panel, Dr Kenzie felt the overall quality of all the finalists was very strong and made it difficult to choose the winner.
He said: “As we are every year, the judges were blown away were by the detailed research, eloquent writing and independent thinking apparent in all of the shortlisted projects.
“The panel found it extremely difficult this year even more than others, to pick out the prize-winning projects.
“It was a pleasure to be able to meet some of the candidates afterwards and we would like to wish them all the best in their future endeavours.”
On the winners, Dr Kenzie commented that Charlie’s essay “blended an interesting topic with clear scientific analysis to provide motivated and well-explained arguments to evidence its conclusions”, while Lucy’s work was “a beautifully written, intelligent and witty short story in the Austen style”.
He added that the panel found Elizabeth’s analysis “compelling” with “insights that went beyond the level of many projects of this type”, while Tom’s project was “an exceptional piece of engineering, which had a well-motivated real-life use case”.
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