Dr Hazel Wilkinson, Public Engagement with Research Award winner 2016

Dr Hazel Wilkinson is postdoctoral researcher investigating the history of reading and writing habits in the 18th century. In collaboration with Dr Will Bowers at the University of Oxford, she has developed an online public platform, journallists.org, which allows readers to engage with instalments of periodicals, diaries, letters, and novels, on the anniversaries of the day on which they were originally published, written, or set. Adopting this engaged research methodology has allowed Dr Wilkinson to recreate an environment to study reading practices in the modern digital era. Her approach has allowed members of the public to actively participate in research with feedback from subscribers leading to the selection of new texts and providing content for research articles. On a broader level she has also inspired thousands of readers to engage with under-read 18th and 19th century texts, often for the very first time.

To find out more about our Public Engagement with Research Awards visit our webpage. Entries for the 2017 Awards close on the 21 April 2017.