PPIE Award Winner 2024: Prof Sheena Cruickshank
In this blog series we will be featuring our award winners and highly commended recipients from the Faculty’s ‘Outstanding Contribution to PPIE’ awards. Showcasing the inspirational and outstanding commitment to PPIE that has made a positive difference to our community and highlighting the amazing events, activities, people and groups from across the Faculty.
Our next blog in this series will feature Professor Sheena Cruickshank, winner in this year’s special bicentenary category and the individual (staff) category, for her longstanding commitment to public engagement and recent collaboration with Ardwick Climate Action, respectively.
As the University’s first and only Academic Lead for Public Engagement with Research, Sheena has been instrumental in shaping the University’s approach to engaging with the public. Under her leadership, the University has developed and implemented an institutional framework for public engagement, aligning it with other key strategies and driving cultural change, earning the University a Platinum Award from the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) in 2023, shared by only two universities nationwide.
With her own research focusing on immunology, Sheena dedicates substantial time an effort to tackling misinformation, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her outreach activities span a wide array of platforms, including media appearances, social media, podcasts, citizen science initiatives, exhibitions, and public lectures. She is also a member of the Independent SAGE advisory group, which provided informed scientific perspectives during the pandemic.
Her online articles have reached over one million readers, and her impactful writing has been celebrated, most notably with the Dr. Katharine Giles Award for ‘Best Popular Article’ by the Association of British Science Writers. Her award-winning article, “Inflammation: the key factor that explains vulnerability to severe Covid,” published in The Conversation in August 2020, has garnered approximately 260,000 views and has been widely republished and cited.
Sheena has supported work towards new approaches to partnerships and deliberative listening through our Greater Manchester Universities’ Citizens’ Panel. The panel brings together 50 diverse members of the local community to share their input and advise on how the five civic universities in Greater Manchester can best shape their activities to prioritise the needs of local citizens.
Sheena’s award in the individual (staff) category recognizes her six-year collaboration with Ardwick Climate Action. Greater Manchester has amongst the worst air quality in the UK, a significant concern in regions such as Ardwick bordered by major roads like the A6 and the Mancunian Way. The participatory research project began with consultation workshops, where residents voiced concerns about pollution and its impact on their physical activity and health. Sheena led participatory mapping exercises, working 69 residents to plot their regular journeys and highlight danger spots. This, combined with pollution monitoring and site visits, revealed key problem areas and informed the development of a green walking route.
Launched in April 2024, the route is marked by interactive wayfinders designed by a commissioned artist, providing residents with a safer, less polluted path through their neighbourhood. Since its launch, residents expressed their emotional response to seeing the wayfinders and the sense of community empowerment that the project fostered. The findings have been shared with local authorities, including the council, MPs, and the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, to advocate for further improvements, such as additional pedestrian crossings.
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