The 2025 cohort of WIN Ambassadors have now started in their roles. This year we have three Ambassador schemes: Engagement, Open Science, and the brand new Equality, Diversity & Inclusion scheme.
Congratulations to all the new Ambassadors: Boluwatife Cole, Simon Finney, Alex Fung, Grace Gillis, Jake Turnbull, and Yiming Wei (Engagement);
Kirralise Hansford, Yifan Yang, Tara Ghafari and Seamus O'Sullivan (Open Science);
and Joana Pinto, Jason Tian Lyu, David Parker, Juju Fars, and Christine Ahrends (EDI)!
You can learn more about each scheme and the individual Ambassadors here.
The incoming and outgoing WIN Ambassadors came together on Wednesday 29th January to celebrate the achievements of those on the programme and learn from each other.
Past and present Engagement, Open Science and EDI Ambassadors were joined by members of the other ambassadors’ schemes that are supported by WIN: the Department of Experimental Psychology Engagement Ambassadors, the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences Engagement Ambassadors and the University-wide Sports Engagement Ambassadors.
The event, held at Wolfson College, started with a welcome from WIN Director, Heidi Johansen-Berg, followed by introductions to each of the programmes by their leads. The attendees then moved to different rooms in the college for parallel sessions.
The Engagement Ambassadors got to know each other through structured paired chats and in small groups discussed the audiences they were looking to engage with, before hearing from José Rojas Alvarado from Oxford Policy Engagement Network (OPEN) and Polly Kerr from the Patient and Public Involvement Staff Leads Network.
The Open Science Ambassadors heard from Sarah Humphreys and Jason Partridge from the Bodleian Libraries about open science practices within the university. They then asked questions of a panel of senior WIN and University staff about the current state of open science at WIN.
The EDI Ambassador session opened with a panel discussion with WIN members who had contributed to EDI projects over the past few years, and then ambassadors spent time developing ideas for new projects to work on over the coming year.
At the end of the afternoon all streams came together for a plenary session of flash talks from past ambassadors and those working to improve research culture. Karla Miller, WIN Associate Director, then encouraged all ambassadors to stay innovative and creative as they work to deliver a positive change to research culture.
The celebration dinner that followed was a chance to thank the ambassadors for their past and future work on the programmes.
Thanks to all the Ambassador Programme team: Bernd Taschler, Iske Bakker, Sana Suri, Ellie Higginbotham, Carinne Piekema and especially Hanna Smyth, for organising the event.