Catherine Jenkinson nominated for Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for the Breakthrough Researcher Award
Catherine Jenkinson has been shortlisted in the 2025 Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for the Breakthrough Researcher Award for ‘Transforming Heritage Research through Exemplary Collaborative Practice’. Judging panels from a number of University divisions and offices considered the 160 nominations across eleven award categories.
Catherine was nominated for her work as the postdoctoral Research Associate on the History Faculty’s John Fell-funded project ‘(Hi)stories of Violence: Myth-making, Imprisonment, and the Cultural Identity of the Tower of London’. The project (2024-5), led by Dr Hannah Skoda, is a partnership between Oxford’s History Faculty and Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) and the Royal Armouries (RA). The heritage sector co-investigators are Dr Alden Gregory (Curator of Historic Buildings, HRP), Dr Malcolm Mercer (Curator of Tower Armouries and Art, RA) and Emma Mawdsley (Senior Keeper, Keeper of the Tower Armouries, RA) with support from the research teams at the two partner organisations. The project belongs to a wider culture of collaboration between the Humanities Division, Historic Royal Palaces and the Royal Armouries, facilitated by Dr Rachel Delman in the Heritage Partnerships Team.
By investigating the Tower of London’s associations with violence – including torture and execution – in public memory, the project is considering the divide between historical evidence and the ways that histories of violence in the Tower have become a key element of public interest in the site, including for its millions of annual visitors. The project will help propel forward historical research on the Tower and may inform future visitor interpretation at the Tower, too.
Catherine was nominated for providing ‘an outstanding model of cross-sector, collaborative working to achieve significant impact at the University and beyond’. Catherine is the main researcher on this mutually beneficial project and played a significant role in its development.
‘(Hi)stories of Violence’ grew out of a TORCH Knowledge Exchange Fellowship on the history of torture and execution in the Tower. Led by Professor Steven Gunn, who continues to support the current project, the Knowledge Exchange Fellowship (2023-4) included a workshop at the Tower with key representatives from Oxford, Historic Royal Palaces, the Royal Armouries, and other heritage sector and research leaders to consider the difficulties of and best practices in responsibly presenting difficult histories of incarceration and torture to public audiences with diverse experiences and backgrounds. Catherine was also the researcher on that project, for which she produced a research toolkit for Tower curators on the history of torture and execution in the Tower and how that history has been presented to visitors over centuries. The toolkit will help inform future public programming and interpretation at the Tower.
Dr Alden Gregory and Dr Malcolm Mercer praised Catherine’s work, writing, ‘The quality of Catherine’s research, which has already influenced thinking on the ways both partner organisations tell the stories of the Tower of London to our audiences, is exceptional...There is no doubt in our minds that the strength of our relationship with the University of Oxford, which continues to grow, is in no small part thanks to Catherine’s naturally collaborative attitude, her innovative and high-quality research, and her positive and respectful engagement with all partners’.
In addition to her work on the (Hi)stories of Violence project, Catherine is also College Lecturer in History and Julian Schild Junior Research Fellow at Pembroke College.
In early 2024, she completed a DPhil in History at Lincoln College under the supervision of Professor Gunn. Her thesis, ‘Prisoners in the Tower of London, 1547-1625’, considered the use of the Tower as a prison in late-Tudor and early-Stuart England. Challenging a number of pre-conceived narratives about the history of the Tower, Catherine's thesis tracked the experiences of Tower prisoners and the Tower’s place in the early modern public sphere.
Award winners will be announced at a ceremony on 15 May.
