Dr Tim Thurston chosen for prominent funding programme

Dr Tim Thurston and two other Leeds researchers working at the cutting edge of their disciplines have received prestigious national awards.

Dr Viktoria Spaiser, Dr Tim Thurston and Dr Rene Frank have been awarded Future Leaders Fellowships from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The Government-backed scheme, created in 2018, is designed to promote ambitious and challenging research and innovative work by some of the UK’s brightest academic and business minds.

The investment will enable the recipients to more rapidly progress their work tackling global problems by funding essential equipment for researchers’ salaries.

Dr Thurston, in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, is carrying out research for The Tibetan Sustainable Heritage Initiative, which forwards cultural sustainability as a new way of working collaboratively with communities to document and revitalise cultures and knowledge systems.

Leading an international team of collaborators, Tim will conduct the first large-scale investigation of cultural sustainability in an authoritarian context in hopes of developing new methods for supporting vital futures for indigenous and minoritised cultures around the globe.

He said:

I’m thrilled to have received this fellowship, and for the opportunity it provides to develop equitable and collaborative methods for working with Tibetan and other minoritised communities to support continued practice and transmission of threatened traditions.

The three academics take the total number of Future Leaders Fellowships recipients at Leeds to 16.