Announcing the winners of our 2020 awards!
Read about the three award winners here
All nominees for our 2020 scicomm awards
In recent years the BOU has been at the forefront of promoting science communication within ornithology. We champion the use of social media for promoting and discussing research, and #theBOUblog is one of the most-read avian science blogs.
Following the success of our inaugural 2019 Science Communication Awards we’re again looking to award the best ornithological communicators from 2020.
Following an open call for nominations, the following individuals have been short-listed by our specialist scicomm panel to go to a public vote for each award category.
This year’s nominees are . . .
Best of #theBOUblog in 2020 award
Quiet please, I need to sing
House Wrens reduce repertoire size in noisy sites
View article
Roselvy Juárez @RoselvyJuarez & Luis Sandoval
Escuela de Biología, Universidad de Costa Rica, Costa Rica
Daily life of an urban gull
Do gulls adapt their foraging schedule to humans?
View article
Anouk Spelt @AnoukSpelt
Aerospace Engineering Department, University of Bristol, UK
Oh my Godwit, they are indeed different!
An observation of different sized Black-tailed Godwits led to the confirmation of their sub-speciation
View article
Bingrun Zhu @DrewBingrun
Beijing Normal University, China & University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Voting closes 0900 UTC, Monday 1 March 2021
Best social media scicomm award
Laure Cauchard
@CauchardLaure on Twitter
Laure is a Marie-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the University of Aberdeen, UK.
She is an evolutionary and behavioural ecologist interested in animal cognition/life-history traits.
Using Twitter, Laure employs a mix of engaging and accessible animation and real life videos of her study species. Although the infographics are impressive, they are relatively simple in design but very effective in communicating her research on mutliple levels.
Emily S Choy
@Emily_S_Choy on Twitter
Emily is a Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University and Environment and Climate Change Canada and her interests include the response of long-lived marine predators to Arctic change.
Emily uses a great mix of formats to convey her research and combining Twitter threads and video presentations. Her ‘from the field’ videos, with a real sense of ‘location’, make her subject matter engaging. Setting up her own Twitter hashtag to curate her scicomm also shows great initiative and thought for the science she communicates.
Merlyn Nomsa Nkomo
@merynomsa on Twitter
Merlyn is a Conservation Biology masters student at the university of Cape Town, South Africa. She is an ornithologist, and feels at home in the wild with a pair of binoculars.
Merlyn employs a great mix of single tweets and threads to engage her audience. The panel particularly liked Merlyn’s vsiual story-telling mixed with research and a strong call for conservation of vultures and eagles. She is passionate about communicating her research but also those she works with and promotes others’ research beyond her own MSc project.
Voting closes 0900 UTC, Monday 1 March 2021
Best sound and vision scicomm award
Rohan Chakravarty
Green Humour @thetoonguy on Twitter
Rohan’s cartoons bring humour to wildlife and science and frequently include birds. These brilliantly drawn cartoons give little snapshots into birds’ lives, ecology and threats.
View Example 1 | Example 2 | Example 3
Amy Hall
@AmyHallWild on Twitter
Amy’s 60 Second Zoology series of videos has been nominated, in particular her episodes on birds covering the colouration of seabirds, avian respiration and the uropygial gland. These bite-sized chunks of ornithological science are not only brilliantly executed using video and engaging graphics, but are hugely educational.
View videos (links through to YouTube)
Voting closes 0900 UTC, Monday 1 March 2021
Graphics by Freepik.com