On Thursday 13th June, the first Welsh Crucible/Learned Society of Wales prize was awarded at the Welsh Crucible 2017 Lab 3 in Swansea.

Welsh Crucible is a Nesta based programme that supports research-inspired innovation and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Designed to introduce new ways of thinking and working to researchers who are already excelling in their fields, the objective is to create long-term changes in attitude and working practice, as well as encourage practical collaborations between participants. Now in its 6^th year, the programme has demonstrated how it continues to addresses the needs of Welsh universities to collectively grow future research leaders through research-inspired innovation and cross-institutional collaboration. See http://www.welshcrucible.org.uk/

In 2016, the LSW joined up with Welsh Crucible with Fellows contributing to both the selection of applicants and subsequent research projects. This year, Welsh Crucible and LSW set up a new prize for the best collaborative research project from Cruciblees over the past cohorts. This involved a strong group of applications from across the different years with applications being assessed by a panel of LSW fellows comprising a mixture of science and the humanities.

The winning project led by Dr Sofia Gameiro (School of Psychology, Cardiff University) and Dr Berit Bliesemann de Guevara (Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University),  was entitled “Using comics workshops to investigate and disseminate the infertility experiences of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) women in Wales”. The Thorns and Flowers project can be accessed here.