The Inclusive Impact Awards
The Inclusive Impact awards: where change becomes visible
Since 2022, the Inclusive Impact awards have been York's celebration of ideas and transformation in action. They are designed not just to recognise achievement but to inspire others to drive progress in their own communities.
From ground-breaking research that challenges inequity, to teaching practices that unlock potential in every student. From partnerships that extend beyond our university community, to everyday acts of allyship that reshape our values. Our inclusive impact awards illuminate our people and projects that are actively dismantling barriers and expanding possibilities. They demonstrate how anyone at the University can help to build a community without limits, where everyone can flourish.
In 2022, the inaugural awards launched the EDI Exchange; our ongoing conversation about the University we're building together. Now, each year, we gather not just to celebrate one another but to inspire one another to transform, through the ambitious, essential work of creating an institution where public good has inclusion at its heart.
2025 awards and nomination categories
Community without limits: celebrating our community builders
This year’s Inclusive Impact awards will celebrate the remarkable community builders amongst us: those who have transformed complexity into connection or uncertainty into opportunity. We will mark the individuals and teams who embody our values through action - not because they have all the answers, but because they have the courage to ask bold and innovative questions and the creativity to imagine new paths for themselves and others.
This year we are celebrating those who have helped to create a community without limits when it has mattered most. There are six award categories open to staff and students.
1. The Pathfinder Award: navigating uncharted territory
For those who have found new ways through difficult and turbulent situations. Whether revolutionising curriculum delivery amid constraints, reimagining research, transforming professional services, or creating student-led initiatives that bridge divides. This celebrates the courage to lead in different ways.
Recognises: staff, students, or teams who have transformed sector-wide challenges into opportunities for innovation across teaching, philanthropic research, operations, or student life.
2. The Weaver Award: connecting across boundaries
Celebrating those who have stitched together unlikely partnerships between disciplines, departments, students and staff, university and community. Creating collaborations that prove stronger than their individual threads, especially in challenging times.
Recognises: Cross-functional collaborations including academic-professional services, student-staff partnerships, philanthropic work and interdisciplinary teams that have worked together to drive progress.
3. The Alchemist Award: turning constraint into opportunities
For the enterprising and entrepreneurial thinkers who have done more with less during challenging times. For those who have identified creative solutions and, converted challenges into opportunities for innovation in teaching, research, student support, or service delivery.
Recognises: Individuals or teams who have demonstrated exceptional resourcefulness and creativity in sustaining excellence despite sector pressures.
4. The Lighthouse Award: illuminating public purpose
Celebrating those whose work defines public good, including research that serves communities in challenging times, teaching that equips students as changemakers, professional services that open doors to excluded groups and philanthropic or student societies that answer society's urgent calls.
Recognises: Initiatives demonstrating the University's role in public good and practical support during challenging times for communities locally and globally.
5. The Bridge Builder Award: spanning teaching-research-practice divides
Highlighting those who see beyond specialisms to collaborate for public good. From bringing research into classrooms, classroom insights into research, professional expertise into pedagogy, student voice into institutional practice, or academic knowledge into operational innovation.
Recognises: Work that demonstrates education is an ecosystem, not a hierarchy, acknowledging the interconnected value of all university roles.
6. The Phoenix Award: rising through unprecedented times
For those who have persevered and helped others through challenges and uncertainty. From supporting student mental health, to sustaining research programs through disruption, maintaining teaching excellence under pressure or keeping vital services running.
Recognises: Individuals, teams or student groups who have shown extraordinary care, adaptation, and strength in protecting community wellbeing during challenging times.
2025: accelerating our future
When we invest in inclusion, we invest in excellence. When we remove limits, we unleash potential. When we build community, we build a University for Public Good. This is our story. This is our strategy. This is York
Our 2025 inclusive impact awards stand at a powerful intersection. We celebrate those who came before us and our recent milestone of being named Community University of the Year 2025. But importantly we celebrate the changemakers among us right now and we take inspiration for a future where a community without limits isn't an aspiration, it's our lived reality at York.
We would love you to join us and take part. Take a look at our highlight reel from previous years to see what you can expect.