Supervision award won by CBR director Professor Simon Deakin

The Student-Led Teaching Awards exist to reward outstanding teaching and student support across Cambridge. This year, the Cambridge SU received just under 400 nominations. The shortlist and winners were decided by a panel of students. The CBR’s Director, Simon Deakin, was awarded the prize in the Postgraduate Research Supervisor category.

It has been CBR policy since its inception in the early 1990s to support doctoral research and mentoring for early career researchers working in the Centre, most of whom take up a CBR position shortly after completing their PhD. In his time in the Centre Simon has supervised over 30 doctoral students and has mentored a similar number of postdocs. His experience reflects that of many members of the CBR, in various capacities. When Simon joined the Centre he had not long before finished his own PhD under the supervision of Frank Wilkinson.

Although the Centre is not a teaching department and does not admit doctoral students in its own right, many doctoral projects over the years have been closely related to CBR research, and numerous PhD students have combined research on their thesis with working part-time as CBR research assistants and fellows.

On receiving his prize at the Student-Led Teaching Awards Ceremony, held in St Barnabas’ Church on 16 May 2023, Simon emphasised the importance of kindness, support, community and mentorship in making academia a better space, especially for young researchers.

Simon was nominated for the award by a number of his current doctoral students, including Bhumika Billa and Zhenbin Zuo (pictured). Bhumika is a CBR researcher working on projects concerned with the digitalisation of law and work, and Zhenbin, who is also working on themes connected to law and digitalisation, is a CBR research associate and newly appointed Lecturer in Law at the University of Essex.