Dr Alice Twomey
CBCS postdoctoral research fellow
CBCS postdoctoral research fellow Dr Alice Twomey has been recognised with the prestigious UQ Faculty of Science Award for Excellence for her service in advancing inclusivity and promoting diversity across the research community.
The Awards for Excellence celebrate the achievements of staff whose leadership and service reflect the University’s core values. These awards are open to all staff, regardless of their position, and aim to highlight the behaviours and contributions of staff that help shape UQ’s culture and its future.
Image credit: Supplied.
Vision is rewarded
Alice’s award recognises her transformative leadership of the Centre for Marine Science Early and Mid-Career Researcher (EMCR) Committee, which she revitalised after stepping into the role of chair in late 2023. She reinvigorated the committee by creating new terms of reference, securing formal status and ensuring that current and future members receive official recognition for their contributions.
For example, Alice incorporated within the new EMCR committee terms of reference a clause that stipulated the need for gender parity of its membership, prompting a broader shift toward more inclusive, equitable and representative governance. Her vision for the EMCR community has created substantial structural improvements and set a great precedent for the future of this committee.
“I was really excited when I was announced as the winner,” she said. “But also very curious, as I didn’t know what I’d been nominated for! When my nomination citation was read, I was humbled because I was being acknowledged for work I’d done that was really important to me that I thought had gone unnoticed.”
Image credit: UQ Communications.
Embodying UQ values
Alice also undertook extensive engagement with EMCRs to better identify key barriers to participation, such as policy and procedural complexity, episodic funding and lack of recognition. Her collaborative and forward-thinking leadership has created lasting structural improvements and set the stage for stronger engagement across the EMCR community. Alice’s selfless advocacy and dedication to her peers exemplify UQ’s values of integrity, courage, respect and inclusivity, and underscore her excellence in service to the UQ community.
“I'm most proud that serving on committees at UQ has led to tangible positive change. As an ECR, I had assumed I was not senior enough to enact change, but I'm quite stubborn and I persevered. I recently gave a talk on how to overcome career challenges for transdisciplinary ECRs at a CBCS Tuesday seminar which has since sparked many conversations by others who experience these challenges. I want to try and bring some of these solutions into UQ's frameworks”, Alice says.
When asked what advice Alice would give to other ECRs looking to drive similar change in their respective institutions, she advises others to “give it a go and persevere and ask around to find someone who might be able to help you! After all, ‘to do good, you have to actually do something’, a quote by Yvon Chouinard. If you want something to change, first we should simply try asking for it”.
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