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School of Environment, Education and Development

Nominate a colleague for a Distinguished Achievement Award

05 Oct 2026

We are now accepting nominations for the President’s Distinguished Achievement Awards 2027 – your opportunity to recognise colleagues and teams whose work is helping us deliver our Manchester 2035 ambitions.

Do you know a colleague or team who has made an outstanding contribution to our University? Are they always willing to put in whatever it takes to get a job done? Or do they always provide an excellent service or go out of their way to help someone or to solve a problem?

This is your opportunity to recognise their efforts by putting them forward for a President’s Distinguished Achievement Award 2027. The Awards are the University’s most prestigious internal honours, recognising the outstanding contributions of colleagues, students and teams across the University. Nominations for all except the ‘General’ category are co-ordinated locally by the Faculty of Humanities. Full information about eligibility and how to make a nomination are shared with colleagues through their departments, divisions and teams.

Academic and student awards

  • Teacher of the Year – nominations close on Friday 8 January 2027.
  • Researcher of the Year – nominations close on Friday 8 January 2027.
  • Undergraduate Student of the Year – nominations close on Friday 8 January 2027.
  • Postgraduate Taught Student of the Year – nominations close on Friday 30 October 2026.
  • Postgraduate Researcher of the Year – the Faculty of Humanities Doctoral Academy will share details with postgraduate researchers and academic colleagues. The nomination deadline will be confirmed in due course.

Professional services and cultural institutions awards

There are three PS and cultural institutions awards – for individuals, small teams of up to 12 people, and large teams of 13 or more.

  • All Humanities nominations for PS and cultural institutions Individual of the Year, Small Team of the Year and Large Team of the Year close on Friday 22 January 2027.

Following the relevant deadline, nominations will be considered through the Faculty’s agreed processes before selected nominations are put forward to the President’s Office.

General category awards

The General category is to be used only on very rare occasions when the other categories of awards are not appropriate. In such cases a member of staff, a student, lay member of the Board of Governors or close affiliate of the University can be nominated.The General category is designed to recognise sustained and/or exceptional service to the University which is over and above what it normally expected of someone as part of their job, role or course.

Nominations for the General category can be submitted at any time of year but those received by Friday 5 February 2027 will be considered for the main 2027 Awards presentation. Guidance on the general category is available on StaffNet.

The President and Vice-Chancellor will present the awards at a ceremony in Whitworth Hall on Thursday 1 July 2027.

For further information

For questions about the academic, student, PS and cultural institutions nominations process, please contact Faculty of Humanities Business Support Manager, Victoria Roberts, on victoria.roberts-2@manchester.ac.uk.

For questions about the General category nominations process, please contact Secretary of the Awards and Honours Group, Deborah Black, on deborah.black@manchester.ac.uk