Humanities colleagues recognised in first Partnership Excellence Awards
16 Oct 2026
Two Faculty of Humanities colleagues have been recognised by the University’s inaugural Partnership Excellence Awards, which celebrate outstanding partnership working and knowledge exchange that create meaningful impact.
At the awards ceremony, held at the Whitworth Art Gallery on Wednesday 7 October as part of the University’s Innovation Festival, One World Together and Nicola Banks, Professor of Global Development, received the Social Enterprise Excellence award, while SALC Postdoctoral Researcher Dr Milo Harries was named Business Partnership Rising Star.
Based in the Global Development Institute (GDI) in SEED, Nicola co-founded One World Together, which emerged from University research and now operates as an independent social enterprise. Its partnership with the University combines community impact with investment in the next generation of changemakers.
Together, the University and One World Together have secured £217,000 of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding to co-develop changemaking education with secondary schools across Greater Manchester. The partnership has also given three cohorts of GDI students opportunities to build skills and experience while contributing to meaningful change, and strengthened SEED’s extracurricular Changemakers programme.
Alongside this work, One World Together has channelled more than £24,000 in flexible funding to community-led organisations in the UK, Kenya and Zambia.
Milo was recognised for his contribution to two successive knowledge exchange projects supporting Leeds City Council and the Aire Resilience Company. As a Research and Innovation Associate and later a secondee, he applied arts-based listening, storytelling and participatory methods to an innovative public-private climate-resilience initiative.
His work supported the development of alternative, arts-based approaches to public engagement and led to Inundated, a performance piece used by Leeds City Council to galvanise engagement in the case for business investment in natural flood management.
Milo went on to convene many more events, with the activity contributing to the Aire Resilience Company reaching £225,000 in annual revenue and becoming established as a community interest company.
Pictured above, left to right: Laura Dempsey, Head of Individual Giving at One World Together; Skyler Colarusso, One World Together Operations Manager and Manchester PhD student; Nicola Banks; Julian Skyrme, Awards judge and Director of Social Responsibility; Milo Harries; Lee Pugalis, Interim Director of the Masood Entrepreneurship Centre.