We're delighted to announce that the Ten-Minute Book Club has been shortlisted for a Vice-Chancellor's Award. The initiative, led by Dr Alexandra Paddock and Professor Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, has been nominated in the Community Partnership category, which recognises colleagues who have partnered with others to make a positive difference locally, nationally or globally.
The Ten-Minute Book Club is a collaboration between TORCH, the Faculty of English, and LitHits, a free digital reading innovation in the Faculty of English at Oxford. The initiative uses curated short-form literature to remove some of the barriers to reading for pleasure, like difficulty in finding something engaging in a vast sea of choices, or simply not having enough time to read a full book. Ten-Minute Book Club also runs discussion events with teachers of English from across the UK.
There have been four seasons of the book club; you can explore them all on the English Faculty website.
Dr Paddock commented: “I’m delighted that we’ve been shortlisted for the Vice-Chancellor’s Awards! It has been so fulfilling to grow Ten-Minute Book Club from literally just an idea I had in lockdown based on my work with LitHits to a now multi-season platform with national reach to general readers and especially in schools, bringing together a great variety of expertise and passion from across the Faculty. It’s such a boost to have this contribution recognised, for everyone involved: the project is dependent on the hard work and creativity of so many!”
The Vice-Chancellor’s Awards recognise the achievements and celebrate the success of Oxford’s people. There were 250 award entries across the 11 categories, with 1,500 individuals included in the nominations.
The winners and highly commended nominees will be announced at a ceremony at the Sheldonian Theatre in May. All staff will be invited to a Vice-Chancellor's Awards showcase, taking place in May. Find out more on the awards webpage.
