Winner · Arts & Humanities Subject Award 2026
Matija Strlic
“Ancient Egyptian Mummified Bodies: Cross-Disciplinary Analysis of Their Smell”
The finalists
Ten universities. Ten projects. Ten academics.
Matija Strlic
Ancient Egyptian Mummified Bodies: Cross-Disciplinary Analysis of Their Smell
Honorary Professor of Heritage Science at UCL's Institute for Sustainable Heritage, Matija Strlic co-led a cross-disciplinary archaeological, chemical and sensory analysis of the smell of ancient Egyptian mummified bodies, with partners in Ljubljana, Cairo and Krakow, demonstrating the key role of olfactory information in the understanding and conservation of heritage collections as well as their communication through olfactory exhibitions.
Katrien Keune
Katrien Keune, Professor of Molecular Spectroscopy at the University of Amsterdam and Head of Science at the Rijksmuseum, co-led the multi-institution study that detected rare lead(II) formate in Rembrandt's Night Watch, mapping its distribution from macro to micro scale and deepening scientific understanding of how Old Master paintings age and degrade.
Fiona Fidler
Fiona Fidler, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science and Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, leads the repliCATS project, whose multi-institution PLOS ONE study showed structured expert elicitation can reliably predict which social and behavioural science claims will replicate, strengthening trust in published research.
Lene Mรธller Madsen
Challenging the idea of English as a single, fixed language, the work takes a spatial approach to the many Englishes at play in international higher education. By probing how English medium instruction has become a proxy for internationalisation outside Anglophone countries, the study illuminates what English actually means for the students and academics who live and work through it.
Kari ลahan
โEnglish-onlyโ English medium instruction: Mixed views in Thai and Vietnamese higher education
Drawing on questionnaires, interviews and focus groups with well over a thousand students and teachers across 17 universities in Thailand and Vietnam, the study examines how English medium instruction actually plays out in classrooms, including the role of students' first language. Its findings reveal differing attitudes among stakeholders and challenge 'English-only' policies imposed top-down without careful analysis of what learners and teachers need.
Daniel C. Mograbi
Self-awareness in Dementia: a Taxonomy of Processes, Overview of Findings, and Integrative Framework
Self-awareness is difficult to study, yet it matters a great deal in dementia care. Reviewing the field from a neurobiological perspective, this work sets out a taxonomy of self-awareness processes across levels of cognitive complexity, noting that capacities such as body ownership and agency are relatively preserved while autobiographical memory and emotional regulation are impaired.
Sabuj Kanti Mistry
People living with long-term chronic conditions often struggle to navigate complex health and social services, and social prescription offers a patient-centred route to non-clinical support. Through a rapid review of studies published between 2010 and 2023, the team mapped existing interventions and identified the opportunities and challenges of embedding them in primary healthcare settings.
Herman Cappelen
AI safety: a climb to Armageddon?
Provocative and rigorous, the work argues that certain AI safety measures may worsen existential risk rather than reduce it, under assumptions about the inevitability of AI failure and the link between a system's power and the harm when it fails. The study then examines three response strategies (Optimism, Mitigation and Holism) and the intrinsic challenges each faces.
Maanasa Mendu
Social prescription in the US: A pilot evaluation of Mass Cultural Council's โCultureRxโ
What if a doctor could prescribe a museum visit? This evaluation examines CultureRx in Massachusetts, described as the first United States model of arts on prescription and built as a partnership between 20 healthcare providers and 12 cultural organisations, reporting participant experiences, programme successes, barriers and recommendations for developing the approach further.
Michael D. Petraglia
No scientific evidence that Homo naledi buried their dead and produced rock art
When claims emerged that Homo naledi buried its dead and produced engravings, this commentary set out the case for caution. The authors argue that the evidence presented so far is not compelling enough, that natural and post-depositional processes have yet to be ruled out, and that responsible communication of such findings matters as much as the analysis itself.
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The 2026 Subject Awards have been decided.
Partners verify their data and feature their academics. Finalists were identified from open data; winners were decided by our editorial team and announced on 15 September 2026.
Explore partnership →The wider slate
The wider slate: more candidate partnerships behind the finalists.
Pride in foreign language learning: a conceptual framework and empirical evidence
Overcoming racism in the twin spheres of conservation science and practice
More than 10,000 pre-Columbian earthworks are still hidden throughout Amazonia
Genetic admixture and language shift in the medieval Volga-Oka interfluve
Systematic review of social prescribing and older adults: where to from here?
Using self-determination theory to understand the social prescribing process: a qualitative study
Resistance and Care in the Time of COVIDโ19: Archaeology in 2020