Awards success for CRADLE PhD candidate!
4 April 2019
CRADLE is thrilled to announce that CRADLE PhD candidate Sarah Lambert has been awarded an Honourable Mention for Best Open Education Research Paper in the 2019 Fred Mulder GO-GN Awards for her important contribution to the open education literature, ‘Changing our (Dis)Course: A Distinctive Social Justice Aligned Definition of Open Education‘ 
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Awarded by the Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN), the Honourable Mention recognises the outstanding impact of Sarah’s paper, which addresses a significant gap in a field that’s short on theoretical and definitional underpinnings by offering a social justice-aligned definition of open education. As Sarah explains, “the paper critiques some of the long-standing misconceptions of technology for student equity.” Sarah will receive her award, including a monetary prize, at the opening night of the OER19 conference on 10 April in Galway, Ireland. The panel of four independent judges noted the exceptional quality of submissions to this year’s Awards, with only a few points separating the winning entries.
“This paper has opened many doors within the academic community of open education,” reflects Sarah. “I’m currently collaborating with some senior academics in South Africa, including the UNESCO Chair of Open Education and Social Justice, on editing a special edition of a journal devoted to the topic of open education and social justice.” As part of this collaboration, Sarah will be facilitating a writing workshop at OER19 with Prof. Laura Czerniewicz (University of Cape Town) and A/Prof. Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams (University of Cape Town), who was recently appointed UNESCO Chair of Open Education and Social Justice. The writing workshop aims to assist attendees in 
planning papers for submission to the open-access journal special edition which Sarah and Prof. Czerniewicz are co-editing, focusing on open education initiatives as social justice actions.
“While my PhD journey has had its moments, this kind of recognition and collaboration really gives me motivation to write that thesis and get it over the finish line,” Sarah says.
Congratulations Sarah, from everyone at CRADLE!
