Earlier this year, King’s celebrated academics making a difference in communities at the King’s Engaged Research Awards.
The awards recognise projects of all sizes that have communicated research to the public and have made a positive impact on people’s lives.
We spoke to two award winners, Dr Kathryn Bates, for her work upskilling young people and myth busting in science through a podcast, and Professor Gonda Van Steen, for work in restoring birth citizenship to Greek adoptees.
Though they work in different fields, Gonda and Kathryn’s work shows that positive impact that research can have locally and globally.
Dr Kathryn Bates: Working with young people to unpack the science behind the headlines
Dr Kathryn Bates won the National award for building a platform to talk about youth mental health and challenging how science is communicated beyond academia.
The idea for ‘The Science or Fiction Podcast,’ first emerged during her PhD. Growing up without much engagement in science, she recalls how studying psychology as an undergraduate “opened up a whole world of information” that she hadn’t previously had access to, particularly around mental health.
But it was during her doctoral research that she became increasingly frustrated by sensationalist headlines making sweeping claims unsupported by scientific evidence. “It’s all information that’s so relevant to the way we live our lives,but the nuance gets lost.”
The podcast became her response: a space to unpack the science behind the headlines and to share knowledge she felt was too often confined to academic circles. “I felt like it was my job and responsibility to share that information outside of the bubble of academia.” Her episodes have covered mental health topics such as youth loneliness, climate anxiety, and social media, centring youth experiences in every session.
Addtionally, Kathryn’s research into how children visualise information when learning sparked a further commitment to real-world application. Working closely with teachers and schools, she delivered sessions on neuroscience and learning while collecting data. “I always felt like what I was doing should be connected to what was going on in the classroom.” Her commitment to exchange, rather than one-way dissemination, would shape the podcast’s ethos.
From the outset, young people have been integral to shaping the direction and formulation of the podcast. With initial support from a King’s public engagement grant, Kathryn funded a youth consultant – a young person who was interested in taking a hands-on role in co-designing the project.
Together, they decided on the format and style, and conducted focus groups to identify which topics in youth mental health mattered most. What emerged challenged her assumptions. “With my scientist hat on, what I thought was important was quite different to what young people actually wanted to hear about.”
This collaborative model has driven the podcast’s national reach. Kathryn is committed to amplifying a diverse range of voices – young people are recruited from across the UK, no matter their educational or professional experience. We’ve had A-level students from Manchester”, she shares, while also having collaborated with experts in specific mental health topics from up and down the country. Moreover, everything is conducted online, from focus groups to podcast recordings; while this sacrifices some in-person interaction, it breaks down barriers to participation, allowing anyone from anywhere in the country to get involved.
For Kathryn, one of the strongest impacts she feels the podcast has is its impact on the young people involved, who are paid for their contributions, and trained as producers and content creators.
“One of the first youth advisors I worked with was during her undergrad, and she went on to produce our live podcast recording event, sitting on the panel with me and interviewing people in front of a live audience.
“I think that’s the big impact, being able to ensure that young people themselves who are interested in or have experienced mental health issues can own and direct the content, and feel confident in that space, rather than feel like academics are talking at them.
“They’re in control, and can ask the questions that they want to ask and can investigate what’s happening.” In doing so, Kathryn’s work reshapes not only how research is shared, but who gets to shape the conversation.
Dr. Gonda Van Steen: restoring citizenship to Greek adoptees
A Global Category Award winner, Professor Gonda Van Steen, Koraes Chair in Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King’s, has transformed a largely undocumented chapter of post-war history into a change in the law in Greece.
Between 1950 and 1975, over 4,000 Greek-born children were adopted to the United States when widespread poverty, the social stigma faced by unmarried mothers, and political repression against families accused of communist sympathies led many children to be placed in institutions and later adopted abroad. For decades, this movement remained under-researched and overlooked.
Through the ‘Nostos’ campaign, meaning ‘homecoming’ in Ancient Greek, Gonda supported this grassroots campaign with sustained advocacy, Gonda’s work contributed to an amendment in Greek law last year, creating a pathway for adoptees to restore their birth citizenship — with the first already reclaiming their nationality, reconnecting with family in Greece and restoring a piece of their cultural identity.
For many adoptees, this is not simply administrative reform. As Gonda explains, “Likeness and genetic material is not just whether your hair is curly or not. It’s very much also where your interest lies. It’s temperament, it’s attention span… It’s so much that otherwise remains unexplained.”
She adds that living without this knowledge can feel like “a very heavy burden… a piece of the puzzle” that remains missing. Citizenship restoration therefore represents more than paperwork; it is recognition, belonging, and a safety measure.
The research began unexpectedly. In 2013, Gonda received an email from a young man seeking help tracing his adopted relatives’ origins. She soon realised there was almost no academic research on the international adoption of Greek children.
With her background in Greek language and cultural history, she began interviewing adoptees, translating documents, and uncovering patterns within archival records. What started as a single enquiry evolved into an international campaign.
Crucially, this was never research conducted in isolation. Through the Nostos campaign, Gonda worked alongside adoptees and partners in Greece and the US, coordinating media engagement, policy papers, theatre productions, and meetings with political leaders. “I felt I couldn’t do it all on my own. I needed the right partners and then each one of us working towards our strengths.” That collective effort kept the issue in the spotlight and influenced legislative reform.
Gonda credits King’s for providing the platform and institutional support that made this work possible. Through funding and visibility, King’s enabled engaged research that connects scholarship with real-world change. Her work not only transformed the lives of Greek-born adoptees but also contributes to broader conversations about adoption, identity, and citizenship internationally.