PPLS graduate wins Sir William Darling Memorial Prize

During her time at University of Edinburgh, Grace made the institution a better place for working-class and state-educated students thanks to her unwavering commitment to social justice and improving access to education.

Grace is often best known for her role as the president of the 93% Club Edinburgh – a society that represents the interests of State School educated students. In this role, she actively campaigned on issues such as the cost-of-living crisis, the representation of Widening Participation (WP) students, and accent bias and linguistic discrimination. 

Alongside these activities, Grace also was involved in the following initiatives:

• Widening Participation Liberation Officer: Grace and her society successfully campaigned EUSA to introduce a new ‘Widening Participation Liberation Officer’. This officer will be responsible for advocating for WP students at the University from 2025 onwards.
• Cost-of-living support: Grace tirelessly campaigned for cost-of-living support for working-class and other students at the University of Edinburgh and acted as an intermediatory between the University and students.
• Student representative: Grace was a Student Representative for Philosophy for three years and a College EDI Representative. Among her achievements, she has enhanced the student voice in PPLS, particularly by amplifying WP perspectives.
• Accessiball: Grace led two successful ‘Accessiballs’ – an end of year university ball aimed to be ‘accessible’ to all students regardless of 
  socioeonomic background. The ball raised over £3000 for the Edinburgh Food Project. 

Grace did all of this work voluntarily, working out of a pure passion for tackling social injustice. She has offered to help facilitate future sessions and is still actively campaigning on these issues via the social media of the society. 

Well done Grace, we are so proud of you and can’t wait to see what you do next.