2024 Phillips Award: Dr Rebecca Dewey

After years volunteering with the East Midlands Branch, Dr Rebecca Dewey has just completed a four-year term of office as branch chair (ending October 2023). Dewey demonstrated an overwhelming commitment to the work and values of the Institute of Physics (IOP), devoting significant time and effort to IOP activities. She worked strategically, and continues to collaborate, in promoting the I am a Physicist Girlguiding Badge, engaging with IOP members UK-wide to assemble a network of Badge advocates, furthering the vision of the IOP. 

During lockdown, Dewey led in creating online activities and resources to continue delivering Badge activities through showcasing women physicists and engaging in a real-time, safeguarded online environment, with girls UK-wide completing the Badge. Following this, Dewey led activities to update the Badge syllabus, providing activities that were more environmentally friendly, vegan friendly, low-allergen, and economically accessible. She then published the new version of the Badge syllabus in the Welsh language, engaging with another hard-to-reach and often underserved group. The delivery of the Badge to girls aged 5–18 in an all-girls environment continues to make a tangible difference to the way they connect with physics. The Badge has now been completed by nearly 50,000 girls. 

Dewey instigated a new standard of making branch talks accessible to British Sign Language (BSL) users by providing BSL interpretation. When branch talks were moved online during lockdown, she continued to implement this new standard, resulting in many feature talks providing BSL interpretation, creating a lasting and sustainable contribution to the IOP’s engagement with the deaf community. This represents a significant impact on the accessibility of IOP activities. Dewey initiated a collaboration to produce materials to support teaching physics to BSL users, working with BSL users and teachers of physics to establish what is needed and how to create it.

Taken together, these activities around Girlguiding, Welsh speakers and BSL users demonstrate Dewey’s dedication to equality, diversity and inclusion. She was proud to promote these endeavours by presenting strategic talks at the 2023 Celebration of Physics, the culmination of her IOP influence to date. Dewey personally delivered and coordinated IOP outreach activities throughout the East Midlands, including those delivered to school-aged students, undergraduate and postgraduate university students, industrial collaborators, and the public. Further, she has gone above and beyond in support of her team, mentoring and developing members of the branch committee. This resulted in a successful four-year term as branch chair, spanning the entirety of the pandemic, while still expanding and diversifying the committee.