Michael young prize

Runners-up

* Michael Naughton and Michelle Ryan were each awarded £500 towards the costs of undertaking communication with research users and the wider public. Dr Naughton lectures at Bristol University on criminal justice and miscarriages of justice. Dr Ryan is a Research Councils UK academic fellow at Exeter University researching the "glass cliff" as part of a wider European Union project.

Shortlisted

* Mike Aiken , visiting research fellow, Open University: organisational values of voluntary organisations, the co-operative advantage in mutual organisations, and a European investigation of UK social enterprises offering work for disadvantaged groups.

* Tracy Packiam Alloway , senior research psychologist, Durham University: how working memory affects learning.

* Gillian Chowns , qualified social worker, academic and researcher, Oxford Brookes University: supporting children before bereavement, and palliative care education.

* Robert Johns , politics lecturer, Strathclyde University: elections and voting in Britain, cognitive psychology and political behaviour.

* Alex Loftus , academic fellow, Royal Holloway, University of London: how people shape urban environments and the constraints on their ability to do so.