Peer Support Awards 2026

On Thursday, 23rd April 2026, our annual Peer Support Awards was held in Whitworth Hall. We were delighted to celebrate our wonderful Peer Mentors, PASS Leaders, and Student Coordinators, who have shown immense dedication and hard work this year, proving to be brilliant assets to the Peer Support community over the past year.  

After working hard over the past year, it was great to see so many of our staff and student volunteers gathering in Whitworth Hall to acknowledge and honour the achievements and success across the schemes.  

 
A lovely keynote speech delivered by Grace Hollingsworth, a current Student Coordinator and Peer Mentor in our BSc Education Peer Mentoring scheme, detailed the lessons she had learnt from Peer Support. Taking us through her journey in her scheme, she stated that "the experiences we gain not only from our successes but also from our failures teaches you skills no degree course could give you”, highlighting the impact her role in Peer Support had in developing skills in resilience and, by extension, confidence. 

That in mind, we received 98 fantastic nominations for the Outstanding Contribution Award this year, making it extremely difficult for our judging panel to pick the winners. Individuals were assessed on the following criteria: support, development, engagement, and fostering an inclusive community. Our nominees, similarly to Grace, have faced various challenges throughout the year that they creatively worked through to support students and nurture a thriving community. 

The Outstanding Contribution winners:  

Asha Parmar (Russian PASS) 

Eisya Sofea Binti Embran and Han Yan (Pharmacy International Student Experience Programme Peer Mentoring) 

Hanzila Hussain and Kayley Lam (Computer Science Year 2 PASS) 

Yafei Wang (Mathematics PASS) 

Sebastian Jones (Civil Engineering PASS) 

Nur Amni Fatini Binti Rizal, Xinyu Fan and Yichang Gong (Pharmacy International Student Experience Programme Peer Mentoring) 

Rufus Clark (Aerospace Engineering PASS) 

Salma Alkhaza’leh (Pharmacy PASS) 

Angus McCormack, Hrishikesh Pawar and Pornlapas Boonsermmit (Mechanical Engineering PASS) 

Samuel Schmidhalter-Jones (Mechanical Engineering PASS) 

Jiahui Nadia Tang and Yihan Chen (Art History and Cultural Practices Peer Mentoring) 

Emma Wilkinson and Fraser Moore (Aerospace Engineering PASS) 

Rozana Kandil and Yusra Rashid (Pharmacy PASS) 

Yufei Zhao (Pharmacy International Student Experience Programme Peer Mentoring) 

Andrew Gridley (Optometry PASS) 

  
In addition to our individual awards, we celebrated larger cohorts through the Outstanding Scheme Awards. This year, we had 39 high-quality applications over the five categories of Resilience, Innovator, Collaboration, Legacy and Community. We are delighted to announce the winners of the Outstanding Scheme Awards as follows:  

Resilience: Physics PASS (Runner-up: School of Biological Sciences PASS)  

Innovator: Pharmacy PASS (Runner-up: Mechanical Engineering PASS)  

Collaboration: Computer Science Year 2 PASS (Runner-up: Linguistics and English Language PASS) 

Legacy: Optometry PASS (Runner-up: Aerospace Engineering PASS)  

Community: Electrical and Electronic Engineering PASS (Runner-up: Russian PASS)  

Congratulations to our winners, and to all who have done their part this year to contribute to the success of Peer Support! Our programme would not be the same without you.