UEA Journalism

Our Year 2 students recording poems from pupils at the Benjamin Britten Academy for the festival which is happening inLowestoft his weekend.

Our Year One student of the year 2026 has had numerous articles published with bylines in the EDP and the Ely Standard. He has also secured paid work rolling autocue for BBC Look East. He works hard and has shown flexibility – turning his hand successfully to all the tasks thrown at him and shows great potential. He was also nominated by a number of his classmates. They remarked on his attitude, attendance and determination. One described him as a ‘true inspiration’. His talent for finding and telling a story was obvious from his first TV report about a local judo coach who became a national champion. is pictured with Jake Humphrey. Photo by Zak Davies.

The Student of the Year Award is given to one person from each year who is professional, punctual, ambitious, organised, hard working, supportive, creative, skilful and a positive member of the team. All four winners have these skills and many more.

Our master's student of the year came to UEA determined to make their mark - and left her teachers exhausted by their sheer hard work, organisational skills and leadership. They knew they wanted to be an investigative journalist, worked and made contacts with The Times - getting a byline on day one of their work experience.

In their spare time, they decided to take on editorship and reframe and reboot UEA's student newspaper, Concrete. And if that weren't enough, they brought and organised The Student Publication Association's 2026 National Conference - known as SPANC - to the UEA, bringing together journalists of the future, workshops and panels.

Our master's student of the year is Emily Pitt-Shaw. pictured with Jake Humphreys. Photo by Zak Davies.

The prize for the most engaging speaker is awarded by our voice coach David Clayton. Every year David does a “What have you found in the news” ad lib exercise. It’s normally 5 minutes long. This is student went on for longer as he didn’t really want her to stop. She was worried she wouldn’t be able to think of the right words to use but ended up speaking at length and in moving detail about a dementia café and the care home she worked at. The winner of most engaging speaker is Layla Page. pictured with .clayton19 and Jake Humphrey. Picture by Zak Davies.

Next up it's the David Clayton award for the best radio voice. David says: "This person’s natural personality shone through what she said, and how she said it in an ad lib exercise. She was worried her Norfolk accent was too prominent. It wasn't. She was engaging and added wit and humour - exactly what a radio or podcast audience would want to hear to draw them in. Basically she was just being herself!"
The winner of best radio voice is Seren Hull pictured [email protected] and Jake Humphrey. Picture by Zak Davies.

This prize is for best original journalism and the winner of this award has astonished her lecturers with the depth, range and quality of the stories she has brought in this year. They all have one thing in common – real heart.

She encourages people to share their most intimate and personal stories with her and shines a spotlight on those who are overlooked and unheard.

Her work is often weeks ahead of the national news – she sets trends rather than follows the crowd.

Organ donation, methanol poisoning, ketamine addiction, topical steroid withdrawal, weight loss injections, every case study is respectfully presented – and the stories are spine chilling and compelling.

The winner of the original journalism award is Tabby Dryhurst pictured with Jack Humphrey (photo by Zak Davies).

There were a number of people who were in the running for the editor of the year award. It’s for the person who can lead and motivate a team and the winner this year has shown that he can deal with huge amounts of pressure and always deliver high quality programmes.

He motivates his team – is clear – gives great direction – asks insightful questions and pushes himself and his teams to be the best they can be. He finished his time with us on a massive high – running a complicated One Show style programme with two presenters – 2 live interviews – performances from a comedian and a musician on set and multiple packages.

He brought the whole show in live at 30 minutes to the second. The presenters said they couldn’t have done it without him – and other students rushed to nominate him for his outstanding performance. The winner of editor of the year is Henry Lockyer .lockyer.journo pictured with Jake Humphrey. Photo by Zak Davies.

The multimedia project award goes to a team who showed real perseverance to get the footage and interviews they needed from an RSPCA seal centre. They worked really well together and produced content which worked well for radio, digital, social media and TV. The winning team were Maria, Jake and Ella in Year 2 pictured with Jake Humphrey. Photo by Zak Davies.

Well done!

The UEA Journalism prize for best online article was a collaboration between a group of students. This story had more than 10,500 views on our website which is by far the most read or viewed piece of content ever published by UEA Journalism.

It came out of a random visit to court – and a lot of digging and journalistic effort behind the scenes to stand up the story – which was then picked up by a number of other news outlets.

For publishing the story of the civil servant who possessed hundreds of child p**n images yet avoided jail – the winners for best article are Vivienne, Steven, Robin, Grace and Joe pictured with Jake Humphrey. Photo by Zak Davies.