Michael Biggs highly commended in Social Sciences Impact Awards 2025
© John CairnsJohn Cairns
The Department's Dr Michael Biggs has been highly commended in the Emerging Impact category for the Social Sciences Division's 2025 Impact Awards.
The Awards celebrate the outstanding contribution of Oxford's social scientists to tackling complex global challenges in partnership with policymakers, businesses, and civil society.
Supported by the University of Oxford's ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, the Impact Awards spanned three categories - emerging, developing, and scaling and sustaining impact - highlighting the importance of high-quality engagement and knowledge exchange at all stages of the impact journey; from the earliest engagement activities to the largest long-term collaborations.
Dr Biggs was highly commended in the Emerging Impact category for his work Creating reliable statistics on the transgender population in England and Wales.
This category recognises outstanding early-stage engagement that laid the foundations for significant potential future impact.
Dr Biggs' research examines data on gender identity from the 2021 Census of England and Wales, arguing that inaccurate results were produced by a flawed question.
The research resulted in a move by the Office for Statistical Regulation to improve the Census' question on transgender identity, to inspire user confidence and ensure robust national data.
Hosting the ceremony, Professor Louise Slater, Associate Head of the Social Sciences Division (R&I), welcomed over one hundred guests from academia, business, policy, community organisations and the third sector, as well as knowledge exchange professionals.
Professor Slater said:
Impact is undoubtedly a collaborative team effort. As we all know here, meaningful and responsible engagement lies at the core of social science research.
We were truly impressed by the outstanding quality of the nominations - it was an exceptionally strong field.
The full list of awardees can be found here.
