Scot wins Young Thinker of the Year title

Mairi Clare Rodgers, press officer of the human rights organisation Liberty, is the new UK and Ireland Young Thinker of the Year. She won the title at the annual final of the programme – co-hosted by ICS – in Stranraer on 29 March after a closely fought competition featuring a selection of the season's 289 delegates. Twenty finalists from all over the UK and Ireland took part, each presenting a 1,200-word paper on a subject of 'current controversy or interest' of their own choice.


The winning paper on sexual consent earned the following accolade in the adjudication:
     'Incomparably the best introduction to any paper: a piece of one-woman role play which gripped the audience from the start and set up her subtle exploration of sexual consent. The paper discussed the weakness of the law, the ambiguities of public attitudes, and the ethical minefield of sexual interaction. She said that the Sexual Offences Act, in defining consent, hadn't gone far enough though failed to explain how much further it should go. But then the paper broadened out into a remarkable short essay on the sacredness of the human body and the need for its integrity to be respected in a society where sexual casualness has gone too far. Beautifully written, it was also intellectually challenging.'
     Mairi Clare is the first Scot to win the prestigious title, and her parents were there to see her presented with the Richard Wild Award, in memory of a young journalist killed in Iraq five years ago. She is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, but has worked in London for the last eight years. Mairi Clare describes herself as 'a fully paid-up member of the skinny-latte-drinking-bleeding-heart-liberal-elite'. She qualified for the final as 2007 Third Sector Young Thinker of the Year.
     Other results:
     Runner-up: Heidi Brooks-Yung, Home Office; Highly Commended: Russell Collins, Barking and Dagenham Primary Care Trust; Commended: Tim Borrett, Teignbridge District Council and Keith Withers, Wokingham Borough Council.
     Claire Callaghan, of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions Ireland, won the Inveramsay Medal for an outstanding continuing contribution to the programme, and Gianna Cassidy of Glasgow Caledonian University was awarded the Dunblane Medal, in memory of the children and teacher massacred at Dunblane Primary School, in recognition of a special contribution to the programme in the current season. Rebecca Clark, of Surrey County Council, won the Esther Roy Medal for outstanding promise.

[click here] for a complete review of the 2008 final


Site updated 8 April 2008