Two members of the Centre for Adult Social Care Research core team have been recognised at the Cardiff University Celebrating Excellence Awards 2025.
Alice Butler received the award in the Culture, Cynefin and Community category, and Dr Sofia Vougioukalou was named winner in the Co-creation and Participative Leadership category.
Sofia’s award recognises her outstanding commitment to participative leadership and co-production in research. Working across CARE, the Centre for Trials Research and the Centre for Vision Services Research, she has consistently embedded lived experience at the heart of research. Her work brings together diverse communities—including people affected by dementia, cancer and social isolation—to shape research design, delivery and dissemination.
Reflecting on her work, Sofia said
“Throughout my research journey, my own learning and understanding of health and social care has been profoundly shaped by experiences that members of the public, service users, service providers and professionals have so generously shared with me. We are in a very privileged place to have research funders that actively promote public involvement and co-production. I very much look forward to developing more research bids with members of the public and professionals as co-applicants, and to be able to support other colleagues to bring public co-applicants on board their research projects.”
Alice’s award recognises her work supporting inclusive, person-centred public involvement in social care research. Drawing on her professional and personal experience across social care, she works closely with communities, practitioners and people with lived experience to ensure research is shaped by those it aims to serve.
Alice said:
I am humbled and honoured to receive the Cardiff University Celebrating Excellence Award 2025 in the category of Culture, Cynefin and Community.
My public involvement work is grounded in years of experience across social care as a carer, personal assistant, support worker, practitioner, and through my own experiences of accessing social care. These experiences have taught me the importance of listening, compassion, dignity, and truly person-centred practice. I try to bring those values into everything I do within CARE and in supporting social care research.
It is a privilege to support the voices of communities across Wales, including people with lived experience and the CARE Lived Experience Collective, practitioners and the Practice Advisory Forum, unpaid carers, and the wider social care workforce, to engage meaningfully and help shape social care research and policy. I am passionate about creating and supporting opportunities where individuals feel safe, valued, heard, and empowered to contribute, and where people are treated as equal partners.
This recognition is not mine alone. I could not do this work without the incredible people around me within CARE and more widely: colleagues across professional services, researchers, academics, members of the CARE Lived Experience Collective and Practice Advisory Forum, people with lived experience, social care professionals and practitioners, partner organisations, and community groups.
It is an honour to be part of work that strengthens inclusion, values lived experience and professional expertise and helps shape compassionate and person-centred social care research for the future.
