Five Swansea University researchers have been named among Wales’s most promising emerging talent as part of the 2026 Welsh Crucible cohort. (L-R Dr Yang Liu, Dr Laura Seymour, Dr Maria Cheshire-Allen, Dr Charlotte Jones and Dr Tom Avery.)
Five outstanding researchers from Swansea University have been selected for the 2026 Welsh Crucible, an award-winning programme to develop the future research leaders of Wales.
Each year, 30 researchers across the country are selected to a series of intensive residential skills labs, designed to enhance research impact, foster interdisciplinary collaboration, and build international research careers.
The Swansea University researchers in this year’s programme highlights academic excellence and innovation across diverse disciplines. The researchers from Swansea University are:
- Dr Maria Cheshire-Allen, Senior Research Fellow and Senior Research Officer in social care who holds two concurrent Health and Care Research Wales awards, a Social Care Fellowship and an Advancing Grant. Her research specialises in unpaid carers, older people, and social justice;
- Dr Laura Seymour, Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow and Senior Lecturer in English literature whose research focuses on how neurodivergent people engage with literature, and how literature can support our wellbeing and understanding of ourselves;
- Dr Charlotte Jonesis a sociology lecturer whose research lies at the intersection of gender, sexuality, disability, and medicine. Her current work explores the challenges of publicly communicating politicised research, and the support available to academics facing negative backlash to their work;
- Dr Tom Avery, Research Officer for the Local Challenges Research Office who works across south west Wales to develop locally meaningful research collaborations in the spaces between community, policy, and academia. His research focuses on interdisciplinary projects, linked by a core interest in promoting community voice in local governance; and,
- Dr Yang Liu, Senior Lecturer in computer sciences whose research concentrates on cybersecurity, privacy-enhancing technologies, and trustworthy AI. It explores how secure and reliable AI systems can be developed with a particular focus on privacy protection, robustness, and real-world deployment in autonomous and connected systems.
Professor Siwan Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research, Innovation and Enterprise) said: “We are immensely proud to see that five of our researchers have been selected for the Welsh Crucible programme. This reflects their outstanding talent, ambition and collaborative spirit, as well as their potential to be future leaders who will deliver meaningful impact for Wales and beyond.”
The Welsh Crucible is a collaborative initiative funded by a consortium of Welsh higher education institutions and Wales’s Commission for Tertiary Education and Research (Medr).