A De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) academic has won a prestigious national award in recognition of her work in tackling hate crime, just weeks after celebrating 10 years at DMU.
Kim Sadique, senior lecturer in
Community and Criminal Justice, won the ‘Upstanding Research and Innovation Award’ for her outstanding contribution to tackling hatred, intolerance and prejudice at the #No2H8 Crime Awards 2017.
Kim received three nominations for the award, including from Leicestershire Police Hate Crime Officer Darren Goddard, and was shortlisted by an esteemed judging panel of respected peers.
The judges were impressed by her teaching and community work and she was named as the winner at the awards ceremony on Tuesday, which was held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in London and attended by high profile politicians Yvette Cooper and Eric Pickles as well as media personalities such as Adrian Chiles and Cathy Newman.
She said: “It’s a huge honour to receive this award, especially being up against such stiff competition. I knew about the reputation of the other two people on the shortlist so it’s amazing to have been given the award.
“It was an extremely inspirational night; the other winners included the Sophie Lancaster Foundation and Jack Stanley, the 12 year old who stood up for a Syrian refugee on Educating Greater Manchester, so its great company to be in.
“It's great timing for two reasons as I’ve just celebrated 10 years at DMU and next week is International Hate Crime Awareness Week.”
Kim is a member of
Leicestershire Police Hate Crime Scrutiny Panel and a member of the National Advisory Board for
Tell MAMA, an organisation which counters anti-Muslim hate.
She runs an elective module at DMU which gives students the chance to look at religion, faith and crime and has also published a book on the topic which acts as the course textbook.
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Kim added: “As an academic I love my job and I want students to be able to counter hate and discrimination. It’s such an important area to focus on, in current times everything is centred around issues of religion, faith and crime so it’s really important that they are addressed.
“I think it’s useful for students to challenge themselves around religion and faith, they are such big issues and very prominent in the media at the moment.”
Kim will continue to tackle hate crime when she participates in a panel session being held at DMU next month. The British Society of Criminology Midlands Branch is holding a panel event titled ‘Moving Beyond the Echo-Chamber? The Case for Improving Responses to Hate Crime’ at the Vijay Patel Building on Wednesday 15th November as part of Inter Faith Week.
Posted on Monday 16 October 2017