Judges
The Wellcome Trust Book Prize 2011 judging panel.
Vivienne Parry
Vivienne Parry is a science writer and broadcaster best known for her many programmes for BBC Radio 4. She is also a prolific writer, contributing to a wide range of magazines and newspapers including 'The Times', the 'Guardian' and 'Good Housekeeping'. Her most recent book, 'The Truth About Hormones', was shortlisted for the 2006 Aventis Science Prize.
She is Vice-Chair of Council for University College London and sits on the Council of the MRC. Vivienne has worked with the Princess of Wales, been a columnist for the 'News of the World' and presented 'Tomorrow’s World'.
Joanna Bourke
Joanna Bourke is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London and has a Wellcome Trust grant in Medical History and Humanities to write a history of pain. She is the prize-winning author of nine books, including histories on modern warfare, military medicine, psychology and psychiatry, and rape. 'An Intimate History of Killing' won the Wolfson Prize and the Fraenkel Prize. Her next book, 'What it Means to be Human', will be published in September 2011.
Joanna is a frequent contributor to TV and radio, and a regular newspaper correspondent.
Roger Highfield
Roger Highfield was the science editor of the 'Daily Telegraph' for two decades and has been Editor of 'New Scientist' magazine since 2008. While studying for his DPhil, he became the first person to bounce a neutron off a soap bubble.
Roger has won various prizes for journalism, including a British Press Award. He edited 'A Life Decoded', the autobiography of the genome pioneer Craig Venter, and has written or co-authored seven books, including the bestseller 'The Arrow of Time'. Last year, Roger was a judge of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction.
Tim Lott
Tim Lott is a former journalist whose first book, the memoir 'The Scent of Dry Roses', won the PEN/JR Ackerley Prize for Autobiography and is now published as a Penguin Modern Classic. His first novel, 'White City Blue', won the Whitbread First Novel Award. Tim’s most recent novel, 'Fearless', is a mythic, political, dystopian fable about a group of 1000 girls confined to an institute in a time of terror.
Tim writes for a wide range of publications and frequently appears on TV and radio as a commentator and critic.
Erica Wagner
Erica Wagner is Literary Editor of 'The Times' and author of numerous stories and poems as broadcast on radio and published in the 'Times Literary Supplement' and 'PN Review'. She is also the author of 'Gravity' (a collection of short stories), 'Ariel’s Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the story of Birthday Letters' and the novel 'Seizure'. She reviews regularly for 'The New York Times' and appears frequently on television and radio.
Erica has judged many literary prizes including the Man Booker Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Forward Prize and the Warwick Prize for Writing.