We are pleased to share that Cristina Blanco Sío-López, Tenured Associate Professor at the University of La Coruña (UDC) in Spain, Life Member and former Visiting Fellow (December 2024 to late May 2025) at Clare Hall, has received the Colin Bell Award 2026 by the Churchill Archives Centre and the Churchill College at the University of Cambridge.

This Award supports and recognises the original historical research of the project she directs on ‘Factors of Sustainable Peace: Art informing Policy-making in European integration and cooperation from the interwar period to the present’.

Her project studies how in a context increasingly dominated by overlapping factors of conflict and discrimination peace continues to be sought by democratic players through an emphasis on strategic and geopolitical analysis. By contrast, her project proposes a counterintuitive approach that recovers factors of sustainable peace reflected in artistic and cultural practices including intuitive and non-textual that produce discursive and graphic Peace-scapes yet to be studied as innovative conceptual maps.

Her research at the Churchill Archives Centre in 2024-2025, during her tenure as former Visiting Fellow at CRASSH, at Clare Hall College and at Cambridge Digital Humanities (CDH) —where she remains an Affiliate— examined the papers of Alexander and Theodosia Cadogan and those of Maurice and Adeline Hankey but paid special attention to the collections pertaining to the Nobel Peace Prize Philip Noel-Baker papers by focusing on: ‘Peace and Disarmament’, peace debates in science and education and peace and human rights in international affairs throughout the 20th century.

In this respect, she aspired to implement her motto of ‘looking back to see beyond’ by using critical historical analysis as a basis for a societal rethink of a most urgent scenario design in peace-building and peace-keeping deeply rooted in overlooked fundamental rights and freedoms that archival research can help bring back to the fore.

This award was established by University of Cambridge alumnus Nigel Grimshaw to honour Colin Bell DFC, a 104-year-old RAF veteran, and to support archival work on Churchill papers, World War II and other collections related to 20th century European and global history.

The award ceremony will take place at Churchill College of the University of Cambridge in 2026 and will include a public lecture to share research results and conclusions. See the announcement from Churchill College and the Churchill Archives Centre: https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/news-and-events/the-colin-bell-award-college-honours-2025-recipient-and-announces-two-awards-for-2026/

Clare Hall very warmly congratulates Professor Blanco Sío-López on this distinguished recognition and celebrates her continued contribution to scholarship and to the life of the College community.