Franziska Schroeder, a Reader at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at QUB and member of the DRN, leads the “Performance Without Barriers” Project which has received this prestigious Vice Chancellor’s Prize for Research Innovation 2020. This award recognises the continued commitment of the team to working together with disabled people to identify more accessible and open ways to designing music technologies. This prize specifically recognised the team’s agenda-setting research in designing virtual reality (VR) instruments that have benefited disabled musicians in Northern Ireland and how this research addresses new challenges of the next generation of immersive experiences in music performance and disability and how innovative design models can facilitate the inclusion of disabled people. You can read more about the project here