Fellows' updates August 2025 Fellows' update: Joy O'Neill
Joy O’Neill (CF 2020) has become a Playful Green Planet Champion for the RSA.
By Joy O'Neill, 2025
About this theme
This theme covers topics relating to strengthening rural communities. Between 2019-2023 the Churchill Fellowship ran a designated programme of Fellowships on this theme in partnership with the Royal Countryside Fund. Fellows from across the years continue to explore this theme as part of their Fellowships. You can read more about them, their reports, and their latest activity below. Fellows’ stories
Fellows' updates August 2025 Fellows' update: Joy O'Neill
Joy O’Neill (CF 2020) has become a Playful Green Planet Champion for the RSA.
By Joy O'Neill, 2025
Blogs & conversations How rural Canada is rethinking migration
Keith Ruffles travelled across Canada to explore how rural communities are using migration to reverse population decline. Over five weeks, he visited six towns taking part in the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot (RNIP), meeting with local coordinators, federal agencies, and migrants like Natalia and Mohammad, who shared their experiences of settling in Canada. In this blog, Keith reflects on what the UK could learn from Canada’s community-driven approach to migration, and how the Fellowship gave him the time, space, and connection to explore these issues in depth.
By Keith Ruffles, 2025
Fellows' updates July 2025 Fellows' update: Sepideh Mojabi
Sepideh Mojabi (CF 2020) has been appointed Chair of the charity NERS, the North of England Refugee Service.
By Sepideh Mojabi, 2025
Fellows' updates July 2025 Fellows' update: Joy O'Neill
Joy O’Neill (CF 2020) has been appointed as a Trustee for the charity Social Farms and Gardens.
By Joy O'Neill, 2025
As part of my Fellowship, I travelled across rural regions in the USA, Canada, and Australia, connecting with experts and victim-survivors to explore how to improve safety and achieve equity. My learning and earlier conversations with Rhianon Bragg – a survivor whose story reveals deep cracks in our justice system – helped shape my focus post-Fellowship, laying the groundwork for a new social enterprise to raise the status of rural domestic abuse in public policy and support more coordinated, realistic responses.
By Judith Vickress, 2025
Fellows' updates April 2025 Fellows' update: Tom Cannon
Tom Cannon appeared on BBC2’s Great British Railway Journeys on 8 April with Michael Portillo.
By Tom Cannon, 2025
Fellows' updates April 2025 Fellows' update: Joy O'Neill
Joy O’Neill (CF 2020) has launched a new newsletter, Green Care, inspired by her Churchill Fellowship.
By Joy O'Neill, 2025
By Jon Macleod, 2019
Fellows' updates April 2025 Fellows' update: Judith Vickress
Judith Vickress featured on the 'Let's Get Visible' podcast, where she spoke about her Churchill Fellowship research on domestic abuse in rural communities.
By Judith Vickress, 2025
Report Helping small rural schools to thrive
By Howard Nelson, 2019