Institution news
IMechE is proud to celebrate Joshua Ashley, who has been awarded a 2020 Whitworth Senior Scholarship. The award will support his PhD studies into plasma facing materials, which are used in nuclear fusion research, at Manchester University.
Joshua’s route into engineering has been quite unconventional, having first studied English at Oxford. However, when he completed his degree, he realised that the path ahead simply wasn’t for him, and that’s when he discovered engineering.
He began his career as an apprentice designer at BAE Systems Submarines in Barrow in Furness in 2012, advancing to an engineering role specialising in structural and shock calculation. Inspired to continue his studies, he attended Furness College and received a first class BEng (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering from Lancaster University in 2020.
He entered the industry later than many of his peers, and that is one of the reasons he is grateful to the Whitworth Society, and IMechE, one of the contributors to the Society, for their support.
“The thing that strikes a chord with me is that the Society recognises and promotes the idea that there’s two routes, and both are equally valid. For me, the appeal of the Whitworth Scholarship is that it recognises academic ability but also vocational ability. I like working with my hands as much as I do with pen and paper, and while I can’t vouch for the quality of my own work, working in the shipyard gave a real insight into the skill and talent present in the various trades. It’s not something I think we celebrate enough, but the parity of esteem given by the work of the Whitworth Society goes some way to addressing this.
"I love that duality, and so I’m hoping I’ll be able to bring some aspects of that to my PhD.”
Joshua is passionate about the opportunities offered by engineering and has spent five years working voluntarily as council secretary for the Barrow & District Association of Engineers, which offers free lectures on all aspects of engineering. In addition, he sits on the BDAE Bursary Committee, which raises scholarships and bursaries for young people aged 11-18 to encourage them into engineering.
Joshua is now excited to discover what the future holds. If he’s successful in his PhD, he hopes to return to industry, working on one of the major projects aiming to make fusion power a reality.
“For the past eight years I’ve been trying to chart a course that would lead to this point. Now I’ve been given the opportunity, the pressure’s on to make the most of it; it’s the culmination of a lot of work, facilitated and enabled by the Whitworth Society. I’m incredibly grateful to them for the support that they’ve given me and hope in the future to be able to repay their help in kind by offering support to young engineers that come after me.”
Further information