Who are we?
The People Behind the Dora Love Prize

Founder & Coordinator of the Dora Love Prize

Prof (em) Rainer Schulze

Rainer is Emeritus Professor of Modern European History at the University of Essex. In 2000-2007 he was one of the project leaders involved in preparing a new permanent exhibition at the Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen and a member of their international advisory board. He has worked as a historical consultant for Holocaust/Bergen-Belsen related exhibitions and documentary films, most recently (2024) Liberation (National Geographics/Disney). From 2017 to 2019 he programmed and presented the weekly film programme Tales from the Margins with films about LGBTIQ rights and the situation of LGBTIQ people across the world, shown on Latest TV Brighton. From 2007 to 2016 he coordinated the annual Holocaust Memorial Week at the University of Essex, and in 2012 he set up the Dora Love Prize.

Patrons of the Dora Love Prize

Frank Bright (1923-2023)

Frank was born in Berlin into a Jewish family. They fled to Prague in June 1938 where the Germans caught up with them again when they invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939. His parents were killed in the Holocaust. Frank survived and moved to England in June 1946 where he had distant relatives. He worked as a civil engineer, married and had children. After his retirement, he dedicated much of his time to tracking down what happened to his Jewish classmates during the Holocaust and sharing their stories with History students of all ages. He regularly talked at schools, providing students with invaluable insight and support for their studies of the Holocaust. Frank featured in the landmark BBC documentary The Last Survivors (2019). In 2022 he received an MBE for services to Holocaust education. He was the Patron of the Dora Love Prize since its inception in 2012-13 until his death in 2023.

Watch the film on Frank Bright here.

Janet Love

Janet, Dora Love’s daughter, is a seasoned human rights and social justice activist. She was part of the underground structures of the liberation movement in South Africa and, later, was involved in negotiating South Africa's new constitution. She served as a Member of Parliament in the first democratic Parliament during Nelson Mandela’s presidency. From 2006 to 2018, Janet was the National Director of the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), during which time she also served as a part-time member of the South African Human Rights Commission (2009-2016). In 2016, Janet was appointed as an Electoral Commissioner and assumed her current full-time role as vice-chairperson of the Electoral Commission of South Africa in 2018. Janet studied through the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of London and has post-graduate qualifications in public administration and development management.

Lesley Scott-Boutell

When she tried enlist to the Royal Navy at the age of 21, Lesley was diagnosed as having severe hearing loss as a result of multiple aggressive ear infections suffered during childhood and continuing throughout her adult life. She is now profoundly deaf in her left ear and severely deaf in her right. Lesley worked in different roles at British Gas, and in May 2002 she was elected councillor for Stanway Ward in Colchester. In 2024-25 she served as Mayor of the City of Colchester; the theme of her mayoralty was fostering tolerance and understanding, breaking down preconceptions and building a safe space for all.

Advisory Group

Dale Banham

Dale is a Senior Leader and history teacher at a large comprehensive school, Northgate High School in Ipswich, and he is responsible for curriculum development, teaching and learning and CPD. His school has recently been recognised as a national ‘Centre of Excellence’ for inclusion, as part of the IQM Inclusive School Award. Dale is an Honorary Fellow of the History Association and the Schools History Project and has delivered training on curriculum development and raising attainment in history for many schools and local education authorities. He has written a number of articles for Teaching History and published several Key Stage 3 and GCSE History textbooks for Hodder Education.

Rachel Howse Binnington

Rachel is an Archivist and Heritage Consultant. Based in Colchester, UK, her work centres around at-risk and diasporic collections touching on military and social history and involving subject areas such as genocide, the Holocaust and armed conflict (including the histories of dependents). She worked extensively in the private and not-for-profit sectors, among others with the US National Archives and Records Administration, The National Archives UK, the Rothschild Family Archives, Fortnum & Mason, and British Land.

Tanya McFerran

Tanya is the chairperson of the Colchester and District Jewish Community and was a senior lecturer in Child Nursing until her retirement in 2021. As the daughter of a refugee who fled Nazi oppression, she is fully committed to Dora Love’s ethos of the importance of education about the lasting impact of the Holocaust, and she sees clear parallels with many aspects of our troubled world today. She has been a member of the Dora Love Prize judges panel for three years.

Dr. David Smith

David is a Reader in Social Policy at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) where he has worked since 2018. He is of Romany heritage and has research interests in Gypsy, Roma & Traveller populations; labour migration and working-class culture, and he has published widely in these fields. David is the ARU lead for the Gypsy Roma Traveller Showmen & Boater (GRTSB) in Higher Education Pledge which is committed to increasing the participation of these populations in HE and supporting those already participating.

Scarlett Betsy Smith

Scarlett is a 20-year-old Romany Gypsy from Hertfordshire and is currently studying Social Work and Community Development at Goldsmiths University of London. She is involved in a number of projects with the Council of Europe representing young Roma from the UK, and she is the community outreach worker for Gypsies and Travellers Essex. Scarlett has experienced prejudice and hate herself because of who she is, and that is why the Dora Love Prize is so important to her: Roma are so often forgotten in education about Nazi atrocities, and their continuing marginalisation is rarely addressed by the majority society.

Board of Trustees

Chair: Prof (em) Rainer Schulze

Secretary: Karen Whittingham
Treasurer: Dale Banham
Trustee: Ella Hall

by Originally:Creative

Who are we? The People Behind the Dora Love Prize