Royal award for violence against women research

A 40-year effort to end violence against women and girls has earned a London university a royal award.

The King and Queen hosted a ceremony with the Princess Royal and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester at St James's Palace on Tuesday.

London Metropolitan University was recognised for its Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit (CWASU) dedicated to ending violence against women and girls nationally and internationally.

Its work includes interdisciplinary research, police intervention, criminal justice reform and improved support of survivors.

Queen Camilla - who has campaigned against domestic violence and sexual abuse - met Prof Fiona Vera-Gray and senior research fellow Jo Lovett from the unit.

The women met Camilla more than 10 years ago, when Vera-Gray was involved with the Rape Crisis charity.

"It was one of the first charities that she [Camilla] supported – not so publicly at the time, but it was there," Vera-Gray said.

"What we spoke to her about was how much that meant for ourselves as workers, but also for survivors, that someone was willing to take up a public platform on an issue that is so unspoken and taboo."

Lovett said: "The King was also very complimentary about the fact that a unit from a university such as ours, which is not the most prestigious compared to some others in the room, was also at the table."

It comes after Camilla met French rape survivor Gisèle Pelicot at Clarence House on Monday, with the Queen telling the 73-year-old she was left "speechless" by the account of her ordeal in her new memoir.

The Queen wrote to Pelicot last year to praise her "extraordinary dignity and courage" in a letter the survivor said left her "overwhelmed" and which is now framed in her office.

The Queen Elizabeth prizes for higher and further education are awarded every two years to universities and colleges which submit work judged to show excellence, innovation, impact and benefit for the institution itself, for society, and the wider world.

Also among the winners were:

• The London Institute of Cancer Research

For leading ground-breaking research in radiotherapy to improve the effectiveness of cancer treatments

• The University of Edinburgh

For its world-first Centre for Fire Safety Engineering

• The University of Oxford

For its OpenSAFELY data analysis platform, which uses new methods to access the entire English population's NHS GP records and enable life-saving research

Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to hello.bbclondon@bbc.co.uk