Stacey Dooley is one of Britain's most prolific documentary makers and presenters and is the youngest person to get the Trustees' Award. She first appeared on television screens in 2008, as a contributor to the BBC Three series Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts. Her strong on-screen presence and her passion to expose how children were being used as forced labour led to a commission for the first series of Stacey Dooley Investigates. Since then, she has made more than 100 documentaries, exploring a wide range of subjects including pollution in the fashion industry, domestic violence, slavery, mass rape and murder, and the illegal narcotics trade.

The trustees were impressed by the way Stacey, who had previously worked as a shop assistant and had no background in journalism or broadcasting, managed to forge a career as a successful documentary presenter in what is a notoriously competitive field. She brought a fresh perspective to the genre and has built an impressive body of work over the past 15 years, never shying away from tackling difficult subjects.

Lorraine Heggessey, Chair of the Grierson Trust said: “Stacey Dooley has brought a refreshing new voice to documentary making and has consistently brought challenging subjects to new audiences, especially younger viewers and children. Her films and series have fearlessly tackled the big issues that affect young, diverse and marginalised people around the world. Her emotional intelligence enables her to build a natural rapport with her interviewees and she is also willing to challenge those in authority by asking direct, difficult questions. This has earned her respect from audiences and peers alike, and she has regularly been mentioned by our Grierson DocLab trainees as the inspiration for wanting to become a documentary maker. We are all thrilled to recognise Stacey’s contribution to documentary making with this year’s Trustees’ Award.”

Stacey’s previous awards include the One World Media Awards’ Popular Features Award for Face to Face with ISIS, Best Presenter at the 2021 Women in Film and Television Awards, and Factual – Documentary and On-Screen Personality at the 2023 RTS East Awards for Two Daughters. She was awarded an MBE for services to broadcasting in 2018. In the same year, Stacey was crowned the winner of BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing and named as Grazia’s new Contributing Editor for Investigations.

The Grierson Awards recognise the best single documentaries and factual series across broadcasters, streamers and online as well as theatrical releases. This year’s winners will be announced at the ceremony taking place on 6th November at Roundhouse, the iconic music and arts venue in Camden, London.

Recent Trustees' Award winners include Anna Hall, Roger Graef OBE, and Tabitha Jackson.