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Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial paper prize for early-career scholars

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We are once again pleased to announce the CPD Paper Prize for Early Career Scholars.  

Prize 

The prize is aimed at supporting CPD’s early career members in the development of peer-reviewed work, while at the same time carving out space in International Studies to engage with the question of empire and coloniality as fundamental to the discipline.  

The winning paper will be chosen by a panel nominated by the convenors of the Colonial, Postcolonial, and Decolonial Working Group and the editors of Review of International Studies (RIS), a BISA journal. In addition to being invited to present their paper at the annual BISA conference (with registration fees generously covered by RIS), the prize winner will be mentored through the review process at RIS. This process will enable the desk review to be waived, and the paper to be sent directly to external reviewers, who will make all final decisions about accepting the paper for publication (for which RIS  can make no guarantees).  

Eligibility 

  • Applicants must either be registered in a PhD programme or in the early stages of their career (no more than three years post-submission of their thesis, and not in a permanent or tenure track post) .

  • Applicants need to be a BISA member by the date of their submission.

  • The paper must be on a topic related to CPD’s main thematic interests, which stem from thinking with (and challenging) the foundational colonial constitutions of the global order, both past and present. Broadly, this could include work reflecting on racial capitalism, colonial materials and materiality, settler colonial and post-colonial entanglements, Indigenous epistemologies and resurgent politics, race and anti-racist knowledge production, carceral geographies and abolitionist futures, etc.  

  • The paper needs to be an original, unpublished work and must not be under review elsewhere.

  • Submissions should be between 8,000 and 12,000 words (including all bibliographic references and notes), submitted in 12-point font and double spaced, and, if possible, follow Chicago citational referencing style (footnotes, rather than in-line citations). For additional guidance on style, please refer to RIS’ instructions for authors.

Previous finalists 

2022 

  • Maia Entwistle, 'Decolonial Aesthesis and Racial Capitalism in the Postcolonial Arab Gulf States' (winner) 

  • Asma Abdi, 'Towards a Feminist Geopolitics of Economic Sanctions and Gendered Insecurity: The case of Iranian women under the US-led regime of sanctions' (honourable mention) 

2023 

  • Christopher Choong Weng Wai, ‘Racial/Gender Capitalism in Malaysia: Contested Scripts, Muted Repertoires’ (winner) 

  • Sara Abdel Ghany, ‘A Pilgrimage back to the Self: A Methodological Journey’ (honourable mention) 

  • George Ygarza ‘Theorizing Peru Profundo: Postcolonial Geographies and Technologies of Order in the Peruvian Hinterland’ (honourable mention) 

 2024 

  • Jamal Nabulsi, ‘Affective Sovereignty: A decolonial politics of emotion in Palestine’ (winner) 

  • Alice Engelhard, ‘Decolonisation and the displacement of the Chagos Islanders’ (honourable mention) 

  • Sara Wong, ‘Towards an Anticolonial Aesthetic Politics: Surrealist Praxis & Epistemic Refusal’ (honourable mention) 

How to apply 

Please send your paper, along with a short biography (150 words), CV, as well as a short paragraph (250 words) that explains the paper’s relevance to CPD’s thematic foci to cpd.group@bisa.ac.uk.  

Deadline: Monday 18 November 2024.

Find out more about the Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group

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