Each year, BAAS offers a growing list of awards, prizes, teaching assistantships, and research assistance awards. In recent years, we have added a new essays award for students of colour at school, undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and, in light of the climate crisis and our commitment to promote low-carbon research practices, we transformed the travel assistance awards into research assistance awards, offering the possibility of hiring research assistants to pursue archival research remotely.
BAAS is committed to promoting best practice in matters of equality and diversity, and will be attentive to issues of equality and diversity when judging all applications.
Below you can find a list of previous winners of BAAS Awards. This list is complete to the best of our knowledge.
The BAAS Awards 2024
BAAS are pleased to share details of the 2024 BAAS Awards which were announced at our awards ceremony in June 2024. The winners in each category for 2024 are shared below.
BAAS Book Prize
Winner: Owen Clayton, University of Lincoln, Tramps, Vagabonds, and Hobos (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Honourable Mentions:
- David Stehan Doddington, Cardiff University, Old Age and American Slavery (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
- Katie McGettigan, Royal Holloway, University of London, The Transatlantic Materials of American Literature: Publishing US Writing in Britain, 1830–1860 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023)
- Kierra V. Williams, Queens University Belfast, Why Any Woman: Feminism and Popular Culture in the late Twentieth Century South (University of Georgia Press, 2023)
Arthur Miller First Book Prize
The Arthur Miller Institute First Book Prize of £500 is awarded for the best first book on any American Studies topic in the preceding calendar year by a United Kingdom citizen based at home or abroad or by a non-UK citizen who publishes a book, providing that the entrant is a member of the British Association of American Studies in the year of submission.
BAAS would like to extend a big thank you to Emma Long, at UEA, who coordinates this book prize (and the article prize)
Winner: Andrew Monteith, Elon University, Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs (NYU Press, 2023)
Honourable Mention: Emma Day, Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, In Her Hands: Women’s Fight Against AIDS in the United States (University of California Press, 2023)
Arthur Miller Journal Article Prize
Winner: Hannah Murray, University of Liverpool, “Get In and Get Out: White Racial Transformation and the US Gothic Imagination” in Humanities
Honorable Mention: Nick Grant, University of East Anglia, “Patriotism and Black Internationalism” in Modern American History
School Essay Award
Winner: Thomas Shamdasani, Harrodian School, “How does ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ explore the Black American experience?”
Honourable Mention: Samuel Lindley, Harrodian School, “Was Pearl Harbour the reason for America’s internment of its Japanese citizens in WWII?”
School Essay Award for Students of Colour
Winner: Karlie Yim, Brighton College, “The Temptation and the Temptress: The Objectification of and Violence towards Asian Women in American Media”
Honourable Mention: Tamar Okunhon, Loreto Sixth Form College “Is Felony Disenfranchisement Harmful for American Society?”
Undergraduate Essay Award
Winner: Anya Carr, Manchester University, “Black and white and ‘Red’ all over: Paul Robeson in Mid-Century Manchester“
Honourable Mentions:
- Xavi Goodall, Manchester University, “Stowed Away and Half-Remembered: Uncle Tom’s Cabin in The Century Magazine“
- Ella Lane, Cardiff University, “‘True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?’: Exploring Extreme States of Consciousness in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ and H.P Lovecraft’s ‘The Rats in the Walls’”
- Katie Marshall, University of Sussex, “‘Good God, Elizabeth, Here Comes Another One!’: The Formation of a Lesbian Community in the US Women’s Army Corps”
Postgraduate Essay Award
Winner: Klara Ismail, King’s College London, “Remembering Alice James and Rendering London Legible: Telegraphy as Prosthesis in Henry James’s In The Cage”
Honourable Mention: Carson Eckhard, University of Edinburgh, “Othering at Work: Re-examining the Genealogy of Biopower Through the Medicalization of Race in Early National Philadelphia”
Graduate Teaching Assistantship (GTA), Ole Miss, University of Mississippi
Winner: Astrid Knox-McConnell
Teaching Prize
Winners: Dr Nick Witham and Dr Josh Hollands, University College London, ”Contemporary Issues in the Americas: Empowering and Inclusive American Studies Assessment for Learning and Skills Development”
Honourable Mention: Hilary Emmett and Thomas Ruys Smith, University of East Anglia, ”Students as Co-creators: Recovering American Children’s Literature”
Teaching Development Award
Winners: Hilary Emmett and Professor Tom Smith, University of East Anglia, “Developing regional connections in publishing and pedagogy”
Research Assistance Awards
Winners:
- Dean Clay, University of Hull, “The Sierra Club: Environmental Activism and US Empire, 1892-1912″
- Christian O’Connell, University of Gloucestershire, “Welcomed as Liberators: African Americans and the Italian Experience in WWII”
- Rebecca Stone, University of Warwick, “‘Educating Harry’ in Harry S Truman and Higher Education”
- Connie Thomas, Queen Mary, University of London, “’Reimagining Migration: Giles, Dexter, and the 1795 Naturalization Act’ presentation from larger project Out of Many: Migration Policy and the Forging of an American Republic”
- Jon Ward, King’s College London, “Queer Black Aesthetics”
- Lucy Whitehead, Royal Holloway, University of London, “Gone West: Modern British Manuscripts and the American Archive, 1890–1963”
Postgraduate Research Assistance Awards
Winners:
- Carrissa Anderson, University of Leeds, “The FBI’s ‘Stay-Behind’ Program and US Intelligence During the 1950s”
- Vladislav Areshka, University of Portsmouth, “Hearing Emily Dickinson: her original New England pronunciation and rhymes”
- Tom Cornelius, University College London, “Uncommon Places: The Landscape(s) of Photography, 1969-1982″
- Thomas Cryer, University College London, Institute of the Americas, “‘Walking the Tightrope”: John Hope Franklin and the Dilemmas of African American History in Action”
- Steven Forbes, University of Edinburgh, “History as a System: Ortegean Existential Historicity in John A. Williams’ “The Man Who Cried I Am”
- Sam Hawksford White, University of Hull, “Swirling Dust-River Rising: A Comparative Analysis of Flooding and Drought in 1930s American Documentary Photography and Film”
- Jade Jenkinson, University of Nottingham, “Symbolic and Spectral Histories: The role of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities in shaping how Virginia remembers its colonial past, 1889-1914”
- Alisha Odoi – Smith, University of Oxford, “Black Power in the Black Atlantic”
- Matthew Schlachter, University College London, Institute of the Americas, “The Role of Moderates in the US Republican Party, 1980 to the Present Day”
BAAS would like to thank everyone who took the time to apply for a BAAS Award in 2024 and to our Awards Sub Committee.
BAAS Research Assistance Awards
BAAS Founders’ Research Travel Awards
2022
Dr Kate Dossett (University of Leeds), Remaking Black Theatre History from Harlem to the West End – visiting Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and New York Public Library Performing Arts Library, New York City.
2021
Dr Aurélie Basha i Novosejt, University of Kent, We Support the Troops: A History
Dr Themis Chronopoulos, Swansea University, The Gentrification of Black Brooklyn
Professor Simon Hall, University of Leeds, John Reed, Edgar Snow, Herbert Matthews and the Revolutions That Changed the World
Dr Mark Shanahan, University of Reading, Ike and Mac: the influence of General MacArthur on Eisenhower’s development as a leader
2020
Sarah Barnsley, Goldsmiths, University of London. Research on Mary Barnard’s Poems
Sam Edwards, Manchester Metropolitan University. Research on the American Expeditionary Force in Britain
Jeffrey Geiger, University of Essex. Research on Colour Film
Thomas Tunstall Allcock, University of Manchester. Research on Cold War Diplomacy
2019
Leila Kamali, University of Liverpool for John Edgar Wideman as Black Flâneur
Katie McGettigan, Royal Holloway, University of London for Representations of Slavery and Abolition in Juvenile Literature, 1830-1900
Emily West, University of Reading for Food, Power, and Resistance in US Slavery
Keira Williams, Queen’s University Belfast for Steel Magnolias, Velvet Hammers, and Southern Feminisms
BAAS Early Career Short-Term Travel Awards
2022
Elsa Devienne (Northumbria University), “Where the heroes are”: Alternative spring breaks and youth activism in the late twentieth-century US – research assistant to work in Atlanta, Georgia in collections at Spelman College, Morehouse College, and Break Away
Nicole Gipson (University of Manchester), “Welfare Hotels: Race, Gender, and Family Homelessness (1970–1990)” – hiring a formerly homeless community organizer and activist to carry out research at Fiorello H. LaGuardia Community College/CUNY & The NYC Municipal archives
Owen Walsh (University of Aberdeen), “Frontiers of Black Freedom: Remapping Black Internationalism during the 1930s” – hiring research assistance at Stuart Rose Research Library, Emory University; Howard Gottlieb Research Centre, Boston University
2021
James Baxter, Independent. Mass-market modernism, magazine culture, and New American Review
Eleanor Bird, University of Sheffield. U.S. Slave Narratives and their Authors in Canada, 1851-54
2020
Rachael Alexander, University of Strathclyde. Research on Anne Harriet Fish and Gordon Conway
Alex Ferguson, University of Southampton. Research on U.S. Policy in Vietnam
2018
Kate Ballantyne, University of Cambridge
Owen Clayton, University of Lincoln
John Tiplady, New York University/University of Nottingham
BAAS Postgraduate Short-Term Travel Awards
2022
Named Postgraduate Research Assistance Awards
From 2023 onwards, the BAAS Research Assistance Awards will no longer be named. This is in order to reflect the diversity of scholars in our community, and all of the awards are given to current applicants in order to honour previous Chairs of BAAS, BAAS Honorary Fellows, and all scholars who have contributed to furthering the study of America in the UK.
Peter Parish Award: Molly Carlin (University of Sussex), How to Jail a Revolution: Theorising the penal suppression of Black American political voices, 1964-2021.
John D Lees Award: Tionne Paris (University of Hertfordshire), “Black Women Will Save America”: Black Radical women and their legacies
Abraham Lincoln Award: Connie Thomas (Queen Mary, UoL), Regional Identity and the Foundations of US Migration Policy in the Early American Republic, 1776-1804
Marcus Cunliffe Award: Ben Atkinson (University of Lincoln), Just Because I’m A Woman: An Ethnographic Study of the Gatekeeping of Female Country Performers in the 21st Century
Malcolm Bradbury Award: Sarah Gilbert (Oxford Brookes University), Women’s anti-Vietnam war poetry and canon(s): critical and feminist representation of the poetry of Muriel Rukeyser and Denise Levertov
BAAS Postgraduate Research Assistance Awards
Sarah Curry (Queens University Belfast), The Intersection of White Supremacy, Anti-communism, and Womanhood at the Height of the Cold War
Sian Round (University of Cambridge), The Editor as Novelist: Lillian Smith’s Strange Fruit in South Today
Lucy Thompson (University of Cambridge), ‘Stepping in Time and Space with Circum-Atlantic Performance: A Cultural and Historical Geography of Tap Dance in America’
2021
Named Postgraduate Research Assistance Awards
Named Peter Parish Award: Timothy Galsworthy, University of Sussex, The Party of Lincoln? Civil War memory, civil rights, and the Republican Party, 1960-1968
John D Lees Award: Emily Hull, University College London, Irving Kristol: Cold War Liberal and Conservative
Abraham Lincoln Award: Catriona Byers, King’s College London, Death as an institution: managing the anonymous dead at the morgues of Paris and New York c.1864-1914,
Marcus Cunliffe Award: Victoria Shea, University of Liverpool, ‘We Are Dogs Here’: Racism and the Human-Canine Relationship in the Southern United States, 1830-1940
Malcolm Bradbury Award: Helen Bain, King’s College London, Sylvia Plath and the Bendix: an American writer’s life in postwar rural Britain
BAAS Postgraduate Research Assistance Awards
Emma Rhodes, University of Leicester, Non-White Woman and the Works Progress Administration in the Southern United States
2020
Named Postgraduate Research Assistance Awards
Named Peter Parish Award: Ellie Armon Azoulay, University of Kent. Collectors of African American Folk Music in the U.S. South
John D Lees Award: Steven K. Driver, University College London. U.S. Foreign Policy and Religion during the Occupation Era, 1912-1934
Abraham Lincoln Award: Katherine Burns, The University of Edinburgh. “Keep this Unwritten History”: African American Families’ Search for Identity in “Information Wanted” Advertisements, 1880-1902
Marcus Cunliffe Award: Ya’ara Notea, King’s College London. American Girls’ Fiction in the Twentieth Century
Malcolm Bradbury Award: Deborah Snow Molloy, University of Glasgow. The Literary Geography of Female Mental Illness in New York Women’s Literature, 1920-1945
BAAS Postgraduate Travel Award
Rebecca Slatcher, The University of Hull. North American Indigenous Languages in the British Library’s (BL) post-1850 Collections
2019
Named Postgraduate Short-Term Travel Awards
Peter Parish Award: Melanie Khuddro, University of Reading: Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science
John D Lees Award: Stephen Colbrook, University of Cambridge: Policy-making responses to the AIDS crisis in California in the 1980s
Abraham Lincoln Award: Sylvia Broeckx, University of Sheffield: The prevalence, prosecution, and consequences of rape perpetrated by the Union Army during the Civil War
Marcus Cunliffe Award: Eleanor Whitcroft, University of Sussex: Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland: Childhood, dreams, and race in American newspaper comic strips
Malcolm Bradbury Award: Shihoko Inoue, University of Exeter: Sylvia Plath, Maternity, and Medicine
BAAS Postgraduate Short-Term Travel Awards
Heather Hatton, University of Hull: Bridging the Divide: The Language of Diplomacy in Early America, 1701-1774
Nathaniel Sikand-Youngs, University of Nottingham: Place and space in literary representations of Californian landscapes, 1880-1917
2018
Named Postgraduate Short-Term Travel Awards
Peter Parish Award: Jodie Collins, University of Sussex and the British Library
John D Lees Award: Mark Eastwood, University of Nottingham
Abraham Lincoln Award: Elizabeth Barnes, University of Reading
Marcus Cunliffe Award: Kimberley Weir, University of Nottingham
Malcolm Bradbury Award: Jake Barrett-Mills, University of East Anglia
BAAS Postgraduate Travel Awards
Sage Goodwin, University of Oxford
Owen Walsh, University of Leeds
2017
Named Postgraduate Short-Term Travel Awards
Peter Parish Award: Ruth Lawlor, University of Cambridge
John D Lees Award: Darius Wainwright, University of Reading
Abraham Lincoln Award: Juliane Schlag, University of Hull
Marcus Cunliffe Award: Janet Aspley, University of Brighton
Malcolm Bradbury Award: Francesca White, University of Leicester
BAAS Postgraduate Travel Awards
Michael Docherty, University of Kent
Quintijn Kat, Institute of the Americas, University College, London
Toby Lanyon Jones, University of Leeds
Essay Awards
School Essay Award
2022
Nadia Bishop-Broadhurst (Xaverian Sixth Form College), ‘Were the Golden Years Really Golden?’; panel’s comments on the essay: “We found this to be fluid, well-structured, and engaging essay. It took a pleasingly direct line to the question, and offered a useful point of qualification around how widespread postwar affluence was in the 1950s.”
Honourable Mention:
Caitlin Bowler (Xaverian Sixth Form College), ‘Has America Always Considered Itself Exceptional?’; panel’s comments: “We found this to be a colourful, interesting response. It took up a major question about America—its purported exceptionalism—and engaged with a wide-range of commentary on the subject.“
2021
Unfortunately no prize was awarded for this year.
2020
Sam Menzies (Kingston Grammar School) “Which political dynasty is the most influential in US politics and history?”
School Essay Award for Students of Colour
2022
Prabjot Beghal (Queen Mary’s Grammar School), ‘To What Extent Has the US Used Power and Fear to Discriminate and Limit the Rights of Chinese and Japanese Minorities from the Late 19th Century to the Modern Day?’
Undergraduate Essay Award
2022
Samantha Barker (University of Manchester), ‘Was the Gentrification of Harlem after 1980 Led by External Forces? And did it Lead by the Early 2000s to a “Take-Over” of the Neighbourhood by Middle-Class Whites?’
Giacomo Guerrini (King’s college London), ‘“The most necessary part of learning is to unlearn our errors”: From Political to Cultural Independence in the Early Noah Webster’
Honourable Mentions:
Anya Carr (University of Manchester); “To what extent were NA activists recognised and embraced as allies of US CR and BP groups?”
Maddie Lyall (University of East Anglia); “Mos Def’s Black on both sides and its conflicted reflection on class in American hip-hop”
2021
Emilie Canning (UCL), “To what extent does #Black Lives Matter represent a new departure in African American protest?”
Honourable Mentions:
Kate Marshall (Sussex)
Maritsa Tsioupra-Lewis (Sussex)
2020
Siobhan Owen, University of Exeter
Honourable Mention:
Mark Parker, University of Bristol
2019
Adam Lawrence, University of Sussex
2018
Jac Lewis, University of Exeter
Honourable Mention:
Robyn Wilson, University of Leicester
2017
Nathaniel Sikand-Youngs, University of East Anglia
Undergraduate Essay Award for Students of Colour
2022
Saniya Mehmood (KCL), ‘In What Ways Did Enslaved Women Resist Their Bondage in the US South?’
Honourable Mention:
Chelsea Mamutse (University of Liverpool), ‘Using a Sample of Articles from 19th Century Newspapers, Comment on the Role that White Mob Violence Played in the Jim Crow System
Postgraduate Essay Award
2022
Liza Loginova (KCL), ‘The Black Slave Returns: Jade E. Davis and the Present/Absent Role of the Racial in Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto’
Postgraduate Essay Award for Students of Colour
2022
Riziki Millanzi (University of Sussex), ‘“I’m always ready for someone to try to take a bite out of me”: Examining Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation in Light of the COVID-19 Pandemic’
Public Engagement and Impact Award
Previous Winners
2022
Not Awarded
2020
Jessica Mehta, University of Exeter. “White Alliahs:” The Creation & Perpetuation of the Wise Indian Trope
2019
Andrew Rowcroft, University of Lincoln. Celebrating the 80th Anniversary of The Grapes of Wrath and North American Fiction Since 1900
2018
Emily Charnock and Hilde Restad, University of Cambridge
2017
Hannah-Rose Murray, University of Nottingham
Barringer/Monticello Teacher Award
Previous Winners
2018
Claire Hollis, Reigate Grammar School
2017
William O’Brien-Blake, Forest School, London
Graduate Teaching Assistantships
University of Wyoming
2021
Esther Adeyemo
2019
Glenn Houlihan
University of Mississippi
2022
Cosmo McGee (University of Hull)
2020
Lily Pearl Benn
University of New Hampshire
2021
Elliott Lelaure
BAAS Book Prize
Previous Winners
2022
Martin Halliwell, American Health Crisis: 100 Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics
Arthur Miller Centre Prizes
Arthur Miller Centre Book Prize
2022
Gordon Fraser, University of Manchester for Star Territory: Printing the Universe in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
Honourable mentions: Hannah Murray, University of Livervool for Liminal Whiteness in Early US Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) and Xine Yao, UCL for Disaffected: The Cultural Politics of Unfeeling in Nineteenth Century America (Duke University Press, 2021)
2021
Gavan Lennon, Coventry University: Living Jim Crow: The Segregated Town in Mid-Century Southern Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2020)
2020
Dr Charlie Laderman, King’s College London: Sharing the Burden: Armenia, Humanitarian Intervention and the Search for an Anglo-American Alliance, 1895-1923 (OUP, 2019)
2019
Dr Tim Jelfs, University of Groningen: The Argument About Things in the 1980s: Goods and Garbage in the Age of Neoliberalism (West Virginia University Press, 2018)
2018
Sam Reese, University of Northampton: The Short Story in Midcentury America: Bowles, McCarthy, Welty, and Williams (Louisiana State University Press, 2017)
Nicholas Grant, University of East Anglia: Winning Our Freedoms Together: African-Americans and Apartheid, 1945-1960 (University of North Carolina Press, 2017)
2017
Dr J. Michelle Coghlan, University of Manchester: Sensational Internationalism: The Paris Commune and the Remapping of American Memory in the Long Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh University Press, 2016)
Arthur Miller Centre Essay Prize
2022
Rachel Winchcombe, University of Manchester: “Reprinting the Colonial Past: Compilation, Inter-Visuality, and Argumentative Strategy in John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia” Renaissance Studies (March 2021). The article is open access and can be read here.
2021
Elizabeth Evens, UCL Institute of the Americas: “Plainclothes Policewomen on the Trail: NYPD Undercover Investigations of Abortionists and Queer Women, 1913-1926, Modern American History, 4(1), pp. 49-66.
2020
Professor Clive Webb, University of Sussex: “The Nazi persecution of Jews and the African American freedom struggle”, Patterns of Prejudice, 53 (4). pp. 337-362. ISSN 0031-322X
Honourable mention to Dr Kaetan Mistry, University of East Anglia: “A Transnational Protest against the National Security State: Whistle-Blowing, Philip Agee, and Networks of Dissent”, Journal of American History, Volume 106, Issue 2, September 2019, pp. 362–389.
2019
Professor Bridget Bennett, University of Leeds: “The Silence Surrounding the Hut”: Architecture and Absence in Wieland”, Early American Literature, 53:2 (2018)
Honourable mention to Professor Simon Newman, University of Glasgow: “Disney’s American Revolution”, Journal of American Studies, 52:3 (August 2018)
2018
Rebecca Gould, University of Birmingham: “Punishing Violent Thoughts: Islamic Dissent and Thoreauvian Disobedience in Post-9/11 America”
Honourable mention to Christopher Phelps, University of Nottingham: “The Sexuality of Malcolm X”
2017
Professor Maria Lauret, University of Sussex: “Americanization Now and Then: The ‘Nation of Immigrants’ in the Early Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries”
Honourable mention to Dr Nicholas Grant, University of East Anglia:”The National Council of Negro Women and South Africa: Black Internationalism, Motherhood, and the Cold War”