The RHS Early Career Article Prize is awarded for an essay or article based on original historical research, by a doctoral candidate or an early career historian within three years of being awarded a doctorate, published in a journal or an edited collection of essays.
Two prizes of £250 each are awarded annually.
2025 Prize Shortlist
The shortlist for the Society’s 2025 Early Career Article Prize is now available.
The list includes eight articles, published in 2024, from which two winners will be chosen and announced in early July.
Eligibility for the RHS Early Career Article Prize, 2025
To be eligible for consideration for the prize:
- applicants must be doctoral students in a historical subject at a UK or Irish institution, or be within three years* of having a submitted a corrected thesis in a historical subject in a UK/Irish institution at the time of the closing date for entries.
- the article or essay must have been published in a journal or edited collection during the calendar year 2024 for the 2025 prize round. Advanced access publisher versions are also eligible, but an item cannot be entered more than once in subsequent years.
- an electronic copy of the publisher’s version the article or essay will need to be uploaded to the entry form.
*this is an extension from the two years for applicants for the article prize in 2024 and before.
Submitting your article for the prize, 2025
For 2025, entries for the RHS Early Career Article Prize remain via self-nomination by the author. The process for submission is as follows:
- eligible authors whose article / book chapter qualifies for the 2025 prize should submit an application via the RHS applications platform (open from Monday 2 December 2024 to Friday 31 January 2025). At this stage, applicants will be asked to provide the publisher’s version of the article as a pdf. The closing date for online applications for the 2025 prize round is Monday 31 January 2025.
- all submissions will then be reviewed by the judging panel to create a long-list from February 2025.
- judging then takes place leading to the creation of a Shortlist of six articles, from which two final winners of the RHS Early Career Article Prize will be chosen. The award of the next round of article prizes is expected to occur in or soon after July 2025.
RHS Early Career Article Prize Winners, 2024
Congratulations to Ellen Smith and Jonathan Tickle who are the co-winners of the 2024 prize.
- Ellen is the author of ‘Widows, Violence and Death: The Construction of Imperial Identity and Memory across British India, 1857–1926’, Gender & History (2023).
- Jonathan is the author of ‘Changing Queenships in Tenth-Century England: Rhetoric and (Self-)Representation in the Case of Eadgifu of Kent at Cooling’, Early Medieval Europe (2023).
Judges’ citation for Ellen Smith’s article:
Ellen Smith’s work explores a critical dimension of understanding imperialism and the justification of imperial projects, by examining how a feminised culture of mourning was utilised and contested in India. Ellen shows how British widows’ memorialisation of their husbands and their service in the military, the Indian Civil Service or as missionaries was part of shaping narratives around ‘honour’ and violence.
The panel were very impressed with Ellen’s methodological approach, which used three women as case studies to explore the different dimensions of imperial work noted above. This produced an exceptionally rich depth of archival sources, which Ellen uses to powerful effect in this complex and multi-faceted study.
Judges’ citation for Jonathan Tickle’s article:
Jonathan Tickle’s article is centred upon Sawyer 1211, an Anglo-Saxon charter in which Queen Eadgifu endowed Christ Church in Canterbury with two estates in Kent, namely at Cooling and Osterland.
Sawyer 1211 has been explored by many historians as it reveals a longstanding dispute over land. Nonetheless, this article brings a fresh, vibrant and vital analysis of the text. Jonathan makes a highly original and compelling contribution by using this legal document as the basis for a rich discussion of women’s rights and the limits to and possibilities of queenship in the 10th century. The panel were impressed with how Jonathan used a legal document as a means for exploring performativity in politics in this period.
- A full listing of previous winners of the Royal Historical Society’s article prizes, previously known as the Alexander Prize (1898-2024) is available here.
General enquiries about Society’s Prizes should be sent to: administration@royalhistsoc.org.
IMAGE: ‘Specimens of Penmanship after Jan van de Velde and other Calligraphy Books, Conrad Baumann’, c. 1620, Metropolitan Museum of Art Collections, public domain