Prizes (Archive)

The panel of judges for the Jeremiah Dalziel Prize in British History met recently to consider fourteen submissions for the 2009 Prize, one of the largest and most distinguished prizes across the UK available to graduate students working on modern British history (including imperial and colonial history). The panel was impressed by the high quality of the applications received which indicated the originality and sheer range of graduate research taking place in British history at Edinburgh. After considering the respective merits of each submission, the panel of judges decided that it would award the prize to one overall winner but also recognise the obvious merits and strengths of a number of other excellent submissions by awarding runner-up prizes.

The main recipient of the Jeremiah Dalziel Prize in British History for 2009 was:

• Cathryn Spence, currently completing a PhD on Women's Roles in Debt and Credit Networks in Edinburgh, Haddington and Linlithgow, 1560-1640

Runner-up prizes were awarded to (in alphabetical order):

• Thomas Lloyd (PhD title: States of Exception: Colonial Counter-Insurgency in India, Ireland and Kenya, c.1770 - 1960)
• Tim Siddons (PhD title: Suspected New-Born Child Murder and Concealment of Pregnancy in Scotland, c.1812-1930)
• Mario Varricchio (PhD title: From the Mother Country: Oral Narratives of British Emigration to the United States, 1850-1940)

Rebecca Chenery, a 2009 Economic History graduate, has been awarded one of the annual prizes for undergraduate achievement in maritime history by the British Commission for Maritime History. Her dissertation was entitled 'A whale over time: the value of the catch versus the value of conservation in International Whaling Commission negotiations, 1946-1974'. In awarding its prizes this year, the BCMH noted that the quality of work submitted had again been outstanding. Our congratulations to Rebecca for this significant achievement.
More information at: http://www.maritimehistory.org.uk/index.htm

Dr Hannah Dawson has been awarded a British Academy Research Development Award of £112,434. The award will contribute to a project to edit John Locke's Disputations on the law of nature for the Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke.

Dr Daniela Vicherat-Mattar, a Marie Curie Research Fellow in Economic and Social History, has won the Essay competition "Urban Governance: Innovation, Insecurity and the Power of Religion" organised by the Irmgard Coninx Foundation and the Social Science Research Center (WZB) in Berlin.
http://www.irmgard-coninx-stiftung.de/index.php?id=135

The essay was entitled "Urban Development Flanked by Religion and Politics: Reflections from the Belfast History" and was selected among 42 contributions, short-listed out of over 150 candidates from different countries.

The award, the Irmgard Coninx Research Grant for the best essay, is a three-month research grant in Berlin for the year 2010 at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB).

The British Council runs the very prestigious Chevening Scholarship Scheme which aims to give present and future leaders, decision-makers and particularly able students the opportunity to study in the United Kingdom. The awards are given to cover the cost of a course of post-graduate study in the UK. There were over 130 applications this year and only 5 were successful in obtaining the Scholarship. Ms. Anila Tahiri, who takes up a place on the MSc in Forensic Anthropology in September, is one of the top five who has been offered the Chevening Scholarship.

The recent Birthday honours announced that Professor Ian Ralston was awarded an OBE for services to archaeology in Scotland, and Hon. Professor David Breeze received an OBE in recognition of his work as Chief Inspector for Historic Scotland.

Recent achievements by Honorary Professors include the prestigious Rhind Lectures for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland delivered in April by Professor Emeritus Trevor Watkins, and the publication of Dr Roger Mercer's major excavation at Hambledon Hill by English Heritage.

Final year students have outshone them all. Nine first class degrees were awarded across three Archaeology MA programmes from a total of 31 graduates. We warmly applaud all these outstanding achievements.

Ms Amy Lloyd, who is completing a Cambridge PhD on British perceptions of emigration 1870-1914, has won the Economic History Society's Anniversary Fellowship for 2009-10. The successful applicant to this scheme is allowed to select the university where the Fellowship should be held. Amy has elected to work in the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies in the School for next academic year.

Dr Francesca Locatelli has won a prestigious Visiting Scholarship at St John's College Oxford to support her research into Eritrean borderlands with Sudan and Ethiopa 1890 to 1952.It will facilitate her work in the major research libraries in Oxford.

 

 

The Fellowship is for £79,910 over 15 months starting on 1 August 2009

Aims and Objectives

The central aim of the project is to integrate the scholarly expertise of a historian with the cartographic expertise of the National Library of Scotland (NLS) to produce a dynamic website capable of generating new maps based on historical data. In so doing, the project will develop a method of representing spatial information based on an address or area which will be rendered as a newly created map. The technique will be useful to almost all disciplines and, when combined with contemporary mapping, need not be confined to historical periods. The project aim, however, is to develop and test the methodology using historical data and to side-step the need to learn Geographical Information Systems.

The project will re-use existing research data obtained originally from the census, property registers, occupational and business addresses in Directories, and information on Edinburgh relating to the period c.1820-1940. This data will then be processed, using new mapping technologies and geo-referenced historical maps of the city supplied by the NLS, to develop maps of the social, cultural and political profiles of the city at various dates. By these means spatial data on Edinburgh will be interrogated in innovative ways, exploiting the potential of NLS' recent intensive scanning and georeferencing programme. However, the key outcome will be to demonstrate how new and existing research on other towns, cities and villages can be linked to a rapidly expanding corpus of freely-available geo-referenced mapping and imagery. The end result will enable students, academic researchers in most humanities disciplines, local historians and the public to learn how to input their own data and, through the tools developed by the project, generate maps of their own data superimposed on any nationally or locally held, geo-referenced map.

Memories: the Unremembered Experience of Italians in Scotland during World War Two'. The Prize is awarded annually for 'an important contribution' by an individual to the study of Oral History or Folklife in Great Britain and Ireland. Dr Ugolini also has a contract with Manchester University Press to produce a monograph from the thesis. The presentation ceremony for the Ratcliff Prize will take place in Edinburgh.

Dr Sarah Cockram has been awarded a Leverhulme ECF in the 2009 competition for a project on Courtly Creatures: Animals and Image at the Renaissance Court. It is believed that this is the only such award to be made to a postdoctoral historian in any Scottish university this year. The School warmly congratulates Sarah on her achievement.

Courtly Creatures: Animals and Image at the Italian Renaissance Court:
Renaissance courts were spaces of co-habitation for people and an array of creatures, including dogs, horses, big cats, and birds. These animals were powerful manifestations of their owner's identity, proclaiming status and wealth. This project examines animals deployed in meticulous strategies of princely image construction, as political indicators; accessories; commodities, dead or alive; and entertainment. It will also investigate affective ties between rulers and their animals. Interdisciplinary study of this under-explored area will repopulate the court with its creatures, who were often accorded far greater prestige than many humans. It will illuminate court mechanisms of self-presentation and performance, and refresh our appreciation of relations of human to animal, human to human, and state to state.

 

 

Yvonne McEwen, Honorary Fellow in, The Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars has beeen awarded the 2009 Women in Medicine, Gloeckner Summer Fellowship. Competition for this annually awarded Fellowship is very fierce and the calibre of candidates is outstanding.

The award is made by the Drexel-Hahnemann University School of Medicine Archives, Philadelphia. The archives hold some of the oldest and rareest acquisitions on the history of women in medicine in the United States.

Last summer the British Army commissioned Yvonne to write the Official Histories of The Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps. The Gloeckner Fellowship will allow her to research the work of the American Women's Hospital and the part it played in the medical and nursing allied war effort in the Two World Wars.

 

Dr Martin Chick is the first winner of the Economic History Society's Teaching Prize. This £1,000 prize is intended to recognise the importance of teaching in economic and/or social history. It will be awarded annually to the individual who is judged to be making the most significant contribution to the teaching of that discipline. Martin's well-earned achievement was announced at the Society's annual conference, held at the University of Warwick 3-5th April 2009.

 

Dr Monica Azzolini and Dr Paul Quigley have been awarded Research Fellowships for 2009-10 by the Research Awards Advisory Committee of the Leverhulme Trust. The competition for these awards is intense; only one other historian in a Scottish university was successful in this year's competition and the success rate across all subjects was around 15 per cent. The School warmly congratulates Monica and Paul on their achievement.

Both candidates produced work of an extremely high standard and show great promise as scholars. Warmest congratulations go to them on this significant achievement.