R. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize

To be eligible for submission the essay must be:

• Entirely the student’s own work and submitted in unrevised form;
• Written in the current academic year by a postgraduate student currently registered (or within six months of registration having terminated) at a university based in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland;
• Addressing a topic within the scope of the discipline of French studies;
• Written in either English or French, with any quotations from French supplied in the original language;
• Up to 6,000 words in length (including notes but excluding bibliography);
• Word-processed with numbered pages;
• Submitted without the name of the student, or institution, appearing in the essay;
• Submitted by the university, with the student’s agreement, as one of up to three annual submissions per university;
• Accompanied by a separate coversheet;
• Submitted on the understanding that no correspondence will be entered into by the Society regarding individual essays.

If a draft thesis chapter is entered, candidates are reminded to ensure that it can be read as a stand-alone essay. Entries must be accompanied by the coversheet available via the button below, and must adhere strictly to the presentation guidelines given on that sheet.

Please note that there is a limit of three entries per department and one per person. This limit applies to both collegiate and non-collegiate universities.

These criteria (and the cover-sheet linked below) were updated on Friday 1st November to correct a discrepancy regarding the maximum permitted length of time between registration elapsing and a student submitting an essay, and to clarify that this prize is open only to students who are (or were) based at a university in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland.

A copy of each entry should be emailed, with a completed coversheet, by 30 November 2024, to Professor Richard Scholar (richard.scholar@durham.ac.uk).

The competition is judged in two rounds. In the first round every essay is judged anonymously by two appropriately selected members of the Executive Committee of the Society for French Studies who are unaware of the submitting university but who are made aware of relevant contextual information supplied on the coversheet.

The five best essays from that first round then undergo a second round of judging by a panel normally comprising the Society’s President, the Co-ordinator of the R. Gapper Undergraduate Essay Prize, the Co-ordinator of the R. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize, the Editor of the French Studies Bulletin, and a member of the editorial team of French Studies.

To avoid conflicts of interest, in both rounds no essay is judged by someone from the same institution as the author of the essay. In the second round, this sometimes requires that one or more substitute judges be selected from the wider Executive Committee to assess all of the five essays.

The prize is awarded for an essay of outstanding merit at postgraduate level and which is also the best essay submitted in its year. The winning essay will be exceptionally distinguished work for that level: critically or theoretically sophisticated, intellectually adventurous, original in its approach and expressed in sophisticated and elegant English or French. It will also be worthy of publication without major revision.