Each year, the Bertrand Russell Society accepts submissions for its Student Paper Prize, which is awarded annually to the best new paper in Russell studies. Papers may be submitted by graduate or undergraduate students. They should deal with some aspect of Russell’s life, work, or influence, and be of suitable length for presentation at the annual meeting.
The award includes a $200 cash prize, a complimentary first-year membership in the Society, and free registration and lodging at the Society’s annual meeting, where the prize is presented. The Society does not award a Student Paper Prize every year, but only in years where there is a sufficiently meritorious paper. Beginning in 1993, the Student Paper Prize replaced the Society’s Doctoral and Masters Grants.
Student Paper Prize submissions should be emailed with (1) an anonymized paper and (2) a cover page including the paper’s title and abstract, author’s name, email address, and institutional affiliation. Submissions should be emailed to Adam Stromme (chair of the committee) at brssocsecretary [at] gmail [dot] com. Submissions for the 2024 Student Paper Prize are due Sunday, March 31st, 2024.
The past paper prize winners are included below.
- 2023, Graduate Paper Amartaya Gupta (University of Delhi) “Possessive Impulses: A Russellian Evaluation of State and Property”
- 2022, Graduate Paper Michael Haiden (University of Salzburg) “Russell’s Philosophy of International Relations”
- 2021, Undergraduate Paper M.K. Wong (Cambridge University) “Russell’s Refutation of Idealism“
- 2019, Undergraduate Paper Adam Stromme (Center for American Progress) “‘The World as it Could be Made’: Bertrand Russell and the Socialist Imagination”
- 2017, Graduate Paper Lianghua Zhou (The University of Virginia) “Russell’s Two Lectures on Mathematical Logic in China”
- 2013, Undergraduate Paper Cyril Ifeanyi Anene (All Saints Catholic Church Major Seminary, Uhiele, Ekpoma, Nigeria)
- 2011, Graduate Paper Donovan Wishon (Stanford University) “Russellian Acquaintance Without Discriminating Knowledge”
- 2008, Undergraduate Paper Andrew Cavallo (Central Connecticut State University) “Russell’s Conception of Ethics”
- 2007, Graduate Paper Chris Russell (La Trobe University) “Kant and Russell’s Logicism”
- 2006, Graduate Paper Emilio Reyes Le Blanc (University of Toronto): “Russell on Acquaintance and De Dicto Belief”
- 2006, Graduate Paper Max Belaise (University of Martinique): “Russell on Science and Religion”
- 2005, Graduate Paper Gulberk Koc (McMaster University): “Russell’s Behavioral Theory of Meaning”
- 2004, Graduate Paper Irem Kurtsal (Syracuse University): “Russell on Matter and Our Knowledge of the External World”
- 2004, Graduate Paper James Connelly (York University): “Russell and Wittgenstein on Propositions”
- 2003, Graduate Paper David Taylor (University of Iowa): “Causal Processes: A Realist Approach”
- 2001, Graduate Paper Giovanni Vianelli (University of Bologna) “The Centenary of the Paradox: Pythagoras and (the recently discovered) Russell”
- 1999, Graduate Paper Jose E. Idler (M.A. student, Central University, Venezuela) “The Human Project in Bertrand Russell”
- 1996, Undergraduate Paper Brian Rookey (Arkansas State University) “What Is Meaning?”
- 1996, Graduate Paper, Gideon Makin (Wolfson College, Oxford and the Bolton Institute of Higher Education) “Some Prevalent Misconceptions Concerning the Theory of Descriptions”
- 1995, Graduate Paper Paul O’Grady (Trinity College, Dublin) “The Russellian Roots of Naturalized Epistemology”
- This paper was subsequently published in Russell 15.1 (1995), pp. 53-63.
- 1994, Undergraduate Paper Todd Hughes (SUNY, Geneseo) “Russell and Pitcher on Propositions”
- 1994, Graduate Paper Jason Holt (Dalhousie University) “On Russell’s Construction of Mind”
- 1993, Undergraduate Paper Tyler W. Roberts (SUNY, Fredonia), “Russell, the Individual and Society.”
- 1993, Graduate Paper Stefan Andersson (University of Lund, Sweden), “Bertrand Russell’s Search for Certainty in Religion and Mathematics.”
- This was from Stefan’s thesis, later published as In Quest of Certainty: Bertrand Russell’s Search for Certainty in Religion and Mathematics up to The Principles of Mathematics (1903): Stockholm, 1994.
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