Dissertation Prizes
AAH Student Dissertation Prizes
Dissertation Prize
Entries for the AAH Student Dissertation Prize are invited from UK undergraduate and postgraduate students of History of Art and Visual Culture, enrolled on either practice-based or theoretical courses, whose work is on some aspect of the history of art in its broadest sense. This prize is awarded in collaboration with publishers, Thames & Hudson
For 2012, the application deadlines for undergraduate and postgraduate competitions will be separate.
Deadline for UG submissions: 1st August 2013 for dissertations submitted this academic year.
The competition is closed for postgraduate submissions, and will re-open next year. The deadline will be 1st December 2013.
The winners for the most outstanding undergraduate and postgraduate
dissertations will receive:
- A £200 cash prize
- Books to the value of £150 from Thames & Hudson
- Free AAH student membership for one year
- Publication of a 300-word abstract of their winning entry in the AAH Bulletin
- A presentation at the AAH Annual Conference, including free admission to the conference (worth £85)
One prize will be awarded for an undergraduate dissertation, and one for a postgraduate dissertation.
Dissertations will be assessed on the following qualities:
Originality: the dissertation should demonstrate a mature and original approach to issues and themes of current concern to the discipline in its broadest interpretation.
Research: This should be thorough, broad and combine primary and secondary sources as appropriate.
Method: This should show a clear awareness of appropriate methodological approaches.
Content: The dissertation should be clearly structured, all source material should be soundly evaluated, the argument or line of enquiry should be balanced and the conclusion well grounded.
To enter students must submit the following by email to admin@aah.org.uk attached to a single email:
- A complete electronic copy of the dissertation (in PDF or Microsoft Word format).
- A completed entry form (in PDF or Word format)
- A scanned image of the completed nomination form, signed by the applicant’s supervisor (in PDF or Word format only).
- A 300 word abstract (in PDF or Word format)
- TOTAL SIZE OF ATTACHMENTS MUST NOT EXCEED 6mb (SIX). You may need to down-res any images used in order to meet this limit.
Forms
See guidelines document for full details. Please note rules on anonymisation of dissertation document.
Deadline: for 2012-13 Undergraduate Dissertation Prize, 1st August 2013, 17.00.
Dissertations and all accompanying paperwork including nomination forms must be sent to the AAH Office and received by the deadline. The deadline is final. No entries will be accepted after this date. You are responsible for ensuring your nomination forms are correct and reach us before the deadline. Applications received after the deadline, not conforming precisely to the regulations or missing sections of the paperwork will not be considered.
Successful applications will be notified about a month after the deadline. The Dissertation Prize will be presented at the AAH Annual Conference.
Assessment:
The prize will be awarded by a panel of judges nominated by The Association of Art Historians and Thames and Hudson. The panel’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into with regard to the judging of the dissertations.
Previous Winners:
Awardees for 2012 TBC
Dissertation Prize 2010-11
Postgraduate winner: Connor Kissane (UCL), "The Violence of Representation: Imaging the Martyred Body in Santi Nereo de Achilleo"
Undergraduate winner: Rachel Dedman (Oxford), "The Importance of Being Ernst: A Reassessment of E.H Gombrich's Relationship with Psychoanalysis".
UG Shortlist:
Daphna Starr (University of Leeds), 'Clare Winsten: Whitechapel Girl'
Francois Vandame (University of Bristol), 'Reading Graffiti: The Aesthetics of Illegal Art'
PG Shortlist:
Rachel Graves (University of Nottingham), ' Breaking With Tradition? The ‘Expanded Field’ in Contemporary Photographic Practice'
Darren Clark (University of Glasgow), ' An Analysis of the Primary Aesthetic Dimensions of Glasgow’s Riverside Museum'
Dissertation Prize 2009-10 (Full abstracts PDF)
BA Winner: Ness Wood (University of Brighton), 'It’s So New Fashioned: Hille from Tradition to Modernity'
Shortlisted entries: Elizabeth Jordan (Edinburgh) ‘The Edinburgh Mirror’
Imogen Wiltshire (Birmingham) ‘John Bratby’s Courtyard with Washing (1956)’
MA Winner: Alison Goudie (University of Oxford), 'The wax portrait bust as trompe-l’oeil? A case study of Queen Maria Carolina of Naples'
Shortlisted entries: Amy Knight (Sussex) ‘The Apparitional Girl of the Fin de Siècle Philip Wilson Steer's female figures and the sexuality that haunts the vacant body’
Tim Satterthwaite (Sussex) ‘VU magazine and the patterns of utopian modernism’
Dissertation Prize 2008-09
BA winner: Matt Fountain, (Christies Education)
MA winner: Stephanie Straine (University of Glasgow)
