Audrey Richards prize
for the best doctoral thesis in African Studies

The Audrey Richards Prize for the best thesis on Africa is awarded every two years at the ASAUK Biennial Conference. Thanks to the generosity of the Royal African Society and a number of noted publishers, who donate books, journal subscriptions and cash, this prize is well worth having. It is also a pleasant way of recognizing and encouraging our up-and-coming new Africanists.

The prize will be awarded for a thesis completed between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2011. Nominations must be made by supervisors or examiners, with the permission of the candidate, and a copy of the thesis should be submitted by 31 March 2012 to David Kerr, ASAUK Research Administrator, CWAS, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT.

The winner of the 2010 Audrey Richards Prize  (theses from 2008 and 2009)

Hassanali Sachedina for his Oxford University D.Phil thesis,
Wildlife is Our Oil: Conservation, Livelihoods and NGOs in the Tarangire Ecosystem, Tanzania.

Previous Winners

2008

Winner Fraser McNeil, LSE An Ethnographic Analysis of HIV/AIDS in the Venda Region of South Africa: Politics Peer Education and Music
Winner Ruth Marshall, University of Oxford The Politics of Pentecostalism in Nigeria, 1975-2000
Runner-up    

2006

Winner Dr Williams Oliver Norman, LSE Living on the Frontline: Politics, Migration and Transfrontier Conversation in the Mozambican Villages of the Mozambique-South Africa Borderland
Winner Dr Samuel Cyuma, OCMS, Oxford Conflict Reconciliation in South Africa (1990-1998) and its Significance for Mediating Role of the Church in Rwanda 1990-2003
Runner-up Dr Kate Meagher, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford Identity Economics: Informal Manufacturing and Social Networks in South-Eastern Nigeria

2004

Winner Joost Fontein, Edinburgh The silence of Great Zimbabwe: contested landscapes and the power of heritage
Runner-up Rebekah Lee, Oxford Locating ‘Home’: strategies of settlement, identity-formation and social change among African women in Cape Town, 1948-2000
Runner-up Mattia Fumanti, Manchester Youth, elites and distinction in a northern Namibian town

2002

Winner Helen Tilley, Oxford The African Research Survey and the British Colonial Empire: consolidating environmental, medical, and anthropological debates 1920-1940
Runner-up Monica Bungaro, Birmingham New cartographies in recent African fiction: changing patterns in the representation of female characters
Runner-up Michael Taylor, Edinburgh Life, land and power: contesting development in Northern Botswana

2000

Winner Ruth Watson, Oxford Chieftaincy politics and civic consciousness in Ibadan history, 1829-1939
Runner-up Annette Czekelius, SOAS Artistry and effectiveness in language use: the evaluation of ways of speaking among the Berba of Benin
Runner-up Jessica Schafer, Oxford Soldiers at peace: the post-war politics of demobilised soldiers in Mozambique, 1964-1996

1998

Winner John Murton, Cambridge Coping with more people: population growth, non-farm income and economic differentiation in Machakos District, Kenya
Runner-up Andrea Cornwall, SOAS For money, children and peace: everyday struggles in changing times in Ado-Ado, Southwestern Nigeria
Runner-up Frederick Rohde, Edinburgh Nature, cattle thieves and various other midnight robbers: images of people, place and landscape in Damaraland, Namibia

1996

Winner David Maxwell, Oxford A social and conceptual history of North-East Zimbabwe, 1890-1990
Runner-up John Parker, SOAS Ga State and Society in early colonial Accra, 1860s-1920s
Runner-up Andrew Bank, Cambridge Liberals and their enemies: racial ideology at the Cape of Good Hope, 1820-1850

1994

Winner Caroline Orwin, SOAS “Yodit”