Audrey Richards prize
for the best doctoral thesis in African Studies
The Audrey Richards Prize is awarded biennially for the best doctoral thesis in African Studies which has been successfully examined in a United Kingdom institute of higher education during the two calendar years immediately preceding the 11th to 13th September 2008 ASAUK Conference.
The 2008 prize will be for theses examined between 1 January 2006 and 31 December 2007.
Nominations must be made by supervisors or examiners, with the permission of the candidate, by 2nd May 2008 and should be submitted to;
Research Administrator
African Studies Association
Centre for West African Studies
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
Nominations should be accompanied by a supporting letter (no more than 300 words), a copy of the thesis, and where possible a copy of the examiners’ report. The recommendation for the award will be made by the Vice-President of ASAUK supported where necessary by Council colleagues.
The winner will be announced at the September Annual General Meeting of the ASAUK and the prize presented at the ASAUK Conference in September 2008.
The winners of the 2006 Audrey Richards Prize (theses from 2004 and 2005)
These were announced at the 2006 ASAUK conference in London. There were three winners and all three were excellent theses on diverse subjects.
Joint winners:
Dr Williams Oliver
Norman, London School of Economics and Political Science
Title: Living on the Frontline: Politics, Migration and Transfrontier
Conversation in the Mozambican Villages of the Mozambique-South Africa
Borderland
Supervisor: Deborah James and Matthew Engelke.
Dr Samuel Cyuma, OCMS,
Oxford
Title: Conflict Reconciliation in South Africa (1990-1998) and its
Significance for Mediating Role of the Church in Rwanda 1990-2003
Supervisor: Dr Ben Knighton.
Third position:
Dr Kate Meagher, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford. Title: Identity
Economics: Informal Manufacturing and Social Networks in South-Eastern
Nigeria
Supervisor: Professor Barbara Harriss-White.
Previous Winners
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, Keele | 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” |
