Awarded annually by the Transatlantic Studies Association for the best paper presented at its annual conference by an early career scholar.
Award: £250
2024 SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 19 JUne
Early career scholar is defined as: a PhD student; anyone within five years of having been awarded a PhD; anyone who has a full-time appointment at a recognised higher education institution, but has not held the post for more than 3 years and does not fall into the doctoral category.
The winner of the Watt Prize is expected to organise a panel for the following year's TSA conference, with the participants being PhD and/or post-doc level.
The winner of the DC Watt Prize will automatically have their paper considered for publication in the Journal of Transatlantic Studies, subject to the journal’s normal review processes. Submissions for the DC Watt Prize must therefore be eligible for
publication in the Journal of Transatlantic Studies, i.e. they must not have been published, or accepted for publication, elsewhere.
Instructions for applicants
Please submit a brief CV and a copy of the paper that will be presented at the TSA annual conference.
Papers should be fully developed and will be assessed against the stated requirements for article submissions to the Journal of Transatlantic Studies. All submissions must be a minimum of 19 pages in order to be given full consideration (applicants should note that a typical twenty-minute conference presentation will be much shorter).
All materials should be sent to the TSA Prizes and Awards Officer, David Ryan.
past recipients
2023:
Heather Colley, University of Oxford, ‘The Ubiquitous Ocean: Naval Conquest, Forms of Citizenship, and Attempted Emancipation in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’
Deborah Anne Fisher, Independent Scholar, ‘The Metamorphosis of John Singleton Copley’s Alice Hooper’
2022: Flavia Canestrini, Sciences Po
‘Economic Sanctions and the Redefinition of American Hegemony in the 1980s’
2021: Asensio Robles Lopez, European University Institute
‘Between Détente and the Shock of the Global: The Late Franco Regime and its meaning for Transatlantic Relations (1975)’
2019: Hannah Champion, Université Bordeaux Montaigne
‘Exiles of Erin: The Irish Bridget in Harriet Prescott Spofford’s The Servant Girl Question’
2018: Susan Colbourn, University of Toronto
‘Denuclearization or Delusion? Envisioning Nuclear Free Spaces in the 1980s'
2017: Jake Richards, Harvard University
‘Anti-slave-trade law, “Liberated Africans”, and the state in the South Atlantic world, c. 1839 – 1852'
2016: Stella Krepp, University of Bern
‘The Falklands/Malvinas War: A View from the South’
2015: Ben Zdencanovic, Yale University
‘Remaking Exceptionalism: West European Social Democracy and the Shaping of the Post-War American Welfare State, 1943-1949’
2014: Mark Seddon, University of Sheffield
‘Peace by Dictation? Anglo-US Efforts to Apply the Atlantic Charter to the Venezuelan Oil Industry, 1944′.
2013: Stephen Bowman, Northumbria University
'An Englishman Abroad and an American Lawyer in Europe: Harry Brittain, James Beck and the Pilgrims Society during the First World War?'
2012: Marie Gayte, Universite du Sud Toulon-Var
'Cold War Triangle? The United States, the Vatican and Cuba'
2011: Douglas Snyder, University of Colorado at Boulder
''Fantastic and Absurd Utterances': The Vietnam War and Misperceptions of Anti-Americanism in Franco-American Relations'
2010: Frederic Heurtebize, Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III)
'Washington's Assessment of the Union of the Left in France (1971-1981): A Threat to NATO?'
2009: Bronwen Everill, King's College London
'British West Africa or 'The United States of Africa'? Imperial Pressures on the Transatlantic Antislavery Movement, 1839-1842'