A related group of the American Political Science Association since 1975

  
 
 
 
Awards & Prizes

The BPG sponsors three scholarly awards:

The Samuel H. Beer Prize, awarded for the Best Ph.D. Dissertation on British Politics by a North American scholar. The prize is named in honor of Samuel Beer, a longstanding member of BPG and eminent scholar of politics. Professor Beer died in 2009; among his published obituaries were those of the New York Times, The Economist, and The Times.

The Stokes Dissertation Fellowship, awarded to help finance doctoral research.

The James B. Christoph Prize , awarded for the Best Paper on British Politics by a junior faculty member. 

 

Our latest awardees

The Beer Prize: Dr. Devashree Gupta

"Militant Flanks and Moderate Centers: The Struggle for Power and Influence in Nationalist Movements"

The 2009 winner of the Samuel H. Beer Prize for best dissertation on British politics written by a US-based scholar is Dr. Devashree Gupta. Dr. Gupta, now at Carleton College, was awarded her Ph.D. at Cornell University in 2008.

Drawing on evidence from nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland and South Africa, Dr. Gupta builds a complex model in the rational choice tradition to argue that moderate and militant nationalists, recruitment of supporters, engagement with status quo governments and external actors, and negotiation of their respective political opportunity structures can advantage one tendency over the other. This is a theoretically ambitious project that offers a thoughtful explanation of how nationalist factions secure legitimacy and influence and that provides the valuable finding that nationalist movements may not be ‘inherently vulnerable to militant politics.’ The scope of Dr. Gupta’s research suggests that she will make important contributions to literatures on nationalism, parties and social movements. This dissertation signals the foundation of a strong research career for Dr. Gupta, and we wish her the best in her future endeavors.

 

The Stokes Fellowship: Mellissa Willard-Foster

The winner of the 2009 Stokes Dissertation Research Fellowship is Mellissa Willard-Foster of the University of California, Los Angles. The Stokes award will support field research on her dissertation, Making Friends Out of Foes: The Causes and Consequences of Foreign-Imposed Regime Change.  She will conduct archival research in the UK on British-imposed regime change.

 

The Christoph Prize

The Christoph Prize was not awarded this year.