The AWGSA Most Distinguished Paper Award was established to recognise and promote outstanding scholarship in the fields of Women’s and Gender Studies and related disciplines. The inaugural prize was offered in 2018; it is now awarded every two years to the most distinguished peer-reviewed article published by an AWGSA member that innovatively engages with feminist paradigms.
The next Most Distinguished Paper Award will be awarded at the AWGSA Biennial Conference, Activist Energies in Melbourne in 2022. The award eligibility period is from November 2020 – June 2022. Criteria below.
Closing Date: 31 July 2022
Winner of the 2021 Inaugural Most Distinguished Paper Award
Thao Phan (Deakin University) Amazon Echo and the Aesthetics of Whiteness Catalyst (2019)
Winner of the 2018 Inaugural Most Distinguished Paper Award
J. R. Latham 
(Deakin/University of Melbourne) – (Re)Making sex: A praxiography of the gender clinic. Feminist Theory 18 (2): 177–204. Available here
Eligibility Criteria
This paper prize is awarded to the most distinguished, feminist, published journal article in the relevant period.
The prize is open to submissions by any AWGSA member.
Papers authored by AWGSA executive members can be nominated but the author/s cannot be part of the voting process.
Only one is permitted per applicant.
The article submitted by the applicant must be in English, have been published (and can include early view online) in the designated period.
The article must have a specific feminist focus.
Papers by multiple authors will be accepted when submitted by the first author. Where there is more than one author, all authors who are members of AWGSA will be recognised for the prize.
Symposia or parts of symposia, replies or rejoinders, notes and book reviews (but not review essays) are excluded from consideration.
The article will be assessed on the following criteria:
Quality (e.g., thoroughness, eloquence, persuasive argument) 25%
Contribution to feminist scholarship (e.g., location within field, extending the field) 25%
Originality (e.g., innovative application/generation of theory and/or methodologies) 25%
Clarity (e.g., well-written, clearly constructed, presentation) 25%
The Prize
The prize winner will receive:
- An airfare to the conference for the prize presentation
- A two-year membership to AWGSA.
- A listing on the AWGSA website award page
- Promotion through the AWGSA membership and social media
Nominations and Submissions Procedure
The nomination and submission details are:
- A general call is made prior to the AWGSA conference to members through the AWGSA Digest, website, facebook and twitter accounts.
- Nominations must be submitted via email to awgsa.submissions@gmail.com.
- Required paperwork is:
- A written statement addressing each of the prize criterion (a one-page limit – no less than 2.54cm margins with a minimum font size of 11).
- A pdf copy of the published paper.
Voting Process
The committee judging the award will consist of senior feminist academics who are members of AWGSA.
Round 1: If 8 or less nominations are received then all panel members review all nominated papers and rank them in order from top (1) to bottom. If 9 or more nominations are received, the papers are divided equally among the panel members with extra papers to be reviewed by the chair of the panel. Each panel member reviews their allocated papers and ranks them in order from top (1) to bottom.
Round 2: All panel members review the papers ranked ‘1’ from Round 1, and rank them in order from top (1) to bottom.
Round 3: All panel members review the papers ranked ‘1’ in Round 2, choose their top 3, and place them in order ranked 1-3, providing brief comments to support their decision.
From the voting in Round 3, a winner is selected and the decision of the committee is communicated to the AWGSA Executive for ratification. The winner of the prize in then notified.