Britain and the World Announces #BATW2022 Paper Prize Winner

We received many excellent submissions for the #BATW2022 Best Paper competition. It was an absolute pleasure to spend time reviewing these essays.

We are pleased to announce that the winner of this year’s competition is Rhys Owen’s (Swansea University, UK) “A Welsh Vision of Empire? Welsh Imperialists and the Indian Empire.” Rhys’ work provided a clear and assertive argument for why historians of the British Empire and of the British world more generally need to pay attention to Wales and Welshness. Owens offered a comprehensive and well-researched examination of the way in which Welsh subjects in India used their Welsh identity to mediate their role within the British Empire. His paper demonstrated a great depth of study and originality; it is also well-written and tremendously engaging. We cannot think of anything more relevant or exciting for our readership, and it is an absolute pleasure to nominate such a fine work for the 2022 BATW paper prize.

We had such high quality submissions this year that we are also pleased to announce two honorable mentions. First, Augusta Waldie’s (University of Cambridge, UK) “Nationality, Protection, and the Global Dynamics of Britain’s Imperial Constitution: 1919-1925.” Our second honorable mention goes to Sarah-Jane Walton (University of the Free State, South Africa) and her paper “Solder Sojourners and CityScapes: Anzac Impressions of the port cities of Durban, Cape Town and Freetown during the First World War and the Significance of the Built Environment.” Both papers had absolutely fascinating arguments and were a pleasure to read. While they did not win the prize this year, we hope that we might see their work in an upcoming issue of the journal.

We would like to thank everyone who submitted papers this year. The paper prize committee (Jess Hower and Jonathan Shipe) were both extremely excited about the quality of submissions. As a reminder, Britain and the World encourages submissions to our highly-rated and peer-reviewed journal, Britain and the World, published bi-annually through Edinburgh University Press.