The Hakluyt Society awards an annual essay prize (or more than one, if the judges so decide) of up to a total of £750. The prize or prizes for 2016 will be presented at the Hakluyt Society’s Annual General Meeting in London in June 2016, where the winner or winners will be invited to attend as the Society’s guests. Travel expenses within the UK will be reimbursed, and winners will also receive one-year membership of the Hakluyt Society. The Hakluyt Society will publish winning entries in a special section of its peer-reviewed online Journal, should the author wish it to do so.
Eligibility criteria
The competition is open to anyone under the age of thirty. Proof of age, such as scanned copy of a passport or other official document, must accompany any submission.
Scope and subject matter
Before considering the submission of an essay, entrants should visit the Hakluyt Society’s website (www.hakluyt.com) to familiarise themselves with the objects of the Society and the scope and nature of its publications. Essays should be based on original research in any discipline in the humanities or social sciences, and on an aspect of the history of travel, exploration and cultural encounter or their effects, in the tradition of the work of the Society.
Essays should be in English (except for such citations in languages other than English as may appear in footnotes or endnotes) and between 6,000 and 8,000 words in length (including notes but excluding bibliography). Illustrations, diagrams and tables essential to the text fall outside the word count. Submissions should be unpublished, and not currently in press, in production or under review elsewhere.
Entrants should consult the style guidelines of the Society, which can be downloaded from http://www.hakluyt.com/authors_info.htm If they wish their essays to be published in the Society’s Journal they must follow these guidelines and must also agree to accept any editorial adjustments made by the refereeing panel.
Submission procedures and deadline
Essays should be submitted as email attachments in Word.doc format to Professor Sebastian Sobecki, Chair of the Essay Prize Judging Panel, at s.i.sobecki@rug.nl and to Richard Bateman, Administrator of the Hakluyt Society, at office@hakluyt.com by 1 November 2015. The entrant’s name, address (including preferred email address), institutional affiliation (if any, with date of admission), and degrees (if any, with dates of conferment) should appear within the body of the email, together with a note of the title of the submitted essay. The subject line of the email should include the words ‘HAKLUYT SOCIETY ESSAY PRIZE’ and the author’s name. By submitting an essay, an entrant certifies that it is the entrant’s own original work.
Selection procedure
The Judging Panel encourages innovative submissions that make an important contribution to knowledge, or a critical or methodological contribution to scholarship. The panel and selected reviewers will pay attention to the analytical rigour, originality, wider significance, depth and scope of the work, as well as to style and presentation. The panel is comprised of academics selected from members of the Hakluyt Society’s council and editorial board of The Journal of the Hakluyt Society.
The Hakluyt Society reserves the right not to award a prize if no submission is judged to be of sufficient merit. The Society’s decision will be announced in April 2016