BIAJS Student Essay Prize
Announcement – BIAJS 2026 Student Essay Prize
Call for Submissions – Deadline for Submissions: 15 June 2026
On behalf of the BIAJS committee, we are pleased to announce the launch of the 2026 BIAJS student essay prize. Two prizes of £400, ordinarily for one outstanding undergraduate and one postgraduate essay by students at institutions in the UK and Ireland, are awarded annually.
Undergraduate submissions should be a final year dissertation from the current academic year on a subject relating to Jewish Studies, broadly speaking of any period ancient through modern.
Postgraduate offerings should be an essay (excluding dissertations) submitted to their institution in the current academic year on a subject relating to Jewish Studies. Submissions by postgraduate research students are not considered.
Only one submission per candidate is allowed, although departments may submit as many prize-worthy candidates as they wish. Please provide an electronic copy of the essay, clearly identified as an undergraduate or postgraduate entry, and the email address of the student.
Submission can be made either by the supervisor of the essay or the department where the student is affiliated, and all submissions should be sent to Dr Lindsey Davidson (secretarybiajs@gmail.com), acting on behalf of the judging panel.
We also request that you obtain with permission a personal email for each candidate for getting in touch with them if they do win, in case their university email is deactivated by July when winners are announced.
Submissions to the essay prizes are restricted to students at UK and Ireland higher education institutions; we are unfortunately not in a position to accept worldwide submissions. (We do, however, accept worldwide submissions for the book prize, each year.) Student candidates are not required to be active members of BIAJS. Student winners of the essay prize will be welcome (but not required) to attend the BIAJS summer conference where the prizes will be conferred to receive their prize certificates.
The deadline for all submissions is Monday 15 June 2026 at 11:59 PM.
The prize winners will be announced in July at the BIAJS 2026 conference and the written announcement to follow in mailings and the 2026 Bulletin (released in the autumn)
Past Prize Winners
Student Essay Prize 2025
Undergraduate winners (split):
Dylan Moss (Oxford), “Lancelot as a New King David: Medieval Jewish Notions of Davidic Descent as Reflected in the Medieval Hebrew Arthurian Romance”
Ethan Yang (UCL), “A comparative study of the magical כשׁף terminology in the Hebrew Bible and its Aramaic rendering in the Targumim”
Postgraduate winner:
Max Benster (Oxford), “Reflecting on the Cosmos in Hellenistic Judaism”
Student Essay Prize 2024
Undergraduate winner:
Konor Sajti from UCL for “Regimenting Emotions Emotional Communities under Israeli Militarism during the 1969-1970 War of Attrition.”
- Hannah Buluwela from the University of Edinburgh, for “An Investigation into the Framing of the Holocaust in the New Imperial War Museum Holocaust Exhibition: Space, Objects, Text and the Shaping of Visitors’ Understanding”
- Cora Morris from the University of Cambridge, for “‘This, too, is Torah’ (Berachot 62a): Radical Jewish Subjecthood, Belonging, and the Question of Authenticity at a Queer Yeshiva School in East London”
Postgraduate winner:
- Yael Tischler from Leo Baeck College, for “He Had Her at ‘Shalom’: The Midrashic Portrait of Shelomit bat Dibri”
Student Essay Prize 2022
Maximilian Ferst (UCL) for ‘Borderlanders: How Zionism and Arab Nationalism Undermined Arab-Jewish Identities’.
Leo Franks (University of Aberdeen), for ‘“Rays of the Spirit of Poetry…”: Haham Moses Gaster and the Advent of Cultural Zionism’.
Andras Schweiczer (University of Manchester), for ‘Red, White, and Green: Three Aspects of the Debates on Zionism between 1897 and 1917’.
Mary Whittingdale (University of Oxford), ‘The Dynamics of Divestiture: Comparing Motifs of Garment Tearing in the Narratives of Joseph and Tamar’.
2021
Undergraduate:
Phoebe Brandon (University of Oxford) for the essay ‘Challenging the “Plight” of the Agunah: An Exploration of Feminist Orthodox Responses to the Problem of Chained Women in Israel’.
Postgraduate:
Martin Lindner (University of Cambridge) for the essay ‘“Wer ‘ihr’? Wen meinst du mit ‘ihr’?”’[‘“Who ‘you’? Whom do you mean by ‘you’?”’]: Questions of Jewish Belonging in Anna Mitgutsch’s Haus der Kindheit [House of Childhood] (2000) and Doron Rabinovici’s Ohnehin [Anyway]’ (2004)’.
Honourable mention:
Ellie Birkett (University of Manchester) for the essay ‘Voices of the Past: Narrating Red Army Rape in Post-War Eastern Europe’.
Student Essay Prize 2020
Undergraduate:
1st: Aviv Reich (University of Oxford) for ‘Israel Zangwill: Negotiating Jewish Identities in English’.
2nd: Sophie Rejali (University of Birmingham) for ‘Redeeming Dr Miklós Nyiszli in Light of Primo Levi’s “Grey Zone”‘.
Student Essay Prize 2019
Undergraduate:
Ryan Comins‘, ‘A Linguistic Analysis of the Wisdom of Solomon’ (Cambridge).
Isobel Carter, ‘The Role of Autobiographical Hardships in Avrom Sutzkever’s Volumes of Short Stories: Griner Akvariyum, Di Nevue Fun Shvartsaplen, and, Dortn Vu Es Nekhtikn Di Shtern’ (UCL).
Postgraduate:
Robert Walker, ‘The Competency of the Greek Translator of Deuteronomy’ (Cambridge).
Hollie Eaton, ‘Blackguards in Bonnets: Women’s Suffrage, Religion and interfaith Relations, 1910-1914’ (Manchester).
Miruna Belea, ‘The Magical Use of Religious Texts: A cognitive approach to religious and cultural textual elements on an amulet from Gaster’s Collection at The John Rylands Library’ (Manchester).
2018
Undergraduate:
2017
Undergraduate:
2016
Undergraduate:
Adam Groves, ‘From Gaza to the Streets of Britain: British Social Media Coverage of the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict’ (Southampton).
Emilie Wiedemann, ‘Processes of narrative construction and the politics of memory in the interpretation of Holocaust art’ (Edinburgh).
2015
undergraduate – 1st place Molly Whyte ‘Women in Britain and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933-1945’ (Southampton); – joint second prize David Clarke ‘The British Government, The Palestine Question And Orientalism,1945-1948’(Edge Hill) and Nathan Taylor ‘A Crisis of Identity: Reflections on the York Massacre of 1190 and the Account of William of Newburgh’ (Nottingham)
postgraduate – not awarded
2014
undergraduate – Louise Pedersen, ‘The Jews’ Hospital and Orphan Asylum: An Assessment of the ‘Orphan Experience’ 1841-1914’ (Nottingham)
postgraduate – not awarded
2013
undergraduate – Rhian Evans ‘The Early Transmission and Interpretation of Malachi’ (Manchester); – Leo Mercer ‘Is a Nonfoundationalist Jewish Philosophy Possible? The Thought of Tamar Ross and Peter Ochs as Case Study’ (Manchester)
postgraduate – not awarded
2012
undergraduate – Katherine Webb ‘Perceptions of Herod: The Jew, The King, The Myth’ (Southampton)
postgraduate – Laura Quick ‘Lamech’s change of mind: early Jewish psychology in the Genesis Apocryphon, with reference to the use of שנא in the book of Daniel’ (Durham)
2011
undergraduate – with special distinction: Magdalena Luszczynska, ‘Father-Son Relationship in medieval Ashkenaz’ (UCL); – Daphna Starr, ‘Clare Winsten: The Whitechapel Girl’ (Leeds)
postgraduate – not awarded
2010
undergraduate – Rebecca Coll, ‘Who should be permitted to represent the Holocaust visually? A comparative study between the art of a survivor, an evader and an empathizer’ (Birmingham)
postgraduate – not awarded
2009
undergraduate – Hannah Atkinson, ‘A Comparison of the Views and Assumptions of the Holocaust Theologies of Eliezer Berkovits and Paul van Buren’ (Manchester)
postgraduate – Tyler Smith , ‘The “Communal Meal” in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, and Philo: An Evaluation of its Purported Cultic Function and Relation to the Eucharist’ (Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies)
2008
Joint 1st (postgraduate) – Simon Mayers, ‘An Examination of the Judaism-Jewishness Dialectic within Jewish Studies’ (Manchester)
Joint 1st (postgraduate) – Zoe Jacob, ‘Which theory of secular domestic law best helps underpin the Orthodox Jewish feminist approach to halakhah, and does this theoretical underpinning strengthen Orthodox Jewish feminist position?’ (UCL)
2007
1st – Thomas Sharrard, ‘Representations of London’s East End through literature: Israel Zangwill’s Children of the Ghetto and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane’ (Southampton)
2006
1st – Charlotte Alfred, ‘Should Palestinian attitudes to Israeli Jews be explained primarily in terms of religion or modern nationalism?’ (Edinburgh)
2nd – Felicity Griffiths, ‘The Blood Libel and the Papacy’ (UCL)
2005
1st – Helen Bartos, ‘Compare and Contrast the Experiences of Jewish Immigrants in the US, England and One Other English-Speaking Land Around 1900’ (UCL)
2nd – Hannah Ewence, ‘How Can national Socialist Attitudes Toward Motherhood Be Interpreted?’ (Southampton)
3rd – Hannah Judd, ‘With Reference to the Work of Melissa Raphael, Discuss Whether there Is a Need for a Jewish Feminist Response to the Holocaust’ (Birmingham)
2004
1st – Zubin Mistry, ‘Jewish Greek literature: apologetic or assertive?’ (Cambridge)
2nd – Fiona Eatwell ‘Popular Conceptions of the Jew in the Medieval Period’ (Manchester)
3rd – Steven Winter ‘Revisiting the 1948 War’ (UCL)
2003
1st – Helene Bartos ‘The Zionist Movement and Jewish Settlement in the Land of Israel 1881 to 1948’ (UCL)
2nd – Daniel Cowen ‘The Treatise of the Pool of Obadiah Maimonides, 1228-1265’ (Oxford)
3rd – Ophira Starr ‘Are There Modernistic or Even Post Modernistic Elements in the Hasidism?’ (UCL)
2002
1st – Sally Style (UCL)
2nd – Greg Smart (Southampton)
2001
1st – J. Cartaris, ‘Yiddish cinema: Der Dibek’ (UCL)
2nd – S. Schubert, ‘Greek and Roman perceptions of Jews’ (UCL)
3rd – Danny Burkemann, ‘R. Ruether and G. Kittel on Jews’ (Cambridge)
2000
1st – C. Belo
2nd – I. Conn
3rd – E. Krausova (UCL)
1999
1st – R. Esterson, ‘Maimonides’ Position on Creation in The Guide to the Perplexed’ (UCL)
2nd – R. Tragen, ‘The Judgments of the Ruseisin Case: Legalism and Refection on the Nature of Jewish Identity’ (Manchester) and L. Wicken, ‘The Significance of the Spanish Expulsion for the Messianic Idea in Judaism’ (UCL)