In 2001, the ASA Board of Directors established an annual prize for the best graduate student paper. The prize is awarded at the Annual Meeting for an essay presented at the previous year’s Annual Meeting. Graduate students should submit papers they wish to be considered for the prize, together with a letter of support from their faculty adviser, by March 15 to the ASA. The letter of support provided by the faculty adviser should touch upon both the paper submitted and the Graduate student. The winning essay will be submitted to the African Studies Review for expedited peer review. If the essay is recommended for publication it will appear in the June issue following the Annual Meeting in which the prize is awarded.
It is the expectation that conference papers will be formalized into draft articles that are viable for publication. To prepare their papers for submission, graduate students should adhere to the “General Guidelines for Manuscripts” that are used by the African Studies Review.
To Submit: Graduate students should submit papers they wish to be considered for the prize by March 15, 2025 to members@africanstudies.org. The letter of support should also be emailed to members@africanstudies.org by the faculty advisor or graduate student.
2025 Committee
Jacquline-Bethel Mougoué (Chair)
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Claudia Gastrow
North Carolina State University
Casey Golomski
University of New Hampshire
Cajetan Iheka
ASR Editor in Chief (Ex-officio)
Graduate Student Paper Prize Winners
2024
Oluwasola Daniels (University of California, Davis), “How Stories of Sex Became Stories of Shame: Ale and Sexual Mobilities in Yoruba Conjugal Spaces”
2023
Mahder Habtemariam Serekberhan, “Political Possibilities: The 2019 Sudanese Uprising” and Kuukuwa Manful, “Building Classes: Secondary Schools and Sociopolitical Stratification in Ghana.”
2022
Adaugo Pamela Nwakanma, “The Gendered Economics of Political Empowerment: Lessons from Nigeria, Africa’s Largest Economy”
2021
Justin Haruyama, “Shortcut English: A Pidgin Language and Symbolic Power at a Chinese-operated Mine in Zambia”
2020
Allen Xiao, “Lagos in Life: Placing Cities in Lived Experiences”
Victoria Mary Gorham, “Displaying the Nation: Museums and Nation-Building in Tanzania and Kenya”
Shaonan Liu, “Symbol of Wealth and Prestige: A Social History of Chinese-made Enamelware in Northern Nigeria”
Amanda B. Edgell, “Vying for the ‘Man’s Seat’ – Constituency Magnitude and Mainstream Female Candidature for Non-Quota Seats in Uganda and Kenya”
2016
Moritz Nagel, “Precolonial Segmentation Revisited: Initiation Societies, Talking Drums and the Ngondo Festival in the Cameroons”
Kathleen Klaus, “Contentious Land Claims and the Non-Escalation of Violence: Evidence from Kenya’s Coast Region”
2014
Catherine Porter, “Bound and Unbound Identities: The Reconstruction of Katanga’s Nationhood Struggle”
2013
Jamie Miller, “Yes, Minister: Reassessing South Africa’s Intervention in the Angolan Civil War”
2011
Noel Twagiramungu, “The Anatomy of Leadership: A view-from-within Post-genocide Rwanda”
Laura Weinstein, “The Politics of Government Expenditures in Tanzania: 1999-2007”
Bert Ingelaere, “Peasants, Power, and Ethnicity: Centre and Periphery in the Knowledge Construction in/on Post-Genocide Rwanda”
Kristin D. Phillips, “Consuming the State: Hunger, Healing, and Citizenship in Rural Tanzania”
Habtamu Mengistie Tegegne, “Revisiting Land Tenure in Eighteenth Century Gondärine Ethiopia: Zéga and the Land Charter of Däbrä-Sehay Qwesqwam Church”
Severine Autesserre, “Local Violence, National Peace? Local Dynamics of Violence during the Transition in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo”
2005
Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, “’Dangerous Properties’: Poisoned Arrows and the Case of Strophanthus hispidus in Colonial Gold Coast, 1885 – 1922″
Kristin E. Cheney, “Village Life is Better than Town Life’: identity, migration and development in the Lives of Ugandan child citizens”
2003
Staffan Lindberg, “The ‘Democraticness’ of Multiparty Elections: Participation, Competition, and Legitimacy in Africa”
Benjamin Lawrance, “Le Revolte des Femmes: Economic Upheaval and the Gender of Political Authority in Lome, Togo, 1931-33”
