Heterodoxology

A call has just gone out for nominating PhD dissertations for next year’s biannual ESSWE Thesis Prize. So if you are finishing a dissertation on an esotericism related topic, it’s time to slip this call to your supervisor and subtly suggest a nomination. The reward? Honour and glory and  € 500 prize money, awarded at next year’s ESSWE Conference in Riga, Latvia. There will be some money available for reimbursing travel expenses to Latvia. The awarded dissertation will be recommended for publication in the Aries Book Series. More information on who can apply, when, to whom, and so forth, see the call – which I also paste below.

ESSWE PhD Thesis Prize

Nominations are invited for the fourth biennial ESSWE PhD Thesis prize, awarded by the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism.

Prize: The prize will be given for an outstanding PhD thesis completed since 1 March 2014 on any aspect of Western Esotericism. Candidates for the prize must be members of the ESSWE. The thesis must have been approved formally by the nominee’s thesis committee, but the degree need not have been formally awarded.

Notification & Certification: The prizewinner will be notified in April 2015 and will receive an award of €500 and a certificate, to be presented at the ESSWE conference in Riga, Latvia, 16-18 April 2015. The ESSWE will also make a substantial contribution to travel expenses and lodging costs.

Publication: The thesis will also be recommended for publication in the ARIES Book Series, though the final decision on publication will be taken by the ARIES Book Series editorial board.

Nomination: Nominations must be made by electronic mail to the Chair of the Prize Committee, Birgit Menzel (University of Mainz/Germersheim, bmenzel@uni-mainz.de and boguna@uni-mainz.de) by 1 February 2015. The nominator must be a faculty member at the institution that awards the nominee’s PhD degree, or a member of the nominee’s thesis committee. Each nominator may make only one nomination. The applications should consist of pdf files of the following material:

1. A letter of nomination
2. The nominee’s thesis
3. A separate summary of the thesis, written by the nominee, of no more than ten pages (double spaced)
4. A brief biographical sketch of the nominee
5. Documentation to show that the thesis has been approved

Items 1, 3 and 4 must be in English. Item 2 may be in any one of the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish. Item 5 may be in any language, so long as a translation into English is provided if it is not in English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish.

The Prize Committee consists of:

–       Birgit Menzel, University of Mainz/Germersheim (Chair)

–       Helmut Zander, Université de Fribourg

–       Sophie Page, University College London