The 2018 Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) — Richard Higgott Journal Article Prize

Following the success of the 2015, 2016 and 2017 Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) — Richard Higgott Journal Article Prize awards, this is to announce the Fourth Annual Journal Article Prize for the best article published in the broad field of International Political Economy (IPE) by an Australia-based academic.

For some time, it has been noticeable that, outside individual academic journals or associations, independent recognition of IPE scholarship in journal article form has been lacking. While there are independent and esteemed prize awards for academic book publishing, e.g. the British International Studies Association (BISA) International Political Economy Group Book Prize, the recognition of something similar for journal article accomplishment has been neglected.

As a consequence, we are announcing the 2018 Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) — Richard Higgott Journal Article Prize.

The Prize will be awarded to the best article published in IPE as deemed by a selection committee of IPE scholars. The award will be given to any article in IPE, understood in a pluralist sense to include the political economy of security, geography, literature, sociology, anthropology, post-coloniality, gender, finance, trade, regional studies, development and economic theory, in ways that can span concerns for in/security, poverty, inequality, sustainability, exploitation, deprivation and discrimination. For that reason, it is fitting that the prize be named after Professor Richard Higgott. In a career spanning four decades, Richard has played a pivotal intellectual and practical role in establishing IPE as a thriving enterprise committed to theoretical innovation and inclusion in Australia and elsewhere. In 1987 he and Richard Leaver introduced the first graduate course in IPE at the ANU.  Author or editor of 20 books, research monographs and edited volumes, as well as over 120 journal articles and book chapters, Richard has been at the forefront of research on globalisation, global and regional governance, and international trade. He served as President of the Australian Political Studies Association and as Vice-President of the International Studies Association and has supervised some 25 PhD theses, including those by now leading scholars. He was also principal investigator on a number of large-scale grants, totaling some $30m, which facilitated the establishment of the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick and two major international scholarly networks providing funds for postdoctoral positions and PhD scholarships.

Nominations should be made by authors and/or academic colleagues that have published an article in the previous calendar year, either in journal hardcopy or early online publication, in 2017. These articles can be single-authored or multiple co-authored journal publications published in international or Australia-based periodicals. The only requirement is that the author (for a single-authored piece) or one of the authors (for joint pieces) is permanently based in Australia and that they commit to joining the AIPEN listserv and write a short blog post on the wider import of their article for Progress in Political Economy.

Once nominated, the longlist of candidates will be circulated on the AIPEN list and the PPE blog after which the members will cast a vote for their top preferences. These will be collated to make a shortlist of five, which will then be read in full and deliberated by a committee made up of Heloise Weber (University of Queensland), Sara Motta (University of Newcastle), Susan Park (University of Sydney), Gareth Bryant (University of Sydney), John Mikler (University of Sydney), and Wesley Widmaier (the Australian National University) to decide on the eventual awardee.

The winner of the best journal article prize granted by the committee will then be awarded at the following Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) annual meeting. The winner will also receive a prize of $250.

The deadline for nominations for IPE-related articles matching the above wide-ranging and inclusive criteria published in 2017 is 31 August 2018 and the full bibliographic reference, including DOI for early online publication, should be entered at https://bit.ly/AIPEN2018. The longlist will then be publicised in September, leaving time for the voting process to be completed in October, and then the committee will read the final five articles prior to announcing the winner in December.

Past Awardees

2017 Samanthi J. Gunawardana, ‘“To Finish, We Must Finish”: Everyday Practices of Depletion in Sri Lankan Export-Processing Zones”, Globalizations, 13:6 (2016).

2016 Gareth Bryant, Siddhartha Dabhi and Steffen Böhm, ‘“Fixing” the Climate Crisis: Capital, States and Carbon Offsetting in India’, Environment and Planning A, 47:10 (2015).

2015 Ainsley Elbra, ‘Interests Need Not be Pursued If They Can be Created: Private Governance in African Gold Mining’, Business and Politics, 16:2 (2014).