Congratulations to the winners of the 2023 Design Writing Prize and Student Essay Prize

Awards

19 September 2023

The Design History Society would like to share the outcome of the Design Writing Prize and Student Essay Prizes (undergraduate and postgraduate categories). Once again, this year the standard of submissions was extremely high, making the reviewing and selection of winners a challenge. As usual, this was carried out through a double-blind peer-review process and the winners were chosen on the basis of their scores.

In addition, this year's Guest Judge for the Design Writing Prize, Priscila Farias selected the final winning entry and runner up. We would like to express our gratitude to Priscila and to all of the submitting authors, whose work enriches and expands our field.

Without further ado, the winners based on top scores were:

Design Writing Prize:

■ First place: Ijeoma Ndukwe (Journalist) for "Golden Lion winner: the pioneering architecture of Nigerian artist-designer Demas Nwoko" - you can find Ijeoma on Twitter and Instagram

■ Runner up: Prof Annebella Pollen (University of Brighton) for "A Carrier Bag Theory of Photography" - this essay is available open access in The Ephemerist (the Journal of the Ephemera Society), issue 201, pp.16-19

Student Essay Prize:

■ Undergraduate winner: Deekshita Viju Nair (Manchester School of Architecture, University of Manchester) for "Watery Archives: Critically assess photographic archives as a means of investigating the marginalisation, exclusion and silencing of black people in the construction of the Panama Canal"

■ Undergraduate runner up: Tioluwalase Delight Olojede (Manchester School of Architecture, University of Manchester) for "The Expanding Role of the Vernacular for the Social ‘(Re)Production’ of Architecture in South America. Beyond the Glorification of the Materiality and Aesthetic"

■ Postgraduate winner: Rudra Chatterjee (University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education) for "Calcutta Refugee House - the new colonialists"

■ Postgraduate runner up: Jessica Flower (University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education) for "Talking Rubbish: Practices of Waste in 1960s Britain"

We were delighted to congratulate all our winners wholeheartedly for their invaluable contribution to design history at the Oxford University Press reception held at the Museu da Quinta de Santiago in Matosinhos, Portugal as part of the 2023 annual conference 'Displaying Design' where the Design Writing Prize winners were able to join us in person (see image). All prizes will run again in 2024, please check back in early Spring for more details.