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The topic for this year’s Royal Institute of Philosophy essay prize competition is ‘Imagination’.
Each year the Royal Institute of Philosophy holds an essay prize competition. The winner will receive £2,500 and their essay will be published in Philosophy.
Previous winners include ‘The Emptiness of Naturalism’ by Thomas Raleigh and ‘Scorekeeping in a Therapeutic Language Game’ by Stefan Rinner (2023 joint prize winners), ‘Fitting Diminishment of Anger: A Permissivist Account’ by Renee Rushing and ‘Empathy and Psychopaths’ Inability to Grieve’ by Michael Cholbi (2022 joint prize winners), Jonas Faria Costa’s ‘On Gregariousness’ (2021 prize winner), Lucy McDonald’s ‘Please Like This Paper’ and Nikhil Venkatesh’s ‘Surveillance Capitalism: A Marx-inspired Account’ (2020 prize winners), Georgi Gardiner’s ‘Profiling and Proof: Are Statistics Safe?’ (2019 prize winner), and Rebecca Buxton’s ‘Reparative Justice for Climate Refugees’ (2018 prize winner).
The topic for this year’s prize is ‘Imagination’. We intend this topic to be understood broadly, so as to include related issues in any area of philosophy and from any philosophical tradition.
The winner will receive £2,500 and their essay will be published in Philosophy. The submission deadline is, 30 November 2024 23:59 GMT. Entries will be considered by a panel of judges and the winner announced in spring 2025. All entries will be deemed submissions to Philosophy.
In assessing entries priority will be given to originality, clarity of expression, breadth of interest, and potential for advancing discussion.
In exceptional circumstances the prize may be awarded jointly, in which case the financial component will be divided. The winning entry/entries will be published in the October 2025 issue of Philosophy. Please submit entries by email to [email protected], with the subject line ‘Prize Essay’. The word limit for the Essay Competition is 8,000 words.
Instructions for contributors can be found here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/information/author-instructions
Entries should be anonymised and suitable for blind review. (Please note that Essay Prize submissions should be sent to the email address above and should not be submitted through the ScholarOne portal).