The Prize recognises student research and engagement with the legacies and practices of enslavement.
After a stellar response in the prize’s first year, the William Dusinberre Prize judges are pleased to announce that Carson Eckhard of St Edmund’s College has been awarded the Prize for their essay, Beyond the Border of a Great Belonging: Biopower and Slavery’s Medical Afterlives Among Formerly Enslaved Women in Early National Philadelphia.
The judges’ comments on Carson’s essay note:
‘The winning essay is remarkably accomplished, and in many directions. Notably, it does not only demonstrate the part that practices of enslavement have made to imaginings of racial inferiority as biologically medically ‘provable’, but also shows how taking American enslavement into account radically revises Foucault’s influential theory of state power over life.’
The judges were so impressed by the overall very high standard and quality of the essays that they have put forward an additional five entries to be Highly Commended.
Those Highly Commended for their essays are:
Kim Abramson of Lucy Cavendish College, for linguistic awareness of how pidgin and creole languages continue to be marginalised: When a Name Betrays You.
Peace Chisom Aniakor of Fitzwilliam College, who wrote on screen presentations of enslavement, domestic servitude and modern trafficking: I Am Not A Colour! White Supremacy, Blackness and African Resistance on Screen.
Alexandra Bird of Corpus Christi College, for a critical account of a musical tradition whose dimensions have been underestimated: "Roll, Jordan, Roll": Flow, Spatiality and the Political Body in the Nineteenth Century African American Spiritual.
Sydnae Taylor of Darwin College, whose study concerns the reality of ongoing enslavement legacies in contemporary obstetric care: Breeding Narratives: The Continuity of Colonial Violence in Black Jamaican Women.
Emilia Warr of Selwyn College, who analysed the embodiment of enslavement and its partial resolution in Morrison’s famous novel: Embodiment, Trauma, and Healing: A Study of Hands and Feet in ‘Beloved’.
Judges’ reflection on the Prize’s first year
The judges reported a successful response to the call for essays and were moved by the breadth and diversity of approach the entries showed:
‘Overall, the essays submitted more than met one of the principal aspirations of the prize in the way they responded to the invisibilities of enslavement and its legacies. A feature of the William Dusinberre Prize is that it invites coursework submissions, and all credit to the 2025 essayists for seeing connections and possibilities in the particular circumstances of their own studies or interests. The result has been entries drawn from a wide range of disciplines and diverse stages of study – from first year undergraduate work to doctoral research.’
The William Dusinberre Prize is generously supported by Girton Fellow Juliet Dusinberre, in memory of her husband, an historian of slavery. More details of Girton College’s Legacies of Enslavement activities and its Committee may be found under Girton Reflects.
The prize giving ceremony will take place in the Stanley Library, Girton College, on 23 October 2025 between 5.00pm – 5.45pm. All welcome.