Girton College is pleased to announce the 2026 William Dusinberre Essay Prize goes to Charlotte Gleeson (King’s College) for her essay called Freedom from Liberation: Configurations of Marronage in 'Biografia de un cimarrón' (1966) and 'Afuera crece un mundo' (2017).
The judges' comments on Charlotte's essay note:
A thoughtful and creative address to the enduring question of whether freedom is possible, the winning essay brings to life two texts about ‘marronage’ or escape from enslavement. A self-account of a Cuban escapee is juxtaposed with the reworking of a famous Colombian novel to highlight the incomplete and contingent meanings of liberation. One of the rewarding outcomes of this essay lies in the cool appraisal of abolitionism that this entails. In sum, the sharpness of critical acumen, alongside a courageous attempt to push intellectual barriers, makes this an outstanding piece of work.
In consideration of the high quality of the essays overall, the judges put forward three entries as Highly Commended. One is co-authored, so their congratulations go to four very accomplished essayists.
In alphabetical order, Highly Commended for their essays are:
S M Mashrur Arafin Ayon and Mallika Bandyopadhyay (both of Hughes Hall) for their robust and well-sourced confrontation of invisible forms of female enslavement entailed in domestic servitude, a phenomenon at once multi-faceted and widely practised in colonial South Asia: '‘If I try to escape’. Women, Slavery and the Gendered Body in Bengal, c. 1694-1843'.
Nimue McDowall (Newnham College) for a literary-philosophical analysis that, through an exercise of the highest imaginative order, brings home the efforts of Black banlieue residents in France to keep revolt all but invisible: 'Revolt, Futurity, and Flamboyance in Diaty Diallo’s 'Deux secondes d’air qui brûle' [Two seconds of burning air].'
Dequn Teng (Girton College), for 'Hidden in the Ledger: Modern Slavery, Supply-Chain Risk Models, and What a Diversity-Aware NLP System Can (and Cannot) See', an engineering-based study of supply-chain audits showing how attention to historical legacies can be combined with emerging technologies in detecting – and creating a practical challenge to – modern-day slavery.
The judges’ report
Overall, the judges were impressed by the calibre, ingenuity and general scholarship of the essays, and found many of them illuminating. Indeed, the judges were gratified to see an entry of such quality. Importantly, the essays more than met one of the principal aspirations of the William Dusinberre Prize in the way they responded to the invisibilities of enslavement. In some cases this was evident from their subject matter and in others from the way in which the essay themes took up particular aspects of the issue.
A feature of the Dusinberre Prize is that it invites coursework submissions, and all credit goes to the 2026 essayists for seeing connections and possibilities in the particular circumstances of their own studies or interests. In this second year, the result once more has been entries drawn from a wide range of disciplines and diverse stages of study – from 1st year undergraduate work to doctoral research. Thank you to everyone who submitted their work!
The William Dusinberre Essay 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.