The Stuart Hall Essay Prize, run by the Stuart Hall Foundation, supports a new generation of writers aged 18 to 30 based in the UK, inviting new and unpublished writing that connects with Professor Stuart Hall’s ideas and impacts broad public discourse.
The prize is open to a range of stylistic approaches; academic, journalistic, creative, biographical or other modes of writing are welcomed, inviting entries from academics, journalists, students and other kinds of writers. The entrants may choose the topic of the essay. The prize welcomes essays that connect with Hall’s characteristic interests, and with his concern to say something relevant about the current ‘conjuncture’, however broadly received. Examples of Stuart Hall’s interest areas broadly include questions of race and inequality in culture and society; identity and difference; (post)coloniality and diaspora; Marxism and post-Marxism; present-day politics of the left; media and cultural studies.
Essays of 4500-5000 words are judged on originality, engagement with Hall’s work and wider scholarship, and clarity, with the winner selected by a panel chaired by Professor Catherine Hall.
Funded by a private donation for its first two years, the prize has now awarded two winners, who each received a prize of £2,000.
The inaugural 2024 prize went to Hashem Abushama for “a map without guarantees: Stuart Hall and Palestinian geographies,” a memoir-driven essay on growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp that combined ethnography and theory to explore colonialism and dispossession, selected from a shortlist that also included Dee Cattle, Katy Ensch and Rory Weal. Read more about the inaugural Stuart Hall Essay Prize.
The second prize in 2026 was awarded to Harriet Hillier for “Choosing a Nation: Identity, Belonging, and Representation in International Sport,” with honourable mentions for Finn Kim and Holly Nsiya Mangu. Read more about the second Stuart Hall Essay Prize.
There are no current calls for submissions to the Stuart Hall Essay Prize. Sign up to our mailing list for updates
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