2021 Jeremiah Dalziel Masters Prize winners announced

The Prize

Two graduate students have been named as joint winners of the 2021 Jeremiah Dalziel Masters Prize. It is awarded annually to the 'most meritorious student(s) registered at the University as a candidate for a postgraduate degree in the field of British History'. Submissions are judged on the basis of the submitted work and the student’s supervisor’s supporting statement.

This year’s winners

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Commendations are from the judging panel, which consisted of Dr Wendy Ugolini and the judging panel of Dr Adam Budd, Dr Rochelle Rowe and Dr Benjamin Weinstein.

Ruby Hann: 'Leopard-print briefs and khaki shorts: The hierarchy of masculinity in British physical culture literature, 1890-c.1930' (Supervisor: Dr Sarah Goldsmith) 

The panel was impressed by this thoughtful and genuinely cross-disciplinary analysis of the lives, afterlives, and representation of male bodybuilders in the metropole and its colonies during this transitional period in British imperial history. This eloquent attempt to consider the presentation, consumption, and ideological meaning of male bodies in times of war engages with recent theoretical work on gender, homoeroticism, globalisation, and moral panic over the “degeneration” of masculinity and masculine values through “modern civilization.” This is an admirably ambitious, cogently argued, and well-defined work of primary research. 

Kathryn Watts: 'Savages, heathens, and thieves: An examination of Highlanders in satire, 1690-1763' (Supervisor: Dr Alasdair Raffe) 

Specialists are familiar with the considerable humanitarian and cultural consequences of the post-1745 military occupation of the Highlands by the British army, along with its apparent intellectual justifications among “enlightened” Scots in the “polite” societies of Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. This fluently-written and carefully researched study analyses literary attempts to ridicule Highlanders as primitive and dangerous barbarians, long before and after the ’45. Watts makes a convincing case that the fashionable reception of Macpherson’s Ossian poems (1761), which has been seen as taking a step toward mainstream rehabilitation of the Highlands, with its unique dress, landscape, and historical culture, only enabled a new and cutting wave of satirical attacks on Lord Bute and his apparent Highland associations. This learned study makes a valuable contribution to the cultural historiography of national identity during 18th century.   

The School sends warmest congratulations to the very  worthy winners who share the £500 prize.