Call
for Nominations: 2024 ESIL IG History of International Law Article Prize
The ESIL IG History of
International Law invites its members to nominate an article that they believe has
had or will have a major impact on the field of international legal
history (sensu stricto).
Members may nominate any article on
the history of international law published in any academic journal in 2022,
2023, or 2024 (the range is deliberately broad to avoid restricted access due
to publisher embargoes). The official date of publication of the journal issue
in which the nominated article must be published is 2022, 2023, or 2024. The
prize winner will be invited to present the paper at an online ESIL event and
participate in an interview with the IG Coordinating Committee, with the
intention of publishing the interview in a peer-reviewed scientific venue. It
is our intention to award this prize on a yearly basis, with the following
year’s award covering the years 2023, 2024, and 2025.
Nominations
should adhere to the following rules (eligibility):
- While
the IG does not wish to define the history of international law, we
prefer articles that, in substance, deal with history and international
law, for example, by relying on archival materials. Articles whose primary
focus is present-day international law (theory or practice), with an incidental
historical excursion, will not be eligible for the award. Articles whose
primary focus is history, with an incidental account of international law, will
also not be eligible. In case of doubt, members are welcome to nominate the
article. The evaluation committee will make the final decision based on the
abovementioned criteria. Use of archival materials (treaties, doctrine,
diplomatic correspondence, …) is a strong indicator of a primary focus on the
history of international law, but not the sole criterion.
-
Self-nominations
are not allowed.
-
The
official year
of publication of the article needs to be 2022, 2023, or 2024.
-
Only
papers published in the Society’s official languages, English or French, are eligible.
-
Nominations
should be sent to esil.ighilprize@gmail.com by the 25th of April 2025 with
the subject line following the format: [FirstName_SURNAME_Paper title], with
the paper attached in PDF. Nominations that do not adhere to this format will
be excluded from evaluation.
-
Evaluation
procedure:
-
Members
of the IG Coordinating Committee and invited evaluators cannot express an
opinion on or score papers submitted by colleagues currently or formerly
affiliated with the same university to avoid a conflict of interest. The
evaluators will assess any further conflicts of interest in accordance with the
Canadian guidelines for federal
research funding.
-
Threshold
for consideration: The Coordinating Committee does not award this prize; the
members of the IG do. To draw on the “wisdom of the crowd,” the Coordinating
Committee will evaluate only the ten most nominated papers.
-
Each
IG member can nominate only one paper. If a nominated paper does not receive
the award, IG members can renominate it in a subsequent year, if they believe
the impact of the paper has endured.
-
Nominations
must be submitted through an institutional email address; IG members without an
institutional email address can ask for a motivated exception.
-
In
deciding the award, the Coordinating Committee will invite one or several
highly-regarded, senior historians of international law to join the evaluation
committee.
-
The
Coordinating Committee calls upon its members to make an individual
evaluation of a paper, in line with the four Mertonian norms underpinning the
scientific ethos: communality, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized
scepticism. Social media campaigns or other types of advertising, recruiting,
or intimidation to increase a paper’s nominations are considered unethical.
The
evaluation committee will assess papers based on the following criteria (1-5
scale):
-
The
paper addresses longstanding and emergent questions regarding the history of
international law from an innovative methodological and/or theoretical point of
view.
-
The
paper expands the history of international law by examining
overlooked/understudied social contexts.
-
The
paper bridges the history of international law with other disciplines in ways
that result in new and original knowledge, advancing the state of the art of
our field.
-
The
paper soundly and rigorously explores the topic at hand, and offers significant
or impactful insights, beyond increasing our knowledge of the field in
question.
-
Clarity:
The paper lays out the main argument unambiguously without unnecessarily
reducing complexity or nuance.
Questions regarding the prize can
be addressed to Dr. Florenz Volkaert (florenz.volkaert@uclouvain.be).
