Prizes

The Society offers two prizes, both intended for outstanding work by junior academics.

Charles Schmitt Essay Prize

The International Society for Intellectual History, offers an annual prize for a graduate essay in intellectual history. Originally set up with the generous support of an anonymous donor, and our publisher (Taylor & Francis), the prize was established in honour of the contribution to intellectual history by Charles B. Schmitt (1933-1986)

The prize is £250, plus £100 worth of Routledge books, and a year’s free membership of the ISIH with a subscription to the Society’s quarterly journal Intellectual History Review. The paper awarded the prize will also be published in the Intellectual History Review.

Submissions will be accepted in any area of intellectual history, broadly construed, 1500 to the present, including the historiography of intellectual history. Because it is a condition of the award that the paper awarded the prize will be published by IHR, submissions should not have been accepted for publication elsewhere, or exceed 9,000 words (including footnotes). Eligibility is restricted to doctoral students and those who have submitted their PhD within two years of the closing date for the prize.

The 2025 Prize was awarded to Ross Moncrieff (All Souls College, Oxford) for his paper, “When sinologists were geologists: Chinese chronology in early modern England and the heterodox Chinese studies of Robert Hooke and John Beaumont.” 

Constance Blackwell Prize

The ISIH Constance Blackwell Prize is awarded biennially to the best first monograph in intellectual history (broadly construed) published in the previous two years. The prize was established in memory of the Society’s founder, Constance Blackwell (1934-2018).

The value of the prize is £500. The prize may, exceptionally, be divided between two recipients. There will also be an announcement about the book which is proxime accessit to the prize.

The criteria for submission:

· the book must be the author’s first monograph

· the book must have been published in the previous two years (2024 or 2025 according to the book’s copyright page, for the 2026 prize)

· a brief supporting statement of a few sentences, with an electronic copy of the book, sent to the Chair of the Prize Committee (Dr Richard Oosterhoff, richard.oosterhoff@ed.ac.uk by 31 August 2026).

· self-nomination is permitted

The shortlist will be announced by September of the year in which the prize is awarded. The award of the prize itself will be publicised by the ISIH by the end of December that year.

The 2024 Prize was awarded to Freddy Foks (University of Manchester).