British Academy announces 2014 prize and medal winners

The British Academy today announces the winners of its 2014 prizes and medals, which will be formally celebrated at the British Academy’s annual awards ceremony on 25 November 2014.

For the first time, the Academy has awarded the Neil and Saras Smith Medal. This Medal will be awarded annually to recognise lifetime achievement in the scholarly study of linguistics. Professor Noam Chomsky was named the first winner of the Medal. As well as attending the awards ceremony, he will take part in a free public event organised by the British Academy on 26 November.

Also new for 2014 is the Brian Barry Prize, which will be awarded annually for excellence in political science research. This year, the prize was awarded to Dr Helder De Schutter, Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and Dr Lea Ypi, Associate Professor of Political Theory at LSE, for their essay Mandatory Citizenship for Immigrants.

The Academy’s most valuable prize is the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Transcultural Understanding. This year the £25,000 prize was awarded to Professor Jonathan D. Jansen, for his work Knowledge in the Blood: confronting race and the apartheid past. He will be attending the special Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize ceremony on 30 September 2014.

Lord Stern, President of the British Academy, will present the awards. He said: “These Prizes and Medals are an important means of celebrating exceptional academic achievement and are an essential part of the Academy’s work in recognising excellence across the humanities and social sciences. Our portfolio is steadily growing and I look forward to celebrating these outstanding contributions”.

The full list of award winners is available online.