History of the prize
The Brian Barry Prize, worth £1,500, is awarded annually for excellence in political science, with the winning essay published in the British Journal of Political Science.
The prize is made in partnership with Cambridge University Press and the British Journal of Political Science in honour of Brian Barry, a distinguished Fellow of the Academy and founding editor of the Journal. The prize was first awarded in 2014.
Professor Brian Barry FBA (1936-2009) was a distinguished moral and political philosopher, widely credited with having fruitfully brought together analytic philosophy and political science, political theory and social choice theory. In 1988 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, to which he gave valuable service.
Eligibility
a) Eligible submissions must be an essay that has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere
b) The essay can address any topic in political science, as covered by the British Journal of Political Science, but essays in fields related to the work of Brian Barry will be especially welcome
c) Essays may be submitted by anyone in possession of a first degree
d) The prize is not open to current employees and Fellows of the British Academy, employees of Cambridge University Press, or the current Editors, Managing Editors or other administrative staff of the British Journal of Political Science
e) The Prize cannot be awarded to the same person more than once
f) Entries should be at least 8,000 and up to 10,000 words, including references, with an abstract of no more than 100 words
How to nominate
Nominations for the Brian Barry Prize are currently closed and will open again on 1 December 2023.
If you have any queries about submitting a nomination, please email [email protected]
Key Dates 2022-23
2022 winner
Associate Professor Chiara Cordelli, for her essay 'Freeing People, Restricting Capital'
Chiara Cordelli is associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. She works on a variety of topics in political philosophy, including questions of distributive justice, political legitimacy, normative defenses of the state, and the ethics of philanthropy. She is the author of The Privatized State (Princeton University Press, 2020), which was awarded the 2021 ECPR Political Theory Prize for best first book in political theory, and of Privatocrazia (Mondadori 2022). She has published articles in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Ethics, the Journal of Political Philosophy, the Journal of Politics and the British Journal of Political Science, among others. She is also the co-editor of Philanthropy in Democratic Societies (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Cordelli held visiting positions at Stanford (2011-13), Princeton (2014-15), Harvard (2018-19) and EHESS in Paris (2021-22).
"Receiving this year’s Brian Barry Prize from the British Academy is a great honour. This is especially true given the deep admiration I have for Professor Barry’s scholarship and for his exemplary ability to combine rigorous philosophical argument with the social sciences and social policy. The paper itself was first stimulated by Barry’s own writings on the mobility of capital, and I hope this prize will bring further attention to this not yet fully appreciated aspect of his work."
– Associate Professor Chiara Cordelli, August 2022
Previous winners
2021 not awarded
2020 Associate Professor Jonathan Havercroft, University of Southampton, for 'Why is there no just riot theory?'
2019 Dr Andre Santos Campos, Nova University of Lisbon, for "Representing the Future: The Interests of Future Persons in Representative Democracy"
2018 Dr Zeynep Pamuk, St John's College, University of Oxford, for "Justifying Public Funding for Science"
2017 Dr Jonathan White, London School of Economics and Political Science, for "The Ethics of Political Alliance"
2016 Professor William Roberts Clark, Texas A&M University, Professor Matt Golder, Pennsylvania State University, and Professor Sona N. Golder, Pennsylvania State University for "An Exit, Voice, and Loyalty Model of Politics"
2015 Dr Parashar Kulkarni, New York University, for "Are There Cultural Prerequisites to Effective Property Rights?: Evidence from Inheritance Rights of Widows in Colonial India"
2014 Dr Helder De Schutter, KU Leuven, and Dr Lea Ypi, LSE, for "Mandatory Citizenship for Immigrants"