History of the prize
The award commemorates Derek Fortrose Allen (1910-1975), elected a Fellow in 1963, who served from 1969 to 1973 as Secretary of the Academy and from then until his death as Treasurer. It was founded in 1976 by his widow, Mrs Winifred Allen, and her sons to provide an award in one of three academic fields in which Mr Allen had particular interest. The prize was first awarded in 1977.
Eligibility criteria
In 2025, eligible nominations will be in recognition of outstanding work by a scholar in musicology.
In 2026, eligible nominations will be in recognition of outstanding work by a scholar in numismatics.
How to nominate
Nominations for this award are open from 1 December to 31 January and may only be made by Fellows of the British Academy. Entries should be submitted electronically via this nomination form.
The deadline for submissions is 31 January each year. Nominations will be reviewed, and the winner selected, by the relevant panel.
If you have any queries submitting a nomination, please email [email protected].
2024 winner
Professor Erich Poppe is awarded the Derek Allen Prize for 2024 for being the leading figure in Celtic Studies in Germany for decades, and inspiring numerous devoted students to enter the field. Poppe has also brought new or neglected areas into the mainstream.
Erich Poppe was Professor of Celtic Studies at the University of Marburg (Germany) from 1995 until his retirement in 2017. From 1991 to 1995, he held the position of an Assistant Lecturer and then Lecturer in Celtic Studies at the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at the University of Cambridge. He obtained his PhD degree in German Linguistics from the University of Marburg in 1980 and afterwards a MA in Celtic Studies from the National University of Ireland / University College Dublin in 1984. He obtained the ‘Habilitation’, the highest academic degree in the German system, in Comparative Linguistics and Celtic Studies at the University of Marburg in 1989.
His main scholarly interests are medieval Irish language and literature, medieval and early modern Welsh language and literature, and the history of Celtic Studies. His most recent publications include discussions of strategies of translation and textual transfer in medieval Ireland and Wales, of the impact of translations on their target languages, of medieval Irish literary theory and the meaning of medieval Irish narratives to their authors and audiences, of medieval Welsh Arthurian texts, of Middle Welsh word order, and of syntactic and stylistic complexity of Early Modern Welsh texts.
He has recently co-edited 'Arthur in the Celtic Languages', 'The Arthurian Legend in Celtic Literatures and Traditions' (together with Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, Cardiff, 2019), 'Classical Antiquity and Medieval Ireland', and 'An Anthology of Medieval Irish Texts and Interpretations' (together with Michael Clarke and Isabelle Torrance, London, 2024). He is currently Co-PI (together with Professor Elena Parina, University of Bonn) of the research project ‘The Welsh Contribution to the Early Modern Cultures of Translations: Continuities and Innovations’, funded by the German Research Foundation as part of its Priority Programme ‘Early Modern Translation Cultures (1450-1800)’. From 2018 to 2021, he was PI of this project’s first part, and from 2015 to 2018 he was PI of the project ‘Translations as a Locus of Language Contact: Exploring Medieval Welsh Religious Texts’, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. He participates in the British Academy’s ‘Development of the Welsh Language / Datblygiad yr Iaith Gymraeg’ project, which sets out to gather, interpret, and digitise materials relating to the historical grammar of Welsh.
He is editor of 'Studien und Texte zur Keltologie' and co-editor of the 'MHRA Library of Medieval Welsh Literature'. He is a member of the editorial board of 'Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies', the 'Journal of Celtic Linguistics', and 'Studia Hibernica', and a member of the counseil scientifique of Études Celtiques.
"I am delighted and grateful to the British Academy to have been awarded the Derek Allen Prize in Celtic Studies for my contribution to the discipline and to be included in the list of eminent colleagues who have received this award, many of whom I have met over the years and admired, and still admire, as role models for their outstanding scholarly work. I feel therefore greatly honoured for the recognition of my contributions coming from the subject’s geographical margins. Germany is not a heartland of Celtic Studies today, with the subject now being taught in only two universities, Marburg and Bonn, even though many of the forefathers of our subject worked and taught in Germany in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It is therefore all the more gratifying to see that German scholarship in Celtic Studies can still have an impact on the subject at large. Of course I hope that Germany will continue to have its place in the international scholarly community of Celtic Studies and that Celtic Studies will continue to have its place in the German university system, and I would be proud if I could have made a contribution to this."
- Professor Erich Poppe, August 2024
Previous winners
2023 (numismatics) Professor Joe Cribb, British Museum
2022 (musicology) Professor Suzanne G. Cusick, New York University
2021 (Celtic studies) Professor Ralph A. Griffiths, Swansea University
2020 (numismatics) Dr Andrew Burnett FBA, University College London
2019 (musicology) Alejandro Enrique Planchart, University of California, Santa Barbara
2018 (Celtic studies) Professor Máire Herbert, University College Cork
2017 (numismatics) Professor Michael Crawford FBA, University College London
2016 (musicology) Dr Margaret Bent CBE FBA, University of Oxford
2015 (Celtic studies) Professor Pierre-Yves Lambert, Centre national de la recherche scientifique
2014 (numismatics) Dr Richard Reece, University College London
2013 (musicology) Professor Arnold Whittall, King's College London
2012 (Celtic studies) Professor Fergus Kelly, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
2011 (numismatics) Dr Mark Blackburn, Keeper, Department of Coins and Medals, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
2010 (musicology) Professor Gary Tomlinson, Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania
2009 (Celtic studies) Yr Athro Dafydd Jenkins, Emeritus Professor of Legal History and Welsh Law, University of Aberystwyth
2008 (numismatics) Professor Michael Metcalf, Emeritus Professor of Numismatics, University of Oxford
2007 (musicology) Professor Philip V. Bohlman
2006 (Celtic studies) Mr Daniel Huws
2005 (numismatics) Professor Philip Grierson FBA
2004 (musicology) Professor Colin Timms
2003 (Celtic studies) Professor Pádraig Ó Riain
2002 (numismatics) Professor Dr Gert Hatz
2001 (musicology) Dr Janice Stockigt
2000 (Celtic studies) Professor Derick Thomson FBA