Routledge Area Studies

Impact & Interdisciplinarity Awards

Celebrating Area Studies research, the Impact and Interdisciplinarity awards are each worth £2,500 and are awarded annually in November.

The Routledge Area Studies Awards in Impact and Interdisciplinarity, worth £5,000 (two awards of £2,500 each), are presented annually for original research which showcases the unique strengths of Area Studies, its special applicability in real-world contexts, and position at the interface of multiple disciplines. They celebrate research which makes a significant contribution to our understanding of ‘areas’ of our world and the lives lived therein. 

The awards are conferred by an expert panel of Area Studies scholars, in partnership with Routledge, the world’s leading academic publisher in Area Studies, and the Humanities and Social Sciences broadly.  Routledge publishes thousands of books and journals each year, serving scholars, instructors, and professional communities worldwide.

Our vision is that the awards will support those working in Area Studies and foster collaboration between teams working on different projects, in different institutions, in different countries, and in different traditions, globally, as is befitting of the field. 

> Submissions are welcome from all specialisms, backgrounds, and locations. We particularly welcome applications from scholars based in the Global South; applicants who have no permanent academic affiliation are also eligible. 

> For the purposes of these awards, Area Studies is defined as research rooted in the Humanities and Social Sciences and that is very attentive to specific national contexts, histories, languages and cultures.

> Routledge and the judging panel acknowledge that impact can be defined in different ways by different communities and individuals. For the purposes of the Impact Award, impact is defined as research that has tangibly contributed to, benefitted and influenced the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia. See last year’s Impact Award winning project for an example.  

> The research should be original. 

> At least one substantive original journal article presenting the research needs to have been published or accepted for publication.  

> If multiple journal articles have resulted from the research project, submit your strongest or most relevant article.

> The journal article presenting the research must have undergone a form of peer review appropriate to the research (single-anonymous, double-anonymous, open, etc.) 

> The peer-reviewed journal article presenting the research should have been published, or accepted for publication, in an academic journal no more than five years prior to submission for the award. 

> The research does not need to have been published in English; however, a translation of the submission will be required by the judging panel. 

> Applications for the Interdisciplinarity Award must showcase research that has a genuinely inter-, multi-, or trans-disciplinary approach. 

Applicants may nominate their research for either the impact or the interdisciplinarity prize, but not both.

The awards will be judged by a panel of experts and advisers appointed by the Routledge, Taylor & Francis Area Studies team.

Previous winners are not eligible for entry in successive years.

Previously submitted research projects are not eligible for resubmission again, neither in the same form, nor a revised form.

Applications will be not be considered if the nomination form submitted is incomplete, the copy of the peer reviewed journal article is missing (including a translation if published in a language other than English), evidence to support the submission is missing, or the corresponding applicant’s CV is missing. Applicants will not be contacted if any items are found to be missing.

Applications will not be considered if more than five pieces of evidence (excluding the peer reviewed journal article) have been submitted.

Applications will not be considered if they do not meet the definition of Area Studies stated under the criteria for eligibility.

Applications for the Impact Awards will not be considered if they do not meet the definition of impact stated under the criteria for eligibility.

A substantive original research article needs to have been published in a peer reviewed journal; a book or book chapter alone is ineligible.

The judges’ decision will be final, and no correspondence will be entered into.

Should there be a tie in judging, an award may be awarded to joint winners, with the prize money divided equally.

Winning and shortlisted applicants will be contacted in November 2023. Applicants who have not been shortlisted will not be contacted.

Should no applications be deemed suitable, the awards will not be awarded.

The award winners should be willing to provide a photograph of themselves and to participate in relevant promotional coverage which may be undertaken by Routledge, Taylor & Francis.

Any personal information provided will be handled and stored in adherence with the Informa privacy policy.

Payment will be made where possible and in keeping with Taylor & Francis Informa compliance requirements. The payment will be paid in the currency of the bank account held by the winner(s), converted at the Informa treasury rate for that year.

If the winning research is published or has been accepted for publication in a Routledge, Taylor & Francis journal, free access will be put in place for one year for the associated article(s).

The application period for the awards opens in spring each year. Information about past winners and shortlisted projects can be found here.

The nomination form can be found below. Please note, the following should be attached to an email before sending: 

  • Completed application form

  • CV of the corresponding applicant

  • A copy of one peer-reviewed journal article presenting the research

  • A translation of the peer-reviewed article if the original article is not in English

  • A maximum of five pieces of written, visual or statistical evidence to support your submission (excluding the peer-reviewed journal article). Where possible, one Word document containing links to the pieces of evidence should be provided instead of separate attachments. Evidence may include, but is not limited to: Altmetric or other social media data, audio or video recordings, blog posts, book reviews, citation or usage data, curricula, finance reports, infographics, leaflets, letters, museum or gallery exhibition reports, performance reviews, photos, policy briefs, posters, regulation and standards documentation, statistics, surveys, testimonials, tweets, UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) relevance, and web forum discussions. 

Any queries about the prize or the application process may be directed to [email protected]. 

Professional photo of David Lees

David Lees

David Lees is an Associate Professor of French at the University of Warwick, UK. He is a specialist in aspects of modern and contemporary French culture, history and politics, particularly film propaganda in the twentieth century and the political campaigns of the centre and extreme-right in the twenty-first century. David is Co-Editor of the journal Modern & Contemporary France.

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Jane Hindley

Jane Hindley is a comparative political sociologist and is the Deputy Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Centre at the University of Essex. She works on social movements, sustainability, and climate change and is also interested in radical pedagogies and the history of radical thought.

Gregorio Alonso headshot

Gregorio Alonso

Gregorio Alonso is an Associate Professor of Hispanic History at the University of Leeds and the Editor of the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies. His research interests range from the study of political and religious conflicts in Modern Europe and Latin America to the making of the liberal and the Catholic traditions during the Nineteenth Century.

Rashida Resario

Rashida Resario

Rashida Resario is a Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at the School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana. Her main research focus is in the Cultural and Creative Industries, with additional interests in the interaction of cultures through performance, mediated performance, and gender in performance. She has published in top-ranked journals such as the International Journal of Cultural Studies; Contemporary Journal of African Studies; Media, Culture & Society; Cultural Trends; Information, Communication and Society; among others.

Eswaran Sridharan headshot

Eswaran Sridharan

Eswaran Sridharan is the Academic Director and Chief Executive of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India (UPIASI) in New Delhi. He is the author, editor or co-editor of ten books and has published 90 academic articles in scholarly journals and as chapters in edited volumes. His current research interests include political parties, party system change, coalition politics, party finance, and the growth of the middle classes in India; international relations theory and India as an emerging power. He is the Editor-in-Chief of India Review.

Headshot of Ioannis Grigoriadis

Ioannis N. Grigoriadis

Dr Ioannis N. Grigoriadis is Associate Professor and Jean Monnet Chair of European Studies at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Bilkent University. He is also Senior Fellow and Head of the Program on Turkey at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP); Editor-in-Chief of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies journal. He is also a member of the Greek Turkish Forum (GTF). In the academic year 2018-2019, he was a Visiting Professor at the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program, Buffett Institute for Global Studies, Northwestern University. In the academic year 2016-2017, he was IPC-Stiftung Mercator Senior Research Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik-SWP) in Berlin and Stanley J. Seeger Research Fellow at Princeton University. His research interests include comparative, European, Greek, and Turkish politics and history with a focus on nationalism and democratization.

Godwin Siundu headshot

Godwin Siundu

Godwin Siundu is founding co-editor of Eastern African Literary & Cultural Studies. He researches in postcolonial discourses, focusing on the literary and cultural works of South Asian diasporic experiences in eastern Africa and North America. Siundu has published some of his articles in Research in African Literatures, Journal of African Cultural Studies, African Identities, English Studies in Africa, and the Publication of the Modern Languages Association (PMLA), among others. Siundu is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of Literature, University of Nairobi.

Susan Hodgett headshot

Susan Hodgett

Susan Hodgett is the founding Professor of Area Studies at the University of East Anglia. She was Principal Investigator of the UK AHRC’s Blurring Genres Network: Recovering the Humanities for Political Science and Area Studies to 2018. Susan served as: Chair of the 2021 UK REF Sub-panel 25, Area Studies; President of the UK Council for Area Studies Associations (2011-14); President of the International Council for Canadian Studies (2014-16); and President of the British Association for Canadian Studies (2008-11). Her recent books on the future of Area Studies are Necessary Travel: New Area Studies and Canada in Comparative Perspective (2018, with Patrick James, Lexington Press) and What Political Science Can Learn from the Humanities: Blurring Genres (2021, with RAW Rhodes, Palgrave).

Headshot of Martin Bull

Martin Bull

Martin Bull is Associate Dean for Research & Innovation and Professor of Politics in the School of Arts, Media & Creative Technology at the University of Salford. He has published widely in the area of Italian and comparative politics. A former Director of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR), he is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies, and former Editor-in-Chief of the following journals: Italian Political Science Review, Modern Italy, Social Sciences,and European Political Science. He is currently on the Editorial Boards of Southern European Society and Politics and Modern Italy.

Headshot of Alexander Makulilo

Alexander Makulilo

Alexander Makulilo is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Dar es Salaam. Makulilo is currently the Georg Forster Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt (2023 – 2025) based at Freiburg University. His research focuses on governance, democracy, gender, public opinion, constitutionalism, peace and security, development, and comparative politics. For a decade, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of The African Review: A Journal of African Politics, Development and International Affairs published by the Brill. Professor Makulilo earned his Ph.D. in Political Science (Summa cum Laude) from the University of Leipzig, Germany.

Matthias Neumann headshot

Matthias Neumann

Matthias Neumann is Senior Lecturer in Modern Russian History at the University of East Anglia, UK. He has published widely on the history of childhood and youth in revolutionary Russia and is the President of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES).

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Lorenzo Fabbri

Lorenzo Fabbri is Associate Professor of French and Italian at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and Editor, with Professor Ramsey McGlazer of Italian Culture. Lorenzo has published extensively in film history, critical theory, and Italian Studies; his second book, Cinema Is the Strongest Weapon: Race-Making and Resistance in Fascist Italy is forthcoming at the end of 2023.

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