Prizes

In October 2024, the first call for papers was made public inviting scholars from all stages in their career to apply to participate in the first Central European History Convention to be held at the University of Vienna in July 2025. The deadline for submissions was set for January 31, 2025. In those four months between announcement and deadline no one had any idea what was going to come of it all. What if no one applied? What only certain branches of scholars applied? The what ifs were so many it’s silly to relive them all. But what is pleasant to relive is seein the enormous interest among all geographies, chronologies, and professional levels to participate in the Convetion. Almost 500 submissions were received and then the heart-wrenching work began to select participants. To ease the pain of it all, decisions were made to ask the more senior scholars who had applied to serve as discussants or chairs if possible. And, presto! The convention was regeared as a forum for bringing emerging scholars into the spotlight, with the more experienced scholars taking on the role of asking questions, providing advice or insight, and leading broader discussions to bridge the individual papers into ever bigger interventions. To include as many as possible, it was also decided to hold 5 parallel sessions for each time slot, excepting the keynotes and roundtable on Pieter Judson’s work.

Part of this spotlighting of junior scholars was the creation of an infrastructure to help connect really exciting work of emerging scholars with journals that might be interested in pursuing publication. But there was one hitch in this scheme: how can you scout 55, mostly parallel panels? The answer we devised was to enlist a diverse crew of senior scholars known for their experience in working with tier-1 journals to act as scouts during the convention. 20 senior scholars were enlisted and given very simple instructions: go to as many panels as you can and then drop us a line if you heard anything “new” (not published yet) and particularly exciting that seemed like it could be converted into a first-tier article. About a week after the convention ended, the emails began flowing in. In the end, almost 90 papers were recommended. Peter Becker and Dominique Reill then compiled the list and sent it to dozens of journals known for publishing in topics linked to Central European History. Authors were also notified that they had been mentioned by the scouts that their papers had been particularly appreciated. Authors were also invited to submit their papers for consideration for a Convention prize if they could confirm their submission fit the following conditions: 1) the author was within 5 years of completing their PhD and 2) the material of the paper had not yet been published.

In the end, close to 40 prize submissions were received and a committee was put together made up of 12 members spanning 9 timezones. All these members read and ranked the submissions and then met on a zoom in order to make the final selections. The conversation was long but incredibly jovial: though it was hard to choose winners, there was something so inspiring about reading so many fascinating papers from so many different fields by the next generations of scholars who would soon take the reins in Central European Studies. After much back and forth, a final group of winners were chosen, 5 to be precise. Their papers were chosen because all of them posed an important research question, proved analytically interesting, and all the members were excited to see what these papers would look like article-length in a first-tier journal. It was in light of that last element – the curiosity about what these papers would reveal if in article-length in a first-tier journal – that the contours of the prize were also decided. The prize would not just be symbolic (being bestowed the title “Prize Winner”), or monetary (500euros), it would also be a mentorship prize. Peter Becker and Dominique Reill then sent off a flurry of emails to secure three well-respected and experienced mentors for each prize winner (outside their already established networks) to help guide and offer advice on how to convert the paper into something that would get published in the journal of the author’s choosing. Winners were contacted in November and put in touch with their mentors. At the time of writing this, we hope these winners -- Evelyn Knappitsch, Svit Komel, László Mika, Anna Molnár, and Ben Van Zee -- are benefiting from the support of these mentors to help make their ambitions come true. We can’t wait to read the published versions to come. In fact, we can’t wait to read the published versions of all the submissions we received: they were all so good.

Peter Becker & Dominique Reill

To learn more about the contours of the winners’ projects, below are the abstracts the authors provided with citations provided by the committee on why these papers proved particularly worthy of note and support.

Knappitsch, Evelyn [University of Graz]

“On the Trail of Words. Censorship, ‘Human Intelligence’ and early ‘data‑mining’ during World War I”

Komel, Svit [University of Ljubljana]

“Surveys and transformation of property in the Habsburg Empire”

Mika, László [Humboldt University, Berlin]

“Competing Cis- and Transleithanian Historical Visions in the Kronprinzenwerk (1885–1902)”

Molnár, Anna [King's College London]

“Private Banking Activities of Female Religious Organisations in the Later Middle Ages”

Van Zee, Ben [European University Institute]

“A New Galicia in Brazil: The Impact of Habsburg Federalism on Polish Colonial Thought”