Background

In 2015, the Commission on Legal Pluralism decided to introduce an award for the best paper by an early career scholar presented during the biennial conferences, with a view to drawing more attention to this field of study and academic research.

Previous winners of the award, whose papers have been published in the journal of the Commission are:

Ottawa 2018: Viviane Weitzner - published in vol. 51 (2019) issue 1
Mumbai 2015: Joyce Das - published in vol. 48 (2016) issue 2

Eligible candidates

The award is conceived as an incentive award for early career researchers, and the nominations are limited to scholars who obtained their PhD (or any other degree where relevant) no earlier than six years prior to the starting date of the conference.

The prize is awarded at each biannual conference and consists of a present and the publication of the winning paper in the Commission's peer-reviewed journal, Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis (previously The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law). For more information on the history of the journal please visit the journal page.

Criteria for participation 

To qualify for the award, submissions must fulfil the following requirements:

•    Papers should be original work, not published previously. Papers by more than one author are accepted on the condition that all authors fulfil the requirements.
•    Papers should be accepted and presented at the Commission's conference held in the year that the award is presented.
•    Papers should be full papers, well-written (in English), clearly structured, argued and referenced.
•    Papers should clearly address issues that are relevant to the field of legal pluralism, either as a fully theoretical paper or as a case study-based paper linking insights from the case study to legal pluralism theory.

Jury

All manuscripts will be evaluated and the prize winners selected by an international jury of three members, including one member of the Executive Body of the Commission on Legal Pluralism, the Editor in Chief of Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis, and a guest academic in the field of legal pluralism.

For more information please contact Dik.Roth@wur.nl