The Prince Consort & Thirlwall Prize and Seeley Medal is a prize awarded annually by the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge for the doctoral dissertation submitted in the previous academic year which is deemed by the Faculty's judging panel to be the best. The prize is one of the university's oldest and is considered the most prestigious accolade for doctoral work within the Faculty.
As of May 2025, the prize is valued at £1,500 and is drawn from the Prince Consort and Thirlwall Prize Fund, which also offers studentships and grants to PhD students, and hardship funding for fourth-year PhD students.
History The prize is the result of a merger between the Prince Consort Prize, the Thirwall Prize, and the Seeley Medal. From 1904, the Prince Consort Prize and Thirlwall Prize were awarded in alternate years for the best doctoral dissertation.
The Seeley Medal emerged from an attempt, in 1896, to create a Memorial Fund in memory of John Robert Seeley, a former Regius Professor of History at the Faculty, who had died the previous year. The organisers were unsuccessful in raising their target of £3,000 to offer a postgraduate scholarship "to encourage the study of English and foreign archives bearing upon modern international history"; only £635 was raised, which was eventually designated for the Seeley Medal to reward exceptional historical scholarship. Prior to its merger with the Prince Consort and Thirlwall Prizes, the Seeley Medal was only awarded sporadically.
List of past winners The following is an incomplete list of past winners. The year given is the year in which the prize was awarded; the dissertations to which they refer were submitted in the previous years. Year Names of recipientsTitle of doctoral dissertation2025Elena ZhengThe Politics of Belief in Hume and Enlightenment Scepticism2024Edward EverettSanctuary in Sixteenth-Century EnglandKate FalardeauThe Manuscript Circulation and Use of Bede’s Martyrology and Religious Practice in Carolingian and Post-Carolingian Europe, to c. 12502023Charlotte JohannFriedrich Carl von Savigny and Politics of Legal Pluralism in Germany, ca. 1810–1847Tamara Fernando Of Molluscs and Men: Pearling Labour and Environments in the Northern Indian Ocean 1880–19252022Daniel AllemannSlavery and Empire in Iberian Scholastic Thought, c.1539-1682Samuel Sokolsky-TifftThe Problem of Guilt: Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Fanon, and Glissant2021Sara CaputoForeign Seamen and the British Navy, 1793–1815Jake Subryan RichardsLiberated Africans and Law in the South Atlantic, c.1839–18712020Freddy FoksSocial Anthropology and British Society: c.1920–1975Chika TonookaJapanese 'Civilisation' and Ideas of Progress in Britain, c.1880–1945 2012Emile ChabalRepublicanism, Liberalism, and the Search for the Political Consensus in France, c.1980–c.20102005Ben Griffin2001Emma GriffinPopular Sports and Celebrations in England, 1660–18402000David StoneThe Management of Resources on the Demesne Farm of Wisbech Barton 1314–14301999Jonathan WalkerHonour and the Culture of Male Venetian Nobles, c. 1500–16501988George Garnett1961David Loades
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