Prizes

The IFTR runs two annual essay competitions for the New Scholars' Prize and Helsinki Prize.

New Scholars' Prize 

The New Scholars' Prize is awarded to the best essay, judged on originality, coherence and rigour. The first prize would enable the winner(s) to attend the IFTR conference. It covers the following costs: conference registration, economy travel and student accommodation (or equivalent) for the duration of the conference. 

Helsinki Prize 

The Helsinki Prize was founded by the student Congress Team of the 2006 IFTR/FIRT World Congress in Helsinki. Since 2011, it has been offered annually by IFTR to a promising new scholar who may be a postgraduate or lecturer at any university, but whose country of origin and of first degree-level studies is in Africa, Asia or South America, and who wishes to participate in an IFTR conference. The prize is awarded on the basis of the merit of the essay and strives to promote the exchange and networking of new scholars in developing regions, and to encourage research in the field of theatre in their countries. The prize would enable the winner(s) to attend the IFTR conference. It covers the following costs: conference registration, economy travel and student accommodation (or equivalent) for the duration of the conference.

Information on Prizes for IFTR 2023 Accra can be found here.

New Scholars Prize and Helsinki Prize: Recent Past Winners

2022
New Scholars Prize: Rachel Merrill Moss, Lecturer in Dramatic Literature at Boston University (USA) for the essay ’The Theatre of Jewish Absence in Poland’ 
Helsinki Prize: Nisha Tiwari, PhD candidate, Jawaharlal Nehru University (India), for the essay ‘Feminist aesthetics of discomfiture: Performing Precarity in LasTesis’ The Rapist is You (2019) and Maya Rao’s The Scent of the Land (2020)
Honorable mentions: Jessica Friedman, PhD candidate, Northwestern University, ‘Dancing Sharecroppers: Jane Dudley’s and Pearl Primus’ Border Crossing Blues’ and Sheetala Bhat PhD candidate, Western University (Canada) for ‘Hunters Love against Hungry Listening: Indigenous Sovereignty in Vigil and The Unnatural and Accidental Women'

2021
New Scholars Prize: Reka Polonyi, PhD candidate, University of Manchester  (UK) for the essay ‘Playful disobedience in the Model for a Qualitative Society; a method of practice for uncertain times’
Helsinki Prize: Hayana Kim, PhD candidate, Northwestern University (USA) for the essay ‘Performing Democracy in the Graveyard: Military Dictatorship and Commemorative Activism in South Korea’

2020
New Scholars Prize: Guanda Wu, Lecturer at the Hangzhou Normal University (China) for his essay ‘Republican Nandan, the Discourse of Chinese “Aestheticism,” and the Formation of Nandan’s “Artistic” Femininity’
Helsinki Prize: Sheetala Bhat, PhD candidate, Western University (Canada) for the essay ‘In-between Love: Performance of Intimate Love as Making of Counterpublics in Mandeep Raikhy’s Queen-size’
Honorable mention: Weston Twardowski, PhD candidate, Northwestern University (USA) for the essay ‘Peering into the Past: New Orleans Flooded House Museum and Re/Living History’ and Aine Josephine Mary Tyrell, PhD candidate at the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at Stanford University for the essay titled ‘Looking Like Sh*t: The Visual Politics of Photographing Toiletsin/and Hassan Elahi’s Thousand Little Brothers’ 

2019
New Scholars Prize: Cara Brophy-Browne, Trinity College Dublin
Helsinki Prize: Rina Tanaka, Meiji University 

2018
New Scholar’s Prize: Mara Valderrama, City University New York  

2017
New Scholars Prize: Eleanor Skimin, Brown University; Anna White-Nockleby, Harvard University; Phoebe Rumsey, City University New York
Helsinki Prize: Devika N Menon, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Dehli