Dissertation Prize

Deadline for application has been extended to the 15^th of March 2012

EBHA Dissertation Prize

Every two years, the EBHA awards a prize for the best dissertation in business history submitted to a European university in the previous two years. Eligible dissertations may be in any European language. The next prize will be awarded at the EBHA annual meeting in Paris in august-september 2012.

Three finalists will be selected from the dissertations submitted for consideration, and the authors will be required to give a presentation based on their dissertations at a plenary session at the forthcoming EBHA conference. All three finalists will receive a certificate that they have been among the short-listed candidates and will be eligible for reimbursement of part of their travel costs. All three will also be eligible for a waiver of their registration fees for the conference. In addition, the prize winner will receive EUR 300 and a special certificate. The finalists are invited to have written versions of their presentations published in the Newsletter of EBHA.

The prize and the travel cost reimbursement fund have been funded since 2010 by the William Lind Foundation, located in Scotland.

Procedure for entry

All candidates wishing to enter the prize competition must meet the criteria indicated above and must attach a summary of 1-2 pages of their dissertation to the application along with a printed copy of the dissertation itself.

Supervisors of candidates may be invited by the candidate to write 1 page outlining the strong points of the thesis. This is, however, optional, and absence of a supervisor's statement will not count against the candidate in the competition.

A printed paper version of the dissertation and accompanying documentation as specified above must be submitted for consideration to the following address:

Arielle HAAKENSTAD
Centre de Recherches Historiques
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
190-198 avenue de France
75244 Paris cedex 13
FRANCE

In addition, an identical electronic version of the dissertation and accompanying documentation as specified above in either Word or PDF format should be submitted to ebha-bhsj.paris@ehess.fr

The deadline for application for the prize is 15 February 2012. Dissertations submitted after this date, submitted only in electronic form at any time, or submitted without a summary, will not be considered further.

Criteria for judging

Each dissertation will be evaluated by at least one external referee, preferably from another country than the candidate.

The dissertation committee, which is appointed by the EBHA council, will select the three, or if necessary four, finalists. Their decision cannot be overruled and will be taken on the basis of the following criteria:

• a) significance and novelty (innovation) of the topic and/or methodology;
  
• b) adequacy of theoretical framework, including literature review and formulation of hypotheses;
• c) methodology, including description and evaluation of sources used;
• d) structure of thesis and cohesion of arguments;
• e) overall written presentation of results;
• f) oral presentation.

A checklist of items a) through e) will be given to the external referee, who will be asked to rank the dissertation's quality for each criterion on a simple three point scale (with 1 indicating among top 10%, 2 among the top 33%, and 3 among top 50% based on the experience of the referee). In case of very similar rankings, a second referee may be consulted at the discretion of the judges.

The judges will then use this information along with any judgments they themselves have formed on the basis of all materials submitted to choose the finalists. The oral presentation will be ranked by them, and the overall rankings will be then used to choose the prize winner. The prize winner will be announced at the gala conference dinner.

Please note: Names of referees and all paperwork associated with the decision-making process will be confidential. It will not be possible to enter any correspondence or discussion about the decision of the judges or the process through which they have arrived at it.