2016 Progress in Human Geography Best Paper Prize

The PiHG annual essay prize is intended to encourage and highlight high-quality published work in human geography from early career scholars. The prize is worth £250 of books from SAGE Ltd. It is awarded to the best essay published by a junior scholar (or scholars) in a given year/volume of PiHG. For these purposes, ‘early career’ is normally taken to mean within 7 years of completion of a PhD or within 7 years of a first permanent academic appointment. For coauthored papers, all the authors must be early career or else lead authors. Eligible papers were assessed by the editors from the 2016 volume, with advice received from two members of the international editorial advisory board. As in previous years, all the assessors felt that the essays were of a very high quality indeed.

The editors are pleased to announce the winner of this year’s best paper competition. He is Kirby Calvert of Guelph University (Canada) and is the seventh winner of the PiHG Best Paper Prize. His paper is entitled ‘From ‘energy geography’ to ‘energy geographies’: Perspectives on a fertile academic borderland’. He is an Assistant Professor. He received his PhD in Geography (2013) at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, where he worked with the Queen’s Institute of Energy and Environmental Policy. Kirby is Co-Director of the Community Energy Knowledge-Action Partnership (CEKAP), a national partnership of universities and non-academic partners with a shared interest in building more resilient and sustainable communities through community energy planning (www.cekap.ca). He is also a member and co-Chair of the City of Guelph’s Community Energy Initiative Task Force.

Noel Castree, Louise Amoore, Christian Berndt, Sarah Elwood, Nina Laurie and Pauline McGuirk