ADHS Dissertation Prize | Alcohol and Drugs Hi

THE ADHS DISSERTATION PRIZE

The award and stipend of $1,000 is given at each biennial ADHS conference for outstanding work in the historical study of alcohol and/or drugs, as demonstrated by the completion of the Ph.D. and a proposal to turn the dissertation into a publishable monograph.

Each prize application will be evaluated for overall excellence, originality of the proposed project, the historiographic contribution of the study, the feasibility of the project plan, and the potential impact of the project on the career trajectory of the applicant.

The ADHS Dissertation Prize
Eligibility Criteria

We accept application packages in English, based on dissertations written in any language.
The Ph.D. must have been completed and the degree granted within the last two years (i.e., 2022–2024).
Applicants must include a curriculum vitae, the dissertation abstract (or an English translation), a cover letter not exceeding 4 pages that explicitly outlines the main argument and includes a draft table of contents, methods or approach, contribution to historiography, and a summary of proposed changes to the dissertation for the scholarly monograph.
Applicants must submit completed original dissertations for reference.
Applicants must also arrange for letters from two referees familiar with the dissertation to submit letters directly to the committee chair.
We encourage applicants to indicate whether they have received expressions of interest from publishers.

Applications are due January 1, 2024.

For inquiries, please contact: erika.dyck@usask.ca

The ADHS Dissertation Prize Committee Members (2022-2024):
Erika Dyck (chair)
Stephen Snelders
Aileen Teague

Dissertation Prize Recipients

2024 Recipients:

Winner:

Dr. Matthew Wormer’s dissertation, “Opium, Economic Thought, and the Making of Britain’s Free Trade Empire, 1773-1839” offers an original and innovative contribution to the study of opium, imperial economics, and addiction in its careful examination of the East India Company and the supply and consumption side of a global opium economy. The committee was impressed with Wormer’s framing of the opium problem, as a fundamental question of capitalism that influenced tastes, preferences, and ultimately consumption patterns. The recentering of opium as a study of consumption encourages scholars to look beyond the political debates and opium wars, to draw our attention to an alternative reading of opium politics in this period with India at the centre. We unanimously agreed that your work is poised to make a major contribution to the field, and we look forward to seeing it as a monograph.

Honorable Mention:

Dr Zoë Dubus’s dissertation “Médicament ou poison? Médecins, médecine et psychotropes du XIXe siècle à nos jours en France,” [Medicine or poison: Doctors, medicine, and psychotropics from the 19th century until today in France], is an in-depth study of psychotropic drugs in France, including morphine, cocaine, and LSD. Dubus makes excellent use of medical archives to show how French psychiatrists developed their own approaches to experimentation and treatment that at times set them apart from their European counterparts. This history elegantly unfolds over 1000 pages in a tour de force analysis of drug experimentation that reveals some of the contests in fields of addiction science and the place of narcotics in studies of both pain and pleasure.