2023 Senior Kirkaldy Prize winners announced

© Belinda Clark

Ellen Hausner and Philippa Monk, both first-year DPhil students in the History of Science, have been jointly awarded the 2023 Jane Willis Kirkaldy Senior Prize. The annual prize recognises outstanding essays in the field of the history of science, medicine, and technology at the University of Oxford.

Philippa’s prize-winning essay, ‘Policing, Treating, and Constructing Venereal Disease in the Vietnam War’ explores the continued regulation of prostitution by Americans in Vietnam, and what this meant in a post-penicillin landscape, particularly in relation to antimicrobial resistance and continued eugenic fears. Now, her doctoral research explores the construction of the category of yaws in nineteenth- and twentieth-century South Asia, and links this to civilisational, colonial, and development discourses and policies. 

Ellen’s doctoral research explores the functions of symbols, images, and glyphs within alchemical texts in the early modern period (c.1450-1700). She came to her DPhil at Wolfson College following a career in academic libraries. Ellen’s prize-winning essay, ‘Prima Materia Lapidis: A Late Medieval Alchemical Scroll and its Early Modern Reception’ analyses the early modern annotations on the earliest extant exemplar of the Ripley Scroll corpus, a body of ornate, richly illuminated alchemical manuscripts.

Both Ellen and Philippa are delighted and honoured to have won the Prize so soon in their academic careers. They are very grateful to the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology for selecting their essays, and for the support and recognition the Prize brings to their research.