Academics win literary prizes

Distinguished literary prizes have been awarded to several Birkbeck academics for their latest publications.

Professor Rob Singh's recent book After Bush: The Case for Continuity in American Foreign Policy (co-authored with Tim Lynch) is the joint award winner of the annual Neustadt Prize for the best book on American Politics. The prize is awarded by the American Politics Group of the Political Studies Association. The award is named after Dr Richard Neustadt, the renowned American political scientist, who served as an advisor to several presidents, including Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton.

Dr Lisa Baraitser is the joint winner of the 2009 Feminist and Women's Studies Association book prize with her Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption. The judges' commented: 'This book is highly innovative and is beautifully and movingly written. She has defined a subject of study that significantly moves on existing debates.  It should be essential reading for all scholars interested in motherhood and the maternal.'

Professor Li Wei has won the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) Book Prize for The Blackwell Guide to Research Methods in Bilingualism and Multilingualism. The book features contributions from Birkbeck colleagues Dr Penelope Gardner-Chloros and Dr Zhu Hua. Prof Li Wei said: "I am particularly pleased as the book was written specifically for students who requested a book that links theory to method and to data. It’s recognition of the excellent research our Department has conducted on bilingualism and multilingualism."

Dr Simon Shaw-Miller has been awarded a 2009 Prix Ars Electronica Award for his forthcoming book Eye hEar: Art, Music, Film & the Culture of Synaesthesia. The Prix Ars Electronica is the world's most important competition in the cyberarts, and has been a showcase of artistic excellence and innovation since 1987. The book explores the concept of synaesthesia (the phenomenon in which stimulation of one sense leads to an automatic, involuntary response of a second sense), proposing a cross-sensory model for the understanding of interdisciplinary relationships in artistic and musical modernism.

Professor Orlando Figes has been shortlisted for the prestigious French Prix Médicis award in the essay category for Les chuchoteurs, la vie et la mort sous Staline. The Prix Médicis was founded in 1958 with Prix Médicis essai introduced in 1980 to recognise outstanding non-fictional works.