2025 DISSERTATION PRIZE WINNERS
Each year we select and award dissertation prizes for outstanding essays written by undergraduate and postgraduate students. Winning and shortlisted essays are assessed on the quality of their originality, research and method, and form and content.
Prize winning essays
We are delighted to announce that Xintong Liu, University of Oxford is the winner of the Association for Art History’s 2025 Undergraduate Dissertation Prize for the essay ‘Picturing Your Body, Imag(in)ing Your Place: Japanese Imperial Postcards of Women Entertainers in Manchuria’. Xintong’s dissertation offers an original and well-structured study of 1930s Japanese imperial postcards of women entertainers in Manchuria.
We are also delighted to announce that Roxana Kaboli, University College London is the winner of the Association for Art History’s 2025 Postgraduate Dissertation Prize for their essay ‘Another Form of Cabinet: Collecting, Feeling and Seeing the Cabinet of Freedom.’ This dissertation offers a nuanced re-reading of Thomas Clarkson’s Cabinet of Freedom through the lenses of material culture and collecting practices, with a methodology that moves between close visual analysis, historiography, and theoretical reflection on museums, archives, and humanitarian narratives.
Many congratulations to both Xintong and Roxana, who were awarded their prizes at the 2026 AAH Annual Conference.
Shortlisted undergraduate dissertations
- Alysha Wong (University College London) for the dissertation ‘Ageing Troubles: Maternal Bodies of Louise Bourgeois’
- Madeleine Oliver (University of York) for the dissertation ‘Doors into Distinctive Devotion: Evaluating the Unique use of Devotional Objects in Female Monasticism through the Allariz Shrine Madonna’
Shortlisted postgraduate dissertations
- Jedikaya Elphick (University College London) for the dissertation ‘Cady Noland’s Log Cabin: Property, Exclusion and the Frontier’
- Daisy Gamble (University of Sussex) for the dissertation ‘ The Contaminated Touch: Exploring the Archives of Nazi Crossdressing in Martin Dammann’s Soldier Studies’
Assessment and Nominations
The Dissertation Prize is assessed by our Doctoral and Early Career Research (DECR) committee. Many thanks to those on the committee, led by Jelena Sofronijevic and Lavinia Amenduni, who read and shortlisted this year’s submissions. The quality and originality of the essays were extremely high. Many thanks to all who submitted nominations.