We are pleased to announce that the winner of the Margaret Harkness Prize 2020 is Jennifer Moriarty for her project: ‘Immaterial Bodies: Affecting Paupers and Spirits in Late-Victorian Literature’
The Margaret Elise Harkness prize is an annual award made by the Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies in recognition of outstanding postgraduate work on a woman associated with the arts, social/political activism, medical humanities, or global travel and writing in the long nineteenth century (1800-1924). The prize was established in 2018 to honour the work of the writer and activist Margaret E. Harkness (1854-1923). The amount of the award is £1000.
The applications this year were particularly strong. The panel was impressed by the quality and the material of Jennifer’s research, in particular by her work on the nineteenth-century writer Margaret Oliphant. We cannot wait to see this work published.

The panel also awarded a honourable mention to Helena Esser for her work on the nineteenth-century woman writer Marie Louise de la Ramée or Ouida,