PAST WINNERS AND WINNING ESSAYS

Oxford Studies In Metaphysics

2012 Winner

Jonathan Schaffer, Karen Bennett, and Jason Turner served as the 2012 judges for The Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Younger Scholar Prize. This year there were a total of 49 essays competing to be included in a future Volume of Oxford Studies in Metaphysics. The judges identified several excellent candidates, including three runner-up essays: "Vague Existence" by Alessandro Torza (UNAM), "Half-Hearted Humeanism" by Aaron Segal (Notre Dame), and "Paraphrase, Semantics, and Ontology" by John Keller (Niagra University). Ultimately, the judges determined Nicholas Jones's essay "Multiple Constitution" be awarded first prize.

2011 Winner

This year, the Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Younger Scholar Prize attracted 44 essays, submitted by scholars at various stages in their careers — most participants were recent Ph.D.s, but there were many graduate students, and a few tenured associate professors as well. The judges, Kris McDaniel, Laurie Paul, and Hud Hudson, found much to like in the submissions, and several runners-up were identified as good candidates for inclusion in a future volume of OSM, including "Composition is Identity" by Aaron Cotnoir, and "Fundamental Properties of Fundamental Properties" by Maya Eddon. The judges eventually converged upon Shamik Dasgupta’s paper, "Absolutism vs. Comparativism about Quantity".

2010 Winner

With over 50 essays to choose from, the judges of the 2010 Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Younger Scholar Prize once again faced a difficult decision. The winning essay was "The Real Truth About the Unreal Future", by Rachael Briggs (a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Sydney) and Graeme A. Forbes (a graduate student at Sheffield University). Several other excellent essays from this year’s competition will, along with the winner, be published in volume 7 of Oxford Studies in Metaphysics; including Troy Cross’s "Goodbye, Humean Supervenience", and Joshua Spencer’s "All Things Must Pass".

2009 Winner (and near-winners)

The record number of 30 submitted entries in 2008 seemed small compared to the new record-number of 55 submitted entries in 2009. The Ammonius Foundation and Editorial Board of Oxford Studies in Metaphysics wish to make special note the remarkably high quality of essays for 2009, and in particular to highlight the University of Leeds, with whom are associated not only the winning author but also, remarkably, the authors of both exceptionally strong runners-up. We congratulate runners-up Elizabeth Barnes (Lecturer, University of Leeds) and J. Robert G. Williams (Reader in Theoretical Philosophy, University of Leeds) for their essay “A Theory of Metaphysical Indeterminacy”, and runner-up Ross P. Cameron (Lecturer, University of Leeds) for his essay “Truthmaking for Presentists.” The Editorial Board and The Foundation congratulate Jason Turner, also University of Leeds, as winner of the 2009 Younger Scholar’s Prize. His winning essay, “Ontological Nihilism,” will (with those of his colleagues) be published in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Vol. 6 (D. Zimmerman, ed.), forthcoming 2010.