CUAA Prize for Best Graduate Student Paper
Deadline for Submissions: Tuesday, September 1, 2026
The Critical Urban Anthropology Association (CUAA) is pleased to announce its 2026 Graduate Student Paper Prize competition. We are seeking papers that address CUAA’s concern with the interaction among urban, national, and transnational processes as manifested in urban ethnographic and/or historical research. This concern includes, but is not limited to, topics such as urban life, space and place, poverty and homelessness, infrastructure, urban governance, social movements, security and surveillance, refugees and immigration. We are especially interested in papers that draw on primary ethnographic research.
The prize includes a cash award of $300, and the winner will be announced at the 2026 AAA meeting in St. Louis. The recipient of the award will be encouraged to revise their paper for submission to CUAA’s journal City & Society, where it will undergo the peer review process.
Eligibility and Submissions Format:
Any author currently enrolled in a graduate program or who graduated in the 2026 calendar year is eligible for the competition if their submission was composed while they were enrolled in school. International entries are strongly encouraged, but papers must be submitted in English. Submissions cannot be under review for publication in a journal or edited volume.
Papers should be formatted to be 5,000 -7,000 words including bibliography, or no more than a total 30 pages double-spaced, including bibliography and images; images should be embedded in the text as .gif or .jpg files; citations/references should be consistent with Chicago style. The submission itself should be a Word document.
Submissions must be received by Tuesday, September 1, 2026. They should be emailed to: Andreina Torres Angarita (atorresa@barnard.edu) and Marta-Laura Haynes (mhaynes@jjay.cuny.edu). Please use the same contact information for queries about the award. CUAA looks forward to your contribution.