The JBSP and BSP are delighted to announce two joint winners of the Second Wolfe Mays Essay Prize for 2024.
The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (JBSP) and the British Society for Phenomenology (BSP) are delighted to announce two joint winners of the Second Wolfe Mays Essay Prize for Early Career Researchers. The theme for the prize was ‘Collective Memory’.
The winners are Dr Vera Hadji-Pulja and Dr Minna-Kerttu Kekki.
Dr Vera Hadji-Pulja is a postdoctoral researcher at University American College Skopje (UACS), Macedonia. The title of Hadji-Pulja’s essay is ‘Collective memory in Husserl. A reading based on generativity “from within”’. The essay seeks to discuss the possibility of properly collective acts, including collective memory, in Husserl, such as the possibility of a shared memory, common to all members of a relatively tightly unified group. It does so in the context of so-called personalities of a higher order, which it in turn interprets based on the model of Husserlian generativity, understood stricto sensu and as seen ‘from within’.
Dr Minna-Kerttu Kekki is a postdoctoral researcher at University of Helsinki, Finland. The title of Kekki’s essay is ‘Collective memory as sedimentations of collective experience: Phenomenological analysis of post-Soviet Europe’. The argument of the essay is that describing collective memory as a historical collective experience involving the sedimentation of experiences can help us understand the complexities in empirical cases. Kekki discusses actual cases of collective memory in post-Soviet European societies and communities, mainly in Estonia and among Ingrian Finns, and – based upon her phenomenological description of collective memory – suggests that the same historical and contemporary political objects may appear very differently to different societies and communities.
Both essays were selected from a competitive field and noted for their insights by all the jurors and reviewers. Accordingly, Prof. Darian Meacham, editor-in-chief of the JBSP, took the decision to award the prize jointly to both Dr Vera Hadji-Pulja and Dr Minna-Kerttu Kekki.
Meacham commented:
Awarding the prize collectively to two recipients seemed appropriate; the two essays, Dr Kekki’s in the area of applied phenomenology, working with a specific case study, and Dr Hadji-Pulja’s creatively developing Husserlian phenomenology, exemplify the diversity of approaches and philosophical rigour that the JBSP seeks to publish.
Upon being awarded the prize, Dr Vera Hadji-Pulja said:
I would like to thank the BSP and JBSP for launching the Wolfe Mays Essay Prize in support of ECRs working in the field phenomenology. In what might be the perfect example of an act of collective memory, they certainly live up to the aspiration of their founder, to “perform an important service in bringing to the notice of the academic world the work of [these] young scholars”. I can only hope that I have, on my end, made a modest contribution to this effect, by attempting to keep “the journal as lively and as controversial a publication” as possible.
Dr Minna-Kerttu Kekki said:
I am very grateful for this prize and the consideration given by the jury. I was very happy to see that the theme of the second Wolfe Mays Essay Prize was collective memory as it is a crucial topic for social and political studies today, and there is much potential in the phenomenological investigation of this topic. Understanding collective memory as an experience is central also for working with the problems related to collective memory. The Essay Prize inspired me to work on collective memory phenomenologically and thereby opened an entirely new productive path for my research.
You can find out more about the Wolfe Mays Essay Prize at BSP Online, and both essays will appear in the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology soon.
> Read the essay by Dr Minna-Kerttu Kekki (published August 2024)
> Read the essay by Dr Vera Hadji-Pulja (to be published soon)