2025 Emerging Scholars Competition

Peter Lang is delighted to announce the results of the 2025 Peter Lang Emerging Scholars Competition in Queer Studies:  

Winner in English  

J. Javier Torres-Fernández 

Narratives and Metaphors of HIV/AIDS in Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance:  

Exploring Stories of Illness and Healing 

to be published in Reimagining Ireland 

Winner in German Studies 

Emily Stokes 

Touching Queer Materiality:  

Murmurs of Affect, Identity, and Memory in Queer Objects and Counter-Objects of the German Democratic Republic, 1979–1990 

to be published in German Visual Culture 

Winner in Classics 

Yentl Sophia Love 

Queering Bacchus in Republican and Early Imperial Literature 

to be published in Queering Paradigms 

Honourable Mentions 

Steph Berens 

On Repair and Worldmaking:  

Literary Reworkings of Cultural Tropes in Contemporary North American Transgender Fiction 

Igor Facchini 

Queering Interpreting Studies:  

Gender-Fair and Non-Binary Language in Conference Interpreting  

to be published in New Trends in Translation Studies 

Winners of the prize receive a Gold Open Access contract for publication. Many congratulations to our winners and honourable mentions! Thank you to our distinguished editorial boards and to all those who took part in the competition.   

The Peter Lang Emerging Scholars Competition is an annual competition in selected fields. Please check back here for the announcement for next year’s competition.  

For more information, please contact Dr Laurel Plapp (l.plapp@peterlang.com) or Dr Phil Dunshea (p.dunshea@peterlang.com).  

History

The Peter Lang Emerging Scholars Competition (previously known as the Young Scholars Competition) is an annual competition for early career researchers in selected fields. It has been held every year since 2011, in fields such as Black Studies, Irish Studies, Women’s Writing, Education, French Studies, and more.  

In each competition, book proposals for monographs are invited from emerging scholars to be evaluated by a distinguished editorial board. Winners receive a contract for a fully funded book and the title of winner. Runners-up and other participants may also have opportunities to publish. 

We’re proud to have a community of over 30 winners of the competition over the years, and we’re pleased to feature some of our winning books. Please watch the interviews with three winners of our 2019 French Studies competition – Polly Galis, Mathew Rickard, and Natalie Berkman – to learn what winning the competition has meant to them.

Image by Acediscovery on WIKIMEDIA COMMONS