Winner: Ida Svenonius, (Lucy Cavendish College)
Six entries were received, all of them prepared to high standards. The quality and diversity of proposed dissertation projects are, as in previous years, very impressive. Thematically, they address various aspects of the arts, media, politics, religion and activism; with a focus this year to some extent on questions about modernity. Regionally, projects are proposed in Catalonia, Greece, Israel, Bangladesh, China, and Denmark.
The decision to award the Wyse Prize for the Best Dissertation Proposal took into account both the practical and conceptual aspects of proposed research, including the way in the candidates had been able to build on their existing knowledge of social anthropology. The winning entry by Ida Svenonius of Lucy Cavendish College, entitled ‘The Alternative: Danish participatory politics and the road to a metamodern anthropology', combines knowledge about the proposed field site with current anthropological perspectives on policy, democracy, and morality in politics. It will investigate the ‘meta-modernism’ of ‘The Alternative’, a radical political party in Denmark, which constructs its political action as a combination of pragmatic idealism and policy-making technocracy, enacted through the crowd-sourcing of political positions. In an innovative move, the proposal also seeks to explore the potential of this theoretical paradigm for the writing of anthropology. The proposal indicates a commendable ability to develop an original and timely research topic and holds considerable promise for a successful dissertation.