We are delighted to congratulate alumna Stephanie van Dam on being awarded the Coventry–Emsley Prize. Stephanie recently completed her PhD in History at Cambridge and reflects on her College experience and what this recognition means for her research.
“I distinctly remember standing outside in the orchard with masks on, trying to remember people by eyes, brows, and style. St Edmund’s did their utmost to make me and my partner feel at home despite the circumstances. As a member of the boat club and the CR environmental officer I felt like I could hold on to some sense of community despite the circumstances. The effort St Edmund’s put into keeping life going helped me make it through that first year of the PhD.
“As travel and archives opened up in my second year, it felt like my academic journey could finally properly begin. I went to the national archives in Barbados, where I found records on imperial injury compensation which led me to drastically change my PhD topic. I tugged on the archival red thread of the voices of disabled workers in the British Empire during the interbellum and went to the national archives in Mauritius, Ghana and did a visiting fellowship at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. The experience shaped me as a person and a scholar, fuelling my desire to write global histories of precarity and protest from the bottom up.
My PhD demonstrates that disabled workers and their families were vital to the implementation of disability rights in the British Empire, holding state and industry accountable for the long-term financial impact of workplace accidents.
“My current work builds from the questions asked in my PhD and tries to understand how (changes in) normative thinking about ‘valuable’ bodies and minds affects power relations, precarity, and protest. My interest in how disability has historically impacted socio-economic opportunity continues in my current work as a postdoc at the École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique where I am writing a trans-national history on disability and ageing in post war Europe.
“I am also a fellow at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, where I am presently writing a global history of workplace accidents in the British Empire which demonstrates the importance of disabled people in British colonies to imperial legal change.
“Winning the Coventry-Emsley prize feels as a recognition of the fact that at times
when precarity and violence against protesters is normalised, support for research that looks critically at the history of the norms that govern economic and governmental structures is vital. I am grateful for the interest taken in and the tangible support given to my work, it is sincerely needed and appreciated.
About The Coventry-Emsley Prize
The Coventry-Emsley Prize is a consolidation of two historic prizes awarded at St Edmund’s College in memory of the late former Master, the Rev Dr John Coventry, and the late benefactor Mr Kenneth Emsley. Their unfailing support of our students and their enduring generosity has left a lasting impact on generations of St Edmund’s members.
The Coventry Prize was established to celebrate the highest mark or recommendation achieved by a student in Divinity, and two Emsley Prizes were established to celebrate the best performance in History or an historically-grounded subject and Natural Sciences respectively.
In 2020 the College combined the remit of the Coventry and Emsley prizes in the humanities, in view of the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of postgraduate scholarship, to recognise outstanding achievements in any of the disciplines of Classics, History, Philosophy or Theology.
Academic prizes celebrate the achievements of St Edmund’s students and champion excellent scholarship, and encourage the prize-winners themselves, and the students of the future that follow them.
Shape the future of academic excellence
You can shape the future of academic excellence at St Edmund’s College by establishing a new prize in your name, or the name of a loved one. To explore how you can make this difference, please contact the William in the Development Office at development@st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk
Image by Alisha Meeder
