Graduate Student Paper Award

2012 AIA Grad Student Paper Award winners Margaret Andrews and Allison Emmerson receive their awards from AIA President Elizabeth Bartman

Guidelines for Submission
Graduate students are the future of our profession and contribute substantially to the success of the Archaeological Institute of America’s Annual Meeting by delivering papers based on original research. Through its Graduate Student Paper Award the Archaeological Institute of America recognizes this contribution and encourages outstanding research by students.

Eligible Graduate Students in Archaeology and related disciplines are invited to submit papers that have been accepted for presentation at the 2014 Annual Meeting to be considered for the Graduate Student Paper Award.

Eligible students are predoctoral students in any discipline related to archaeology who have had a paper accepted by the Program for the Annual Meeting Committee for presentation at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the AIA and who have checked the box on the submission form indicating that they were interested in the award. Accepted papers should then be submitted by email and in their entirety to the Graduate Student Paper Award Committee for consideration for the award. The full written paper must be received by December 2, 2013. When images form part of the argument, illustrations must be included. In substance and form the paper that is delivered should be the same as that submitted (no footnotes, citations, bibliography). Papers are anonymous, so the submitters name should not appear on or within the paper submitted.

The written paper and its oral and visual presentation will be judged for (1) originality, (2) concision and (3) delivery. Assessment of the presentation will not be affected either by technological format of presentation or by circumstances beyond the presenter’s control, but rather it will be judged by organization and rhetorical delivery. The selection committee consists of faculty or independent scholars and current graduate students.

The award will include a certificate of award and a prize consisting of books from multiple presses that exhibit at the annual meeting. The winner will be announced on the AIA website and noted in the AIA Newsletter. A letter will be sent to the chair of the academic department at the winner’s institution announcing the award.

Text and images should be submitted by email as either a Word or PDF document to 2014annualmeeting@aia.bu.edu.

After reading the submitted papers, the committee shall consult by conference call early in December to choose a shortlist of up to five finalists. Finalists will be notified of their status and members of the committee will attend their presentations at the meetings. If possible, the committee will meet in person immediately following the last sessions at the annual meeting; otherwise it will decide the winner by conference call immediately after the conference.

A report containing the name and institution of the candidate, the title of the winning paper, and the session in which it was presented shall be submitted to AIA headquarters immediately after the Annual Meeting each year.

2012 Graduate Student Paper Award Winners: Margaret Andrews and Allison Emmerson

On the recommendation of the Committee for the Graduate Student Paper Award, the Archaeological Institute of America awards co-first prize to Margaret M. Andrews of the University of Pennsylvania for her paper “Monuments and Morality: The Forum Transitorium and Domitian’s Urban Program in the Subura.”  Ms. Andrews’ s paper offered an entirely new look at a well-known but largely overlooked monument in Rome and argued convincingly that this forum was not merely a conduit into and out of the Roman forum but an important part of the fabric of Rome and the civic morality fostered since Augustan times.  Drawing from the archaeological, historical, and art historical record, literary evidence, and sound analysis of sculpture, she has shown that the smallest of the imperial fora in Rome played a role equal to that of the others in the message presented.   

On the recommendation of the Committee for the Graduate Student Paper Award, the Archaeological Institute of America awards co-first prize to Allison Emmerson of the University of Cincinnati for her paper “Repopulating an ‘Abandoned Suburb: The Case of Pomeii’s Tombs”.  Ms. Emmerson’s paper offered a significant new interpretation of a long recognized phenomenon, the accumulation of refuse in and near urban centers.  Using funeral monuments that are familiar to many specialists in Roman archaeology in general and Pompeii and Roman urbanism in particular, she has offered a major new interpretation of previous research.  Her conclusions are quite simply a paradigm shift that will have repercussions in our understanding of Pompeii and Roman urban centers.

Past Winners of the Graduate Student Paper Award

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