Overview of award winners

This overview lists ISSEME award winners between 2005 and 2021; we hope to complete the overview in due course.

Best article by an Early-Career Researcher

  • 2021: Yuta Uchikawa, “Core and Periphery in Anglo-Saxon England: The Mercian Assemblies in the Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons and the Formation of the English Kingdom”, East Asian Journal of British History (2019)

Best article

  • 2021 (shared): Rory Naismith and Francesca Tinti, “The Origins of Peter’s Pence”, English Historical Review 134/568 (2019), 521-552 & Nicole Marafioti, “Secular and Ecclesiastical Justice in Late Anglo-Saxon England,” Speculum 94/3 (2019): 774-805
  • 2019: Martha Bayless, “The Fuller Brooch and Anglo-Saxon Depictions of Dance,” Anglo-Saxon England 45 (2017): 183-212
  • 2017: Nicole Marafioti, “Seeking Alfred’s Body: Royal Tomb as Political Object in the Reign of Edward the Elder,” Early Medieval Europe 23 (2015): 202-28
  • 2015: Patrick W. Conner, “On the Nature of Matched Scribal Hands”, in Scraped, Stroked, and Bound: Materially Engaged Readings of Medieval Manuscripts, ed. by J. Wilcox (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 39-73
  • 2013: Joanna Story, “Bede, Willibrord and the Letters of Pope Honorius I on the genesis of the archbishopric of York,” English Historical Review 127 (2012): 783-818. Honourable mention: Benjamin A. Saltzman, “Writing Friendship, Mourning the Friend in Late Anglo-Saxon Rules of Confraternity,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 41 (2011): 251-91
  • 2011: Andrew Rabin, “Female advocacy and royal protection in tenth-century England: the legal career of Queen Aelfthryth,” Speculum 84 (2009): 261-88
  • 2009 [shared]:Craig Davis, “An Ethnic Dating of Beowulf,” Anglo-Saxon England 35 (2006), 111-29 & Emily V. Thornbury, “Aldhelm’s Rejection of the Muses and the Mechanics of Poetic Inspiration in Early Anglo-Saxon England” Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007), 71-92
  • 2007: Joyce Hill, “Authority and Intertextuality in the Works of Aelfric,” Proceedings of the British Academy 131 (2005), 157-81 (The Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture for 2004)
  • 2005: Stacy S. Klein, “Reading Queenship in Cynewulf’s Elene,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33 (2003), 67-89

Best first monograph

  • 2021: Emily Kesling, Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020)
  • 2019: Herbert Broderick, Moses the Egyptian in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch (London, British Library Cotton MS Claudius B.iv) (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017)
  • 2017 [shared]: Richard Sowerby, Angels in Early Medieval England (Oxford, 2016) & Mercedes Salvador Bello, Isidorean Perceptions of Order: The Exeter Book Riddles and Medieval Latin Enigmata, Medieval European Studies Series 17 (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2015)
  • 2015: Emily Thornbury, Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 2014)
  • 2013: Rory Naismith, Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England: The Southern English Kingdoms, 757-865 (Cambridge, 2012). Honorable mentions: Scott T. Smith, Land and Book: Literature and Land Tenure in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto, 2012) & Sharon M. Rowley, The Old English Version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011)
  • 2011 [shared]: Francesca Tinti, Sustaining Belief: The Church of Worcester from c. 870 to c. 1100 (Ashgate, 2010) & Renee R. Trilling, The Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Historical Representation in Old English Verse (Toronto, 2009)
  • 2009: David Pratt, The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge, 2007)
  • 2007: [shared]:Daniel Anlezark, Water and Fire: the Myth of the Flood in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 2006) & Martin Foys, Virtually Anglo-Saxon (University Press of Florida, 2007)
  • 2005 [shared]: Andrew P. Scheil, The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (University of Michigan Press, 2004) & Joanna Story, Carolingian Connections: Anglo-Saxon England and Carolingian Francia, c. 750-870 (Ashgate, 2003)

Best book

  • 2021: Chris Fern, Tania Dickinson & Leslie Webster, ed., The Staffordshire Hoard: An Anglo-Saxon Treasure (London: Society of Antiquaries of London, 2019)
  • 2019: Lindy Brady, Writing the Welsh Borderland in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017)
  • 2017: Conor O’Brien, Bede’s Temple: An Image and its Interpretation (Oxford, 2015)
  • 2015 [shared]: Asa Mittman and Susan Kim, Inconceivable Beasts: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript (Arizona, 2013) & M. J. Toswell, The Anglo-Saxon Psalter (Turnhout, 2014)

Best Teaching Aid or Public Outreach Project

  • 2021: Megan Cavell, with Matthias Ammon, Neville Mogford and Victoria Symons, ed. and trans., The Riddle Ages: Early Medieval Riddles, Translations and Commentaries, (2013; redeveloped 2020), https://theriddleages.com.

Best Research Aid, Edition or Translation (any medium)

Prior to 2021, this corresponded to two separate categories (see below)

  • 2021: Roy Flechner, ed. and trans., The Hibernensis; Book 1: A study and edition; Book 2: Translation, commentary, and indexes (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2019)

Best edition or translation of an Old English or Anglo-Latin text (any medium)

From 2021 onwards, the category is conflated with Best Research Aid

  • 2019: Jacob Riyeff, Saint Æthelwold of Winchester, The Old English Rule of Saint Benedict with Related Old English Texts, Cistercian Studies Series 264 (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2017)
  • 2017: Kazutomo Karasawa, The Old English Metrical Calendar (Menologium) (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016)
  • 2015: Christine Rauer, The Old English Martyrology (Woodbridge, 2013)
  • 2013: R.D. Fulk and Stefan Jurasinski (eds.), The Old English Canons of Theodore, Early English Text Society (Oxford, 2012). Honorable mention: D. A. Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, Anglo-Saxon Charters 16 (Oxford/The British Academy, 2012)
  • 2011: The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, ed. Malcolm Godden and Susan Irvine (Oxford, 2009)
  • 2009: [shared]: R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, eds., Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, Toronto Old English Series 21 (Toronto, 2008) & Michael Lapidge, ed. and trans., Byrhtferth of Ramsey. The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine (Oxford, 2009)
  • 2007: Scott DeGregorio, trans., Bede: On Ezra and Nehemiah (Liverpool, 2005)
  • 2005: [shared]:Martin K. Foys, The Bayeux Tapestry: Digital Edition (Scholarly Digital Editions, 2003) & Rosalind C. Love, Goscelin of Saint-Bertin: The Hagiography of the Female Saints of Ely (Oxford, 2004)

Best research aid (any medium)

From 2021 onwards, the category is conflated with Best Edition or Translation

  • 2019 [shared]: Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, ed. Claire Breay and Joanna Story (London: British Library, 2018) & Hans Sauer and Elsabeth Kubaschewski, Planting the Seeds of Knowledge: An Inventory of Old English Plant Names, English and Beyond 8 (Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag, 2018)
  • 2017 [shared]: Carole Hough, Mapping Metaphor: Old English: Metaphor in English (mappingmetaphor.arts.gla.ac.uk) & Rory Naismith, and Francesca Tinti, The Forum Hoard of Anglo-Saxon Coins/Il ripostiglio dell’Atrium Vestae nel Foro Romano, Bollettino di numismatica 55-6 (Rome, 2016)
  • 2015: Peter Stokes, English Vernacular Minuscule from Aethelred to Cnut, circa 990 — circa 1035 (Manchester, 2014)