Submissions are now open for the 2026 Oxford Art Journal Essay Prize.

The annual Oxford Art Journal Essay Prize for Early Career Researchers launched in 2018 and aims to encourage submissions from doctoral students and early career researchers who are within five years of gaining their PhD.

The essay will be on any topic relevant to art history and should be between 6,000 and 10,000 words (including footnotes) in length. The editors will review all submissions to select the Prize winner and will work with the successful candidate to advise on revision of the manuscript for publication. The journal and Oxford University Press will advise the Prize winner on securing image permissions and may be able to make a contribution to image costs. Other promising articles submitted to the Prize may be invited to publish their submission in Oxford Art Journal.

The winner will receive:
- Publication of the winning essay in Oxford Art Journal
- £500 worth of Oxford University Press books
- A year’s free subscription to Oxford Art Journal

How to enter:

Entries should be submitted via our online submission system: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/oaj. New authors should create their own account when they first log on. Authors who already have an account should log in using their previous account ID and password in order to submit a new manuscript. Click on the 'Author’ tab once you have logged on, then ‘Start New Submission’, and choose ‘Essay Prize’ from the list of manuscript types.

If you need assistance regarding the online submission system, please click on the 'Online Submission Instructions' link or contact the Editorial Office.

Competition rules:

- Essays will be 6,000-10,000 words (normally including footnotes) in length
- The closing date will be 1 December 2026 and papers can be submitted at any point before this date
- The winner of the Prize will be required to verify their status as a current doctoral student or as an early career researcher who gained their PhD no more than five years previously. The journal will make due allowance for entrants who have had career breaks
- Entries submitted to the Oxford Art Journal Early Career Essay Prize must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere
- The decision of the judges will be final, and no correspondence will be entered into by the editors
- In the unlikely event that, in the editors’ opinion, the material submitted is not of a suitable standard, no Prize will be awarded.

Previous winners:

2025: Rosalind Hayes, ‘A Question of Taste, The Bovril Bonus Pictures’ Imperial Imaginary’ (forthcoming)

2024: Jessy Bell, 'Constructive Uses of Solidarity: Yugoslav Nonalignment and Petar Lubarda’s Industrialization (1958 –61)' (forthcoming)

2023: Freya Field-Donovan, 'Modernity’s Children: Form as Authority in the Films and Photobooks of Helen Levitt', Oxford Art Journal 47, no. 3 (December 2024), pp. 385-406, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcae026

2021: Sunghoon Lee, ‘Oro en el río: Placer Mining, Abundance, and Sustainability in Early Modern Art and Thought’, Oxford Art Journal 46, no. 1 (March 2023), pp. 23–43, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcad002

2020: Katherine Fein, ‘White Skin, Silvered Plate: Encountering Jonathan Walker’s Branded Hand in Daguerreotype’, Oxford Art Journal 44, no. 3 (December 2021), pp. 357–377, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcab029

2019: Kenji Praepipatmongkol, ‘David Medalla: Dreams of Sculpture’, Oxford Art Journal 43, no. 3 (December 2020), pp. 339–359, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcaa023

2018: Alex Burchmore, ‘La maladie de porcelaine: Liu Jianhua’s Regular/Fragile (2007) at Oxburgh Hall and the History of Massed Porcelain Display in English Aristocratic Interiors’, Oxford Art Journal 42, no. 3 (December 2019), pp. 253–281, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcz016