Chair's Essay Prize in Philosophy

The Chair’s Essay Prize in Philosophy is for the best essay written by an undergraduate student in Year 2 or higher in a main-campus Philosophy course taken during the fall or winter term of the current academic year.

Instructors will be asked to nominate essays, but students can also nominate themselves if they have the endorsement of the instructor for whom the essay was written (i.e., their signature on this form).

The Chair of Philosophy will select the award recipient, who will receive $750 and have their name added to a plaque on the third floor of the Philosophy department, near the Chair’s office.

All submitted essays should have a cover page that includes the following information: the student’s name, student number, email address, and full mailing address, and the number of the course for which the essay was written. All identifiers should be removed from the essay itself.

Nomination Form

Deadline: April 15, 2025

Value: $750

Submission Procedure: Nomination forms and essays are due April 15 and should be submitted to the Undergraduate Program Coordinator, Sarah Murdoch at sarah.murdoch@uwo.ca in PDF or DOC format.

Check List

- Full- time undergraduate student, Year 2 or higher
- Essay is from a main campus philosophy course from the 2024-25 academic year
- Student’s name, student number, email address, full mailing address, course number are on the first page of the essay only
- Headers and footers and any other identifiers in the main text of the essay have been removed
- Only one essay per student has been submitted

Previous Winners

2023-24: Rosie Smith, “Arendt’s Caution: Rethinking the Western Ideology on Global Gender Justice”

2022-23: Kseniya Dybatch, “Female-Presenting Bodies, Spatiality, and the Role of Internet Ideologies.”

2021-22: Amanda Currie, Revenge vs. Emotional Orientation: Defending the Strategic Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Slave Revolt in Genealogy I"

2020-21: Nadia Miller, Practical Nous and Akrasia in The Nicomachean Ethics

2019-20: Abbey Horn, Reproductive CRISPR: Rese​arch at the Intersection of Reproductive and Disability Rights.

2018-19: Olivia Gordon, Kant’s Erroneous Objectification of Animals by Regarding their Worth as Indistinguishable from the Worth of “Things”

2017-18: Nicole Nowoselski, The Unbecoming of the Self? An Existential Analysis of Identity and Dementia

2016-17: Ryan Howson, Refuting the Bundle Theory of Mind

2015-16: Francesco Lucia, On the Alleged Inconsistency of Weak Epistemic Egoism

2014-15: Andrew DiMarco, Celebrated Texts of Aristotle: Solving Zeno's Dichotomy

2013-14: Rachel Bath, Levels and Horizons: Preparing for the Possibility for a Phenomenology of Place

2012-13: Tucker Hunter, Improved Basis for an Old Claim: An Analysis of a Pair of Thought Experiment in Kant's Third Paralogism

2011-12: Emily Kress, Elemental Teleology in Aristotle's Rainfall Arguement