Abstract
The PiHG annual essay prize is intended to encourage and highlight high-quality published work in human geography from early career scholars. The prize is worth £250 of books from SAGE Ltd. It is awarded to the best essay published by a junior scholar (or scholars) in a given year/volume of PiHG. For these purposes, ‘early career’ is normally taken to mean within seven years of completion of a PhD or within seven years of a first permanent academic appointment. For coauthored papers all the authors must be early career or else lead authors. Eligible papers were assessed by the editors from the 2017 volume, with advice received from two members of the international editorial advisory board. As in previous years all the assessors felt that the essays were of a very high quality indeed. There were ten candidates in total.
The editors are pleased to announce the winner of this year’s best paper competition. He is Key MacFarlane of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the eighth winner of the PiHG Best Paper Prize. His paper is entitled ‘A thousand CEOs: Relational thought, processual space, and Deleuzian ontology in human geography and strategic management’. Key is a PhD candidate in the History of Consciousness department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he studies under the supervision of Katharyne Mitchell. Before coming to Santa Cruz, he received an MA in Geography (2015) from the University of Washington. His doctoral dissertation focuses on memory, waste, and everyday life in the ‘global city’, building on the work of Walter Benjamin and Allan Pred to explore recollection as a radical urban politics. Key also writes on noise pollution, Cold War management theory, environmental services in the Rust Belt, and refugee movements in Germany. He recently co-authored two chapters on neoliberal education in Katharyne Mitchell’s new book, Making Workers, and has an essay out in Mute Magazine on glass architecture and the US technology industry.