Press release - British Academy honour for Cambridge author Professor Julie Sanders

Press author Professor Julie Sanders has won the coveted Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in international women's scholarship.

Professor Sanders received the award for her latest book in the field of literary geography - an exciting new area of research that connects English literature with cultural geography, landscape history and archaeology, and performance studies.

'The Cultural Geography of Early Modern Drama 1620-1650' examines how drama can give us a revealing 'map' of how people thought about the places in which they lived.

Professor Sanders, Head of the School of English at The University of Nottingham, said: "I am thrilled to be awarded the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize for this book.

"When you look at the list of former winners it's totally humbling: Hermione Lee, Marina Warner, Gillian Beer - one of my own wonderful tutors as an undergraduate - Claire Tomalin... It's such an honour to be a part of the history of this prize for international women's scholarship and I only hope I am as half as good a role model to my students as so many women academics have been for me in my career."

The British Academy, established by Royal Charter in 1902, champions and supports the humanities and social sciences. The Academy is an independent, self-governing fellowship of scholars elected for their distinction and achievement.

The Rose Mary Crawshay prize has been given to outstanding female scholars for more than 120 years. It began in 1888, when Mrs Crawshay established 'The Byron, Shelley, Keats In Memoriam Yearly Prize Fund'. In 1914, some years after her death, the Charity Commissioners transferred the administration of the prize fund to the British Academy.

Each year the prize is awarded 'to a woman of any nationality who, in the judgement of the Council of the British Academy, has written or published within three years next preceding the year of the award an historical or critical work of sufficient value on any subject connected with English Literature, preference being given to a work regarding one of the poets Byron, Shelley and Keats'.

Professor Sanders received the prize at a formal awards ceremony in London on 8 November.

ENDS

Notes to editors:

The Cultural Geography of Early Modern Drama 1620-1650 (9781107003347) by Julie Sanders is published by Cambridge University Press, price £58.

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