Announcement of the winners of our 2019 Undergraduate Essay Competition
We are pleased to announce the winner of our essay competition this year: Joshua Wakeford, from the University of Manchester. The runner-up this year is Cynthia Njeri Mbuthia, from the Queen Mary, University of London.
- Read Joshua’s winning entry: Does the Liaison Committee Hold the Prime Minister to Account?
- Read Cynthia’s runner-up entry: Commons Select Committees and Social Media
Joshua and Cynthia will receive their certificates at our annual conference in Cardiff in November.
All essays were anonymised and judged by a panel of academics and practitioners: Professor David Judge (University of Strathclyde and Chair of the Panel), Lucinda Maer (House of Commons) and Dr Daniel Gover (QMUL). For the winning essay, the panel explained:
“The winning essay is well-written, well-argued, and well-researched. It is rigorous in the collection and analysis of data, and provides a valuable contribution to understanding parliament by focusing on a crucial but less publicised accountability mechanism.”
On the second essay, the panel commented that it:
“provides an engaging and nicely presented analysis which utilises original data and, importantly, points towards a series of questions and issues worthy of further research”.
We would like to thank everyone that took part, and especially for the judging panel who gave up their time to read through all the entries we received this year.
We are looking forward to holding this competition again next year, so please do look for a call in the autumn and spread the message far and wide! If you had any ideas about how to improve the competition, please get in touch.