The Southeast World History Association supports the next generation of scholars through annual monetary awards for Best Undergraduate and Best Graduate Papers. The awards are given for research that makes an original and noteworthy contribution to our shared understanding of the past.

Any student presenter at the conference who is/was enrolled in a degree program during that calendar year is automatically eligible to receive an award. Student presentations are judged by SEWHA officers at the annual conference according to a rubric, and an awards announcement is included at the business meeting.

BEST GRADUATE PAPER

• 2023
  • 1st Place: Matthew Drew (University of South Carolina), “Corrupt Air” and “Northern Vapours” in Loyalist Nassau: Sickness and Slavery in the Bahamas during the 18th and 19th Century
  • 2nd Place: Levi Holton (East Carolina University), African American Labor in the Albemarle Sound in the 19th and 20th Centuries: A Visual History
  • 3rd Place: Aero O’Hanlon (East Carolina University), Eighteenth Century Graffiti at English Harbour, Antigua
• 2022 (inaugural year)
  • Best Graduate Paper: Konpal Kaur (Georgia State University), The Colonial State and Opium Products in British India: A Study of the Opium Agencies in the 19th Century

BEST UNDERGRADUATE PAPER

• 2023 (inaugural year)
  • 1st Place (numerical tie)
    • Jenna Boone (Kennesaw State University), The “Captain’s Equation”: Quantifying Wellness in the Age of Sail
    • Francesca Gibson (College of Charleston), To “Cool Her Immoderate Heat”: Water as Cure and Punishment in Early Modern England
  • 3rd Place: Luke Freeman (Kennesaw State University), Drowning in Deluge: Exploring the Torrential Threads of Global Flood Myths