Award for Ongoing Doctoral Dissertation Research in the Philosophy of Information

1. Nature of the Award

1.1 The award shall consist of $1,000, given annually to a graduate student who is working on a dissertation on the philosophy of information (broadly construed). As we see it, the range of philosophical questions relating to information is broad, and approachable through a variety of philosophical traditions (philosophy of mind, logic, philosophy of information so-called, philosophy of science, etc.).

2. Purpose of the Award

2.1 The purpose of this award is to encourage and support scholarship in the philosophy of information.

3. Eligibility

3.1 The scholarship recipient must meet the following qualifications:
(a) Be an active doctoral student whose primary area of research is directly philosophical, whether the institutional setting is philosophy or another discipline; that is to say, the mode of dissertation research must be philosophical as opposed to empirical or literary study;
(b) Have completed all course work; and
(c) Have had a dissertation proposal accepted by the institution.

3.2 Recipients may receive the award not more than once.

4. Administration

4.1 The Litwin Books Award for Ongoing Doctoral Dissertation Research in the Philosophy of Information is sponsored and administered by Litwin Books, LLC, an independent scholarly publisher.

5. Nominations

5.1 Nominations should be submitted via email by June 1, to award@litwinbooks.com.

5.2 The submission package should include the following:
(a) The accepted dissertation proposal;
(b) A description of the work done to date;
(c) A letter of recommendation from a dissertation committee member;
(d) An up-to-date curriculum vitae with current contact information.

6. Selection of the Awardee

6.1 Submissions will be judged on merit with emphasis on the following:
(a) Clarity of thought;
(b) Originality;
(c) Relevance to our time;
(d) Evidence of good progress toward completion.

7. Notification

7.1 The winner and any honorable mentions will be notified via letter by July 1.

Past Winners

2024: No award given

2023: Courtney Richardson, of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Information Sciences, based on her dissertation project, titled, “Art as Information: Re-Reading Quicksand.”

2022: Sam Popowich, of the University of Birmingham in the UK, based on his dissertation project, titled, “Intellectual Freedom, Constituent Power, and the Politics of Recognition in Canadian Libraries.”

2021: Lily Rajan, of the University of Washington Information School, based on her dissertation project, titled, “Encountering Ambiguity in Information Systems: from Classification Theory to Design Approaches.”

2020: No award given

2019: Elliott Hauser, of the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science, for his project theorizing the development of certainty in information systems.

2018: Chris Hubbles, of the University of Washington, based on his dissertation project, “No Country for Old Media.”

2017: Timothy John Gorichanaz, of the Drexel University College of Computing and Informatics, for his dissertation project, “Understanding Self-Documentation.”

2016: Robert Montoya, of the UCLA Department of information studies, for his dissertation project, tentatively titled, “Articulating Composite Taxonomies: Epistemology and the Global Unification of Biodiversity Databases.”

2015: Quinn DuPont, of the University of Toronto Faculty of Information, for his dissertation précis, titled, “Plaintext, Encryption, and Ciphertext: A History of Cryptography and its Influence on Contemporary Society.”

2014: Patrick Gavin, of the University of Western Ontario FIMS, for his dissertation proposal, titled, “On Informationalized Borderzones: A Study in the Politics and Ethics of Emerging Border Architectures.”

2013: Steve McKinlay, of Charles Sturt University, New South Wales, Australia, for his dissertation proposal, titled, “Information Ethics and the Problem of Reference.”