News archive
Grants programme update, December 2021
December 2021
Our Grants Programme for 2022 is open and we are keen to hear from applicants. See the Grants Programme section for details of how to apply. Please read about the scope of the programme to discover whether your proposal is likely to be eligible for consideration.
Bibliographical Society awards Gold Medal to Professor Michael Twyman
October 2021
From time to time the Bibliographical Society awards a Gold Medal for distinguished services to bibliography to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the development of the subject and the furtherance of the Society’s aims. Over forty awards have been made since the Medal Fund was established in 1929. This year the Society’s Gold Medal will be awarded to Professor Michael Twyman, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. Professor Twyman has long been internationally acknowledged for his research and publication in the history of typography, lithography, ephemera, and graphic design, and, of course, for establishing a BA course in Typography & Graphic Communication at Reading and then a full department for such study in 1974, both the first of their kind in the world. He retired from full-time teaching in 1998 but still teaches postgraduate students and is also the Director of the Centre for Ephemera Studies. He will be presented with the Gold Medal at the Bibliographical Society’s meeting on Tuesday, 16 November 2021.
The Printing Historical Society would like to congratulate Professor Twyman, President of the Society, on the occasion of this award.
Printing Historical Society Prize for New Scholarship
October 2021
The Society is pleased to announce the ‘Printing Historical Society Prize for New Scholarship’, a competition for a new article on any printing-historical subject, suitable for the Society’s Journal. The details and rules are as follows:
1) The competition will be called the ‘Printing Historical Society Prize for New Scholarship’ (or ‘PHS Prize’ for short).
2) Scholars and practitioners who have worked in the field for no more than seven years are invited to submit an original article on any printing-historical subject (see Notes for contributors). The article should be between 4,000 and 8,000 words, and not previously published. Deadline 1 October 2021.
3) The competition will be judged by a panel comprised of the members of the Society’s Grants & Prizes Committee and the Journal Editor. Only the chair of the panel will know the identity of each competitor; the other members will read submissions anonymously and thus judge them solely on their literary qualities, level of scholarship and of novel contribution to the discipline.
4) The article judged best will be awarded the title ‘Printing Historical Society Prize for New Scholarship’ for that year, a purse of £500, membership of the Society for that year, and publication in the Society’s Journal (and digitally on the Society’s website, and other platforms as appropriate), subject to the usual processes of peer-review. The Society reserves the right not to make an award if no articles of suitable quality are received.
5) All articles submitted for the competition will be eligible for publication in the Society’s Journal, at the Editor’s discretion, and none may be published elsewhere until the results of the competition have been announced (the announcement of the results will be made before the end of each calendar year in which the competition is held).
6) Applicants for the Prize should send their article (in Word format), with a short covering-letter, outlining their research and status as a student, early-career researcher, independent scholar, librarian, printer, printmaker etc. new to printing history, to the Journal Editor by the deadline specified.
The Journal Editor (editor@printinghistoricalsociety.org.uk) will be happy to answer queries and discuss possible subjects and approaches for submissions.
Other news
An announcement is generally made in Printing History News when a new grant application period opens, but the Society also advertises its grants programme through a variety of public channels, including on this page of the Society’s website.