The deadline to choose and submit your title for the first Mills Archive Research Competition is 1 December this year – but you don’t need to wait! There are two competitions this year: one for £500 and one for £50 (details below).
As part of its brief “to promote encourage or undertake research and disseminate the useful results of such research” the Mills Archive is launching two research competitions with cash prizes and guarantees of publication. The research must be on a topic connected with traditional milling, by wind, water or muscle power. It must be original, previously unpublished and written in English.
The competition is open anyone over the age of 18 on the date of submission. Six months before the submission deadline researchers must choose which of the two competitions they wish to enter and inform the judges of the intended title.
Two prizes are on offer and the entries will be judged by a panel comprising two trustees from the Mills Archive Trust together with one ‘lay’ member with mill expertise appropriate to the subject matter, selected by them. The panel’s decisions are final and they are not obliged to explain them.
The Mills Archive Research Prize of £500 is for a major piece of research of about 25,000 words and the winning entry will be presented as a stand-alone individual edition, published by the Mills Archive Trust.
The Mills Archive Research Award of £50 is for shorter research communications of about 5000 words. The winning entry will be published in a special edition of Mill Memories.
Illustrations are not essential for either competition and the work may draw on items deposited in the Mills Archive. Use of the Archive and its holdings is recommended but is not a condition of entry. A public lecture, to be delivered at the Mills Archive in Reading, may be arranged if it seems appropriate.
Submission deadline: 31 May 2012 (titles by 1 December 2011)
The full rules of the competition are available at http://www.millsarchivetrust.org/index.php/mills_archive_research_prize/rules_for_the_mills_archive_research_prize_competition/ and by request to:
The Research Management Board, The Mills Archive Trust, Watlington House, 44 Watlington Street, Reading RG1 4RJ, UK.