News
BSHS Singer Prize 2026 Winner Announcement
We are delighted to announce the winners of the BSHS Singer Prize, awarded every two years to the writer(s) of an essay outstanding in research, novelty and expression, based on original research into any aspect of the history of science, technology or medicine. The prize is intended for recent entrants into the profession.
This was an exceptional year for the Singer Prize, with a large number of submissions, two winners and two special commendations.
The winners are:
Lucy Jameson (Durham University), with the essay ‘Pass the Parcel : Disabled Expertise, Prosthetics of Productivity, and Scientific Management in the British Post Office 1918-1921’
Michelle Pfeffer (University of Oxford), with the essay ‘Astrologers on Trial in Early Modern Oxbridge’
The special commendations are:
Sara Bassanelli (Politecnico di Torino/Università di Pavia), with the essay ‘Charged Affairs : Managing Disagreement in Interwar Electrical Standardisation Diplomacy’
Francis Newman (Harvard University), with the essay ‘Hippocratic Modernity : Meteorology, Medicine and the Co-Colonisation of Weather and Disease in Victorian Britain and Treaty-Port China’
The Singer Panel offered the following comments and praise for the winning essays:
Michelle Pfeffer’s essay ‘Astrologers on Trial in Early Modern Oxbridge’ proposes a novel and compelling historiographical thesis on the early excision of astrology from British universities. Drawing on a rich and thus far unexplored body of sources -- records of student disputations in Oxford and Cambridge -- Pfeffer persuasively argues that the marginalisation of astrology occurred earlier than assumed by current historiography. The panel was especially impressed by how the essay made the technical area of Early Modern astrology, and associated historiographical debates, accessible to historians beyond Early Modern specialists, showing the ongoing and broader impact of this field of inquiry for the history of science community at large.
Singer Panel
Comments and Praise for the Winning Essays
Lucy Jameson’s essay ‘Pass the Parcel: Disabled Expertise, Prosthetics of Productivity, and Scientific Management in the British Post Office 1918-1921’ explores how the Post Office became the site of disabled innovation and technological collaboration in the design of occupational prosthetics following the First World War. Drawing on a rich and body of sources – including images – Jameson places disabled designers' agencies at the centre of the argument, showing how returning injured soldiers working for the Post Office desired and created prosthetics for functional, not just cosmetic use. The Panel found particularly impressive how the essay wove together the histories and historiographies of disability, designers' agencies, and the reception of Taylorism and discourses around industrial efficiency in Britain, showing how disabled designers actively engaged with the semantics of industrial efficiency, while creatively turning occupational prosthetics into a material form of knowledge.
Singer Panel
Comments and Praise for the Winning Essays
The Singer Panel offered the following comments and praise for the special commendations:
Sara Bassanelli’s essay ‘Charged Affairs : Managing Disagreement in Interwar Electrical Standardisation Diplomacy’ frames electrical standardisation as a privileged site to examine the political tensions arising from interwar coordination and the management of persistent disagreement in debates around fundamental electrical units. Coining the new historiographical category of 'standardisation diplomacy', the essay casts new light on both the history of standardisation and the history of science diplomacy, bringing these two fields into a novel productive dialogue.
Singer Panel
Comments and Praise for the Special Commendations
Francis Newman’s essay ‘Hippocratic Modernity: Meteorology, Medicine and the Co-Colonisation of Weather and Disease in Victorian Britain and Treaty-Port China’ examines the renewed significance that the field of medical meteorology acquired in mid-nineteenth century British towns and Chinese ports. Offering a new chapter in the longer historiography of the relation between weather and disease, the essay shows how practitioners in Britain and China charted and mobilised a modern Hippocratic tradition in their attempts at making medical meteorology scientific and responsive to their colonial anxieties – and how both weather and disease resisted these attempts.
Singer Panel
Comments and Praise for the Special Commendations
Over the coming weeks, we will launch a social media series introducing the winners and specially commended authors, giving them the opportunity to share more about their research and the ideas behind their essays. Stay tuned!
- News & Announcements, Prizes & Grants
- 24 July 2026
The winners and special commendations of the BSHS Singer Prize 2026
Left to right, is: Francis Newman, Sara Bassanelli, Lucy Jameson, Michelle Pfeffer, image use courtesy of Joseph Martin