Winners of SAGE sponsored international blogging awards announced

Second annual OAIS Awards announced at ISA Annual Conference

Los Angeles, CA - The second International Studies blog awards, supported by one of the leading independent and academic publishers, SAGE, took place last night in Toronto.  Hosted by Jon Western and Charlie Carpenter, conveyors of the OAIS awards and contributors to the eminently influential Duck of Minerva blog, the awards seek to recognize the impact that the international blogging community has on scholarly communication. The awards were presented at a reception at the International Studies Association (ISA) annual convention last night.

Acknowledging English-language International Studies blogs and bloggers whose output has significant scholarly content, the awards were presented for  best group blog, the best individual blog, the best post, the most promising new blog and the special achievement OAIS prize, awarded to the blogger who has made the most outstanding contribution to International Studies blogging.  The winners of this year’s awards selected by a panel of judges that included last year’s winners and permanent contributors to the Duck of Minerva blog are:

• Best Individual Blog
• Winner – Dart Throwing Chimp
• Runner up – Stephen M. Walt
• Best Group Blog
• Winner – Political Violence @ A Glance
• Runner up – The Monkey Cage
• Best Blog Post
• Winner – Christian Davenport –  “Researching While Black:  Why Conflict Research Needs More African Americans (Maybe),”   Political Violence at a Glance
• Runner up – Barbara Walter – The 4 Things We Know About How Civil Wars End (And What This Tells Us About Syria)” , Political Violence at a Glance
• Best New Blog
• Winner  – Nuclear Diner
• Runner-up –  Next War Blog
• Special Achievement
• Winner – Daniel Drezner

Details on last year’s winners and the full shortlist for the 2015 awards can be found here and here respectively.

Dan Nexon, co-founder of the Duck of Minerva blog and founder of the awards said: “There’s a lot of terrific content out there, including high-quality scholarly discussions that deserve to be part of the broader conversation in the field. The network of international studies blogs brings together scholars who would otherwise be divided by methodology, geography, and area of interest. It links them into a community of discourse that includes not only academics, but also students, practitioners, and autodidacts. We hope that these awards increase the field's awareness of international-studies blogging. But, most important, we want to recognize the achievements of truly outstanding bloggers writing about international studies from a scholarly perspective.”

Jon Western, conveyer of the 2015 awards further commented: “As with last year, this year has seen a stellar list of nominees and an outstanding response from the community - the judging panel certainly had a tough time choosing the winners. The response that these blogs elicit from the international relations and wider scholarly community goes to demonstrate the outstanding achievement of these outlets as credible and important contributors to the academic discipline. We are delighted to be able to recognize the output of these scholars, and hope that these awards will continue to mark the achievements of these outstanding bloggers to the wider discipline.”

“Supporting and enabling debates around public policy and the social sciences is a core part of our remit at SAGE’ said Ziyad Marar, Global Publishing Director, SAGE. ‘As we have seen not only from the Duck of Minerva Blog, but from the contributions of the winners, blogs have quickly claimed their place as valuable platforms of academic output, extending and building on debates that originate in scholarly journals and the wider scholarly  community. This year’s awards have once again highlighted the work of those within international relations who have accessibly augmented traditional means of academic communication, theory development and policy influence. We are delighted to be supporting these annual awards and send our congratulations to all the winners.”

Further details on the awards can be found here.

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Duck of Minerva Blog was founded by Dan Nexon in May of 2005. He soon invited Patrick Thaddeus Jackson (PTJ) and Rodger Payne to join. Ever since then, the blog has, in a Borg-like fashion, assimilated an ever-growing roster of academics in an attempt to increase “intellectual diversity”. The blog focuses on world politics from an academic perspective.