We are pleased to announce that nominations are now open for the 2026 Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) Richard Higgott Journal Article Prize. The prize is awarded annually for the best article published in the broad field of International Political Economy (IPE) by an Australia-based academic.
The prize will be awarded to the best article published in IPE as deemed by a selection committee of IPE scholars. The award will be given to any article in IPE, understood in a pluralist sense to include the political economy of security, geography, literature, sociology, anthropology, post-coloniality, gender, finance, trade, regional studies, development and economic theory, in ways that can span concerns for in/security, poverty, inequality, sustainability, exploitation, deprivation and discrimination.
For that reason, it is fitting that the prize be named after Professor Richard Higgott. In a career spanning four decades, Richard has played a pivotal intellectual and practical role in establishing IPE as a thriving enterprise committed to theoretical innovation and inclusion in Australia and elsewhere. In 1987, he and Richard Leaver introduced the first graduate course in IPE at the Australian National University. As the author or editor of 20 books, research monographs and edited volumes, as well as over 120 journal articles and book chapters, Richard has been at the forefront of research on globalisation, global and regional governance, and international trade. He served as President of the Australian Political Studies Association and as Vice-President of the International Studies Association and has supervised some 25 PhD theses, including those by now leading scholars. He was also principal investigator on a number of large-scale grants, totalling some $30m, which facilitated the establishment of the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick and two major international scholarly networks providing funds for postdoctoral positions and PhD scholarships.
Nominations can be made by authors and/or academic colleagues for peer-reviewed articles that were published in 2025, either in print or as OnlineFirst publications. These articles can be single-authored or co-authored publications, published in international or Australia-based periodicals. The only requirement is that the author (for a single-authored piece) or one of the authors (for joint pieces) is based in Australia and that the winner commits to joining the AIPEN e-list and writing a short blog post on the wider import of their article for Progress in Political Economy (PPE). If a person is nominated for multiple single-authored articles, they will be asked to choose which article they would like to be longlisted.
Once nominated, the longlist of candidates will be circulated on the AIPEN e-list and the PPE blog, and AIPEN members will be invited to cast a vote for their top preferences. Votes will be tallied to produce a shortlist of four, which will then be read in full and deliberated on by the selection committee to decide on the eventual awardee. The members of this year’s selection committee are: Ainsley Elbra, Anja Bless, Elliot Dolan-Evans, Tim DiMuzio, and me.
Votes will be tallied to produce a shortlist of four, which will then be read in full and deliberated on by the Prize Committee to decide on the eventual awardee. The winner of the best journal article prize will be announced to the AIPEN community and will receive a prize of $250.
The deadline for nominations for IPE-related articles matching the above wide-ranging and inclusive criteria is Friday 11 September 2026. The full bibliographic reference, including a link to the early online publication, should be entered here.
Past Awardees
2025 Anja Bless, ‘The co-optation of regenerative agriculture: revisiting the corporate environmental food regime’, Globalizations, 22(4), 590-612.
2024 Elliot Dolan-Evans, ‘Pipes, profits and peace: toward a feminist political economy of gas during war’, Review of International Political Economy, 30:2 (2023).
2023 Ainsley Elbra, John Mikler and Hannah Murphy-Gregory, ‘The Big Four and corporate tax governance: From global dis-harmony to national regulatory incrementalism’, Global Policy, 14:1 (2023).
2022 Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri, ‘COVID-19 and the failure of the neoliberal regulatory state’, Review of International Political Economy, 29:4 (2022).
2021 Melissa Johnston, ‘Frontier Finance: The Role of Microfinance in Debt and Violence in Post-conflict Timor-Leste’, Review of International Political Economy, 27:6 (2020).
2020 Claire Parfitt, ‘ESG Integration Treats Ethics as Risk, but Whose Ethics and Whose Risk? Responsible Investment in the Context of Precarity and Risk-Shifting’, Critical Sociology, 46:4-5 (2020).
2019 Linda Weiss and Elizabeth Thurbon, ‘Power Paradox: How the Extension of US Infrastructural Power Abroad Diminishes State Capacity at Home’, Review of International Political Economy 25:6 (2018).
2018 Maria Tanyag, ‘Invisible Labor, Invisible Bodies: How the Global Political Economy Affects Reproductive Freedom in the Philippines’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 19:1 (2017).
2017 Samanthi J. Gunawardana, ‘“To Finish, We Must Finish”: Everyday Practices of Depletion in Sri Lankan Export-Processing Zones’, Globalizations, 13:6 (2016).
2016 Gareth Bryant, Siddhartha Dabhi and Steffen Böhm, ‘“Fixing” the Climate Crisis: Capital, States and Carbon Offsetting in India’, Environment and Planning A, 47:10 (2015).
2015 Ainsley Elbra, ‘Interests Need Not be Pursued If They Can be Created: Private Governance in African Gold Mining’, Business and Politics, 16:2 (2014).
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