By Dr Hayley Bennett, Awards Portfolio holder, SPA Executive Committee.
Image: 2025 SPA Awards ceremony, by Elizabeth Bailey. Source: EASP SPA 2025 Conference Bluesky Account (@easp-spa-2025.bsky.social).
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The Social Policy Association’s (SPA) purpose is to advance the teaching, research, and dissemination of knowledge in the field of social policy. We support and celebrate good research and the vital activities people undertake that keep our social policy community thriving. One way we do this is through the Social Policy annual awards. In this quite functional blog, I outline some details about our SPA awards. All on the SPA exec warmly encourage you to make nominations.
Why does the SPA give out awards?
The SPA awards aim to:
1) Advance the interests of the SPA and its members through increased reach and status
2) Recognise and endorse the work of academics who are both researching and teaching social policy, and who as SPA members contribute to advancing the discipline
3) Recognise and endorse the work of individuals and organisations who as social policy practitioners and/or advocates, are using academic work produced by the social policy academic community and/or are working with academics to promote the public understanding of social policy
What are the categories?
We have six categories of awards, each with their own specific aim, eligibility criteria, and nomination process. These are:
- Outstanding Achievement in Social Policy Award
- Excellence in Doctoral Research Award
- The Richard Titmuss Book Award
- Policy Press Outstanding Teaching Award
- Public Understanding of Social Policy Award
- Cambridge University Press Awards for Excellence in Social Policy Scholarship (JSP, SP&S & JCISP)
How does the award process work?
Each year the SPA calls for nominations for its annual SPA Awards. All (excluding the doctoral researcher award, and the CUP awards relating to the three journals; JSP, SP&S & JCISP) require nominations to be made for the judges to consider and decide on a winner.
The winners are announced at the SPA Annual Conference in July, and many of the awards are kindly sponsored by the SPA, Policy Press, and Cambridge University Press.
Prior to the announcement at the conference dinner, there’s a 7-month long process where we start readying ourselves for nominations, arranging the judging panel, and preparing the long and short lists for the journal prizes. For the journal article awards this involves taking very long lists of all published work from the previous year in each journal and creating short lists for our judges decide on a winning publication.
There are established rules that guide the awards process, including an agreement that the awards are made on the decision of the SPA-appointed judging panel, (that comprises of four judges appointed by the Executive to serve for 3 years) and normally includes:
- The SPA President
- 1 judge drawn from outside the academic community
- 2 judges appointed from SPA membership
When can I nominate?
Nominations for the Social Policy Awards are now open. The deadline for nominations is 5pm on Monday 2nd March 2026.
Who can I nominate?
You’ll need to check each of the awards for specific details to ensure your nominee meets the criteria of that award. Our website has information on each of the awards. If you’re not quite sure, you can email me (Hayley.Bennett@ed.ac.uk) for an informal discussion.
There are some general rules to remember. If you make a nomination, you must do so with the full knowledge of the person being nominated. Many of the awards require the nomination to be made by an SPA member (sometimes more than one). Some awards, such as the doctoral research award, require self-nomination at the time of submitting your paper for the annual conference. Current members of the judging panel are not eligible to nominate, and SPA Exec members can only make nominations for some of the awards (e.g., Public Understanding).
Who won last year?
In July 2025 we announced the winners for all eight awards at the SPA conference dinner held at the University of York.
- Outstanding Achievement in Social Policy Award: Zoe Irving, Emeritus Professor of International and Comparative Social Policy, University of York
- Excellence in Doctoral Research Award: Anna Baillie, University of Glasgow, “Complexities and contradictions: exploring conceptualisations of lived experience in policymaking to tackle poverty”
- The Richard Titmuss Book Award: Philip Rathgeb, University of Edinburgh, “How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare in Europe and the USA”.
- Public Understanding Award: Frances Ryan, Multi award-winning journalist and author
- Policy Press Outstanding Teaching Award: John McKendrick, Glasgow Caledonian University
Cambridge University Press Awards for Excellence in Social Policy Scholarship:
- Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy: Sanni Välimäki, Johanna Lammi-Taskula, Merita Mesiäislehto, and Johanna Närvi, “Growing inequality and diverging paths in early childhood education and care: Educational disparities in Europe”
- Social Policy and Society: Edith England, Cardiff Met University, “You’re having us on … that’s what it felt like.’: Frontline Workers Navigating the Introduction of Moral Commitments to Domestic Abuse Support within a Statutory Homelessness System”
- Journal of Social Policy: Antonia Simon, Atul Shah, Katie Quy and Charlie Owen, “Financialisation and private equity in early childhood care and education in England”
That’s all for now, but if you’ve any questions please get in touch by following the various links on our webpages to find out the details of each award, or emailing me if you’ve a more specific question. Remember Monday 2nd March deadline!