Kessler Essay Prize

Anna Kessler

The Anna Kessler Memorial Graduate Essay Prize in Philosophy is awarded each year to the best graduate student essay based on work undertaken during their time in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Alberta.

To be eligible, students must send a copy of their paper by email in PDF to the Chair of the Awards and Placement Committee. Limit is one paper per student per year and deadline for submission is August 1 each year. All philosophy graduate students, including visiting and exchange students, can submit. Papers need not have been written for a course but must be based on work undertaken (wholly or in part) during their studies at the University of Alberta.

Normally, papers will not be longer than 25 pages double-spaced. Exceptionally, course instructors can also nominate a paper which has not been submitted by the student if they think it is especially worthy. In keeping with best practices, papers should be prepared for anonymous review, and may be disqualified if revealing information is included. The adjudication of the award is supervised by the Awards and Placement Committee.

Past Winners:

  • 2022: Avontay Williams, “On Collective Action Problems: Voting & Individual Moral Responsibility” and Eduardo Andrade, Beyond the Contagion and Projection Divide: A defense of Hume’s account of Sympathy”
  • 2021: Eduardo Andrade, “A Beautiful and Orderly System: Liberal Governmentality and the Aesthetic Deception of Order"
  • 2020: Eihab Idris, “The Dynamics of Scientific Significance: Human Origins Research”
  • 2019: Nicholas Ferenz, "The Future of Modal Naïve Set Theory"
  • 2018: Taro Okamura, "Hume on the Inertness of Reason"
  • 2017: Roxane Noël, "A Solution to the Non-Identity Problem: Contractualism and Care"
  • 2016: Peter Andes, "Sidgwick's Dualism of Practical Reason, Evolutionary Debunking, and Moral Psychology"
  • 2015: Vladimir Dukić, "Scotus on Individuating Difference and the Foundations of Knowledge"

  • 2014: Vladimir Dukić, "Conatus as the Principle of Individuation in Spinoza's Ethics" and Joshua St. Pierre, "Malebranche and Bodily Errors"