ECA Frans van Eemeren Prize for Outstanding Student Paper
Information and general rules
ECA awards the Frans van Eemeren Prize for Outstanding Student Paper at each edition of the conference, with the aim of selecting an outstanding student paper in each ECA edition.
An international panel of six leading argumentation scholars acts as the jury for the ECA Frans van Eemeren Prize (one chair + five members of the jury). The jury is independent from the ECA steering committee, meaning that no member of the steering committee can take part in the jury. The chair of the jury is selected on a rotation principle, which ensures that a scholar cannot act as chair of the ECA Frans van Eemeren Prize more than once. The chair of the jury is selected by the ECA steering committee; the chair is responsible for selecting the other five members of the jury.
ECA organisers strongly encourage students’ contributions that, in order to access the final stage of the evaluation for the prize, must jointly fulfil the following conditions:
- Be accepted for presentation at the conference, either as regular or long paper. Regardless of how the submission is accepted, papers invited to the final stage of the prize will have to be in the 7’000-8’000 word range to be considered.
- With a student (undergraduate or graduate) as first author, who must be registered to the conference before submitting the final version of their paper (specific conditions concerning the end date of the PhD will be made available before each ECA conference).
- Without any non-student scholar as co-author.
Springer – the publisher of the Argumentation journal and the Argumentation Library book series – will award the author of the outstanding student paper with a 500 EUR (around 575 USD) cash prize and an additional 500 EUR (around 575 USD) voucher for books from Springer’s catalogue. In addition to that, the winning author will be invited to publish the paper in Argumentation, pending successful peer-reviewing procedures applying to all papers published in the journal. The published paper will include a footnote or acknowledgement that explicitly mentions the ECA conference as well as the support obtained by Springer for the ECA Frans van Eemeren Prize.
The prize will be awarded during the ECA conference.
Next call
Information will be available in due time.
Winner 2022 – Alex Reuneker: “Assessing classification reliability of conditionals in discourse”
Winner 2019 – Peter Bodlović: “On the differences between practical and cognitive presumptions”
Winner 2017 – José Ángel Gascón: “Virtuous arguers: Responsible and reliable”
Winner 2015 – Jacky Visser: “Speech acts in a dialogue game for critical discussion”
Professor Frans H. van Eemeren has been a central figure in argumentation theory since the early 1980s. He is internationally recognized for the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, developed with his colleagues at the University of Amsterdam. Through a consistent research programme, their work has substantially consolidated the field and provided a continuous source of inspiration for others.
Frans van Eemeren is the founding father and chairman of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA) with its quadrennial conference held in Amsterdam. He is also a founder and editor-in-chief of the main journals (Argumentation, Journal of Argumentation in Context) and book series (Argumentation Library, Argumentation in Context) in the field.
Importantly, Frans van Eemeren has dedicated much of his academic effort to educating students – he has been a respected teacher and supervisor of many active argumentation scholars. The appreciation of students’ work is part of his academic dedication. This makes him the ideal patron of the ECA Prize for Outstanding Student Paper.