Best Student Paper Award
Nomination Deadline: April 15, 2025
Mandate
An award is presented annually by the Association to the graduate student whose paper, presented at the Annual Canadian Sociological Association Conference (in-person or virtual section) in the year of the award, is judged by the Association’s Awards Committee to be the best among those received for adjudication.
Various Association Research Clusters will be sponsoring Best Student Paper Awards within their sessions held at the annual Conference. Information coming soon.
Author Eligibility:
1. Member of the Canadian Sociological Association (must be active at the time of application and through June 13, 2025).
2. Registered Congress delegate with the Canadian Sociological Association in-person Conference section June 1 - 5, 2025 OR Registered for the Canadian Sociological Association virtual Conference section June 9 - 13, 2025).
3. Currently registered Undergraduate, MA, or PhD student (at the time of application and through June 13, 2025).
Note: An author may submit only one paper for consideration in a given year and cannot have received the award in the previous three years.
Paper Eligibility:
4. Paper must be student authored or co-authored. Papers co-written with faculty are not eligible.
5. The paper must be approved for presentation (and subsequently presented) at the Canadian Sociological Association Annual Conference in-person or virtually.
6. The paper must be unpublished and not yet approved for publication.
7. Paper length may not exceed 10,000 words (40 pages) maximum, including bibliography and appendices.
9. Paper must be formatted in Times New Roman font (12) and the margins must not be adjusted (2.54 cm margins).
10. May be written in English or French.
Submitting Nominations
Students may self-nominate.
Download nomination submission instructions
Email nomination packages to the CSA Office (office@csa-scs.ca) by April 15, 2025.
Equity Statement
The Canadian Sociological Association (CSA) is committed to the values and principles of equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization. We recognize and honour the intersectionality of equity-based identities. The CSA therefore invites and encourages the nomination (including self-nomination) of members from marginalized groups, including Indigenous peoples, racialized persons, persons with disabilities, persons who identify as women, and/or LGBTQ2+.
Honouring the Award Recipients
The award recipient will receive a certificate, a prize of $500 CAD (to be shared amongst co-authors if applicable), and acknowledgement in Canadian Sociological Association communications and on the website.
* Honourable Mention
| Year | Recipient | Paper Title |
| 2024 | Sonali Patel, University of British Columbia | Re-theorizing the Sexual Minority Closet: Evidence from Queer South Asian Women |
| 2024 | Galiba Zahid, University of Alberta | Beyond the Punchline: Exploring Social Commentary and Theorizing in Stand-Up Narratives |
| 2023 | Catharina O'Donnell, Harvard University | Calling to Action: How right-leaning and left-leaning contemporary American social movement organizations mobilize their members differently |
| 2023 | Firdaous Sbaï, University of Toronto | Racial disproportionality in incarceration: measuring the legacy of racial history |
| 2022 | Andrew Crosby, Carleton University | "Framework for Social Destruction”: Community Well-being and Domicide in the Liveable City |
| 2022* | Sepideh Borzoo, University of Calgary |
Marketing Diversity in a gendered racialized marketplace: The everyday experiences of selling diversity in the cosmetic retail store |
| 2021 | Natalie J. Adamyk, University of Toronto | "You can transfer skills you’ve gained over time”: Contingent Academics’ Use of Emotional Capital as Skilled Emotion Management |
| 2020 | Not awarded | |
| 2019 | Dana Wray, University of Toronto | Can Paternity Leave Policy Change Father Involvement? Evidence from the Natural Experiment of Quebec. |
| 2018 | Not awarded | |
| 2017 | Francois Lachapelle & Patrick John Burnett, University of British Columbia |
Canadianization Movement, American Imperialism, and Scholastic Stratification: Professorial Evidence from 1977 to 2017 |
| 2017 | Jonathan Simmons, University of Alberta |
‘Not that kind of atheist’: skepticism as a lifestyle movement |
| 2016 | Holly Campeau, University of Toronto | The Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the Blueville Way: How Cultural Match Matters for Standardization in the Police Organization |
| 2015 | Judy Beglaubter, University of Toronto | Balancing the Scales: Negotiating Fathers’ Parental Leave Use |
| 2014 | Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, Oxford University | How Unreligious are the Religious ‘Nones’? Religious Dynamics of the Unaffiliated in Canada and the West. |
| 2013 | Matt Patterson, University of Toronto | Constructing a Sense of Place: Global and Local Sensibilities in Iconic Architecture |
| 2012 | Pasko Bilic, University of Zagreb, Croatia | Towards a Mediated Centre in the Network Society: Social construction of knowledge on and with Wikipedia |
| 2011 | Temitope Oriola, University of Alberta | Kidnapping as "Public Good": the Actors, Social Benefits and Harms of Nigeria's Oil Insurgency. |
| 2010 | Laurence Clennet-Sirois, School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex | Les blogues intimes: des expériences privées notées dans un espace public. Pour une prise de conscience politique? |
| 2009 | Phillippa Chong, University of Toronto | Ethnicity, Nation and Worth: How literary reviewers use author's race and ethno-national origins to construct literary worth |
| 2008 | Mark Stoddart, University of British Columbia | The Politics of Snow: Skiing, media and nature in British Columbia |
| 2007 | Sandra Smele, Concordia University | Jewish Identity and the Authority of Scientific Discourse. An historical comparative analysis |
| 2006 | Kevin Walby, University of Carleton | Performativity and Masculinities: At the gay bar with male erotic dancers and their bodies |
| 2005 | Janice Aurini, McMaster University | Crafting Ligitimation Projects: An institutional analysis of private education businesses. |
| 2005 | Kevin Walby, University of Victoria | Little England? The accession of open-street closed-circuit television surveillance in Canada. |
| 2004 | Kimberly-Ann Ford, Carleton University | Mefloquine Dreams: Preventing malaria in the 'Risk Society'. |
| 2003 | Linda Quirke, McMaster University | When ‘Parent’ Becomes a Verb: Changes to parenting and the rise of cognitively intensive education. |
| 2002 | Stephanie Knaak, University of Alberta | Deconstructing Discourse: Breastfeeding, intensive mothering and the moral construction of choice. |
| 2001 | Diane Crocker, York University | Conceptualizing Violence Against Women as a Gendered Crime: Directions for future theory. |
| 2001 | Gail McCabe, York University | Crone Resurrection: A cyberspace passage from social death to virtual immortality. |