The Western Front Association Masters Grant Scheme is offered to provide postgraduate students the opportunity to enrich their research and thus elevate their dissertation on a First World War topic.
This first iteration of the award saw a range of topics proposed.
The judging panel, made up of The Western Front Association President Professor Gary Sheffield, Universities Officer Dr Adam Prime, and fellow WFA executive committee members Dr Tom Thorpe, Ms Eve Wilson and Dr Jenny MacLeod, found the adjudication process very difficult.
‘These awards are being made only by the finest of margins, the competition was very tight. I am delighted though that the outcome is such a varied range of topics. Much like with the PhD grants earlier in the year, this variety highlights the WFAs commitment to support all First World War scholarship', said Adam Prime (The Western Front Association Universities Officer).
The judging panel presented the following recommendations to the Executive Committee, which were subsequently approved:
The winners and recipients of £300 and a one year subscription to The Western Front Association are:
- Caroline Torode (University of New South Wales, Canberra) - Victorian State School Teachers and Officer Promotions during the Great War - A Prosopographical Study.
- Christian Cardwell (University of Leeds) - From Cold-blooded Murder to a Casual Liaison: Morality, Sin and Forgiveness in the British First World War Experience
- Christopher Kreuzer (University of Kent) - Sites of Memory, Sites of Propaganda? Echoes of Empire in the cathedral memorial tablets erected by the Imperial War Graves Commission in France and Belgium after the First World War.
- Edward Cabot (University of Kent) - Military Service Tribunals in Jersey During the Great War
- Henry Theakstone (University of Leeds) - The Easter Rising and the First World War
- Jonathan Williams (University of Wolverhampton) - From a ‘very poor performance’ to ‘the highest levels of soldierly achievement’: A study of the rehabilitation of the 38th (Welsh) Division in the aftermath of the Battle of Mametz Wood”
- Robert St. John Smith (University of Wolverhampton) - British First World War Cartoons
- Simon Smith (University of Wolverhampton) - ‘A fine, well set-up, hardy lot’? The raising and training of the 6th (Service) Battalion of The Green Howards, Alexandra, Princess of Wales’s Own Yorkshire Regiment and their performance at Suvla Bay, 1915.