Nuclear Politics and Security Paper Prize for Early Career Researchers – with European Journal of International Security (EJIS)
The BISA Global Nuclear Order Working Group is pleased to announce our first Paper Prize for Early Career Researchers (ECRs), in conjunction with EJIS, BISA’s dedicated journal for international security research.
The prize is aimed at supporting the development of ECRs working in the broad field of nuclear politics and security, in the context of an increasingly challenging academic job market.
The winning paper will be selected by the convening team of the GNO Working Group.
The winning paper will receive guaranteed peer review at EJIS. The desk review process will be waived, with the paper being sent directly for external review.
Please note that this does not constitute a guarantee of publication; decisions on publication will depend on the outcome of the peer review process as with regular article submissions.
Application process
The prize will be awarded as part of the GNO Group Online Conference. To be considered for the prize, applicants must present their paper at the Conference. This will be held online, 15-16 April 2026. Click here for full information on the conference.
When submitting your paper for the conference, please confirm in a covering email that you are an ECR, are eligible for the prize, and would like your paper to be considered.
We would like to particularly encourage submissions from researchers based in the Global South.
Eligibility
- Applicants must never have held a permanent academic job. In recognition of increasingly non-linear academic career paths, this is our benchmark for determining ECR status. Accordingly, PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, research fellows, precarious or temporary staff, and independent researchers may apply. However, if you would like to bring to our attention experiences of additional challenges to your career progression, please detail them in your covering email.
- Applicants must be members of BISA when they submit their paper for the GNO Online Conference.
- If the paper is co-authored, all authors must meet these eligibility standards.
- The paper must be an original work that is not published or under consideration for publication elsewhere.
- The paper must be fully drafted and ready for peer review at the time of submission for the GNO Online Conference. You only need to submit a 200-word abstract to be considered to present at the Conference, but the paper itself must be fully drafted and ready for submission to EJIS if you want to enter for the prize.
- The paper must conform to EJIS’s aims, scope, and house style. Please follow the full instructions on how to prepare your article for EJIS, available here. In brief, the article should be between 9,000- and 12,000-words including references, double-spaced in 10 or 12-point font, and may use any citation style (consistently applied).
- Papers must address the broad research theme of global nuclear politics and/or security, in line with GNO Working Group interests. Any topic within this theme is eligible, including but not limited to nuclear deterrence, non-proliferation, arms control, or disarmament; global nuclear order; the international politics of nuclear weapons and/or energy; everyday nuclear politics; critical approaches to international nuclear politics to include e.g. gender, race, (post)colonial perspectives; nuclear weapons and security; emerging technologies and nuclear weapons; intersections between nuclear and other dimensions of international politics and security; interdisciplinary perspectives on nuclear politics, etc.
If you have any questions, please email us: gno.group@bisa.ac.uk.