Marlis Thiersch Prize - Guidelines for Judges  

(n.b. This assumes the award of the prize at ADSA conferences about the beginning of July in any year. Where this is not the case, appropriate adjustments need to be made to the timeline .)  

There are three judges at any one time. Each year at the conference the person who has served for three years will be replaced by a new judge.

Normally the member of the panel who is in the third year of appointment will be the convenor.

Tasks  

1. July, after AGM: prize convenor writes to thank sponsors, and confirms prize sponsorship for following year.  
2. July: the prize convenor arranges for the updating of the prize website, including a list of the current judges, the name of the latest winner, and deadlines for the next nomination of articles, etc. The text of the winning article should also be put onto the website.  
3. July-December: judges individually read articles in obvious places (e.g. ADS) and seek out others though personal contact etc., circulating details of likely contenders to the other judges.  
4. mid-November: public call for nominations, with a deadline of mid January, sent out by convenor. Nominations should be accompanied by full publication details of the article and preferably a photocopy of the article, especially if it is in a publication that may be difficult to access. Nominations can be made by anyone, including the author of the article or those involved in its publication. The call for nominations should make it clear that pieces of a suitable scale and quality published in electronic form rather than in print are also eligible. 
5. mid January: judges compile lists of possible winners. 
6. mid February: finalise long shortlist of no more than 15 articles, coordinated by convenor. Convenor to check that all shortlisted authors are current (or very recent) financial members of ADSA. 
7. end February: convenor contacts authors to inform them that they have been shortlisted. Any shortlisted candidates whose membership has recently lapsed could be invited to renew their membership at this point.
8. mid April: convenor reconfirms sponsorship agreement with sponsor.  
9. end May: all judges have read all shortlisted articles by ADSA members and confer.
10. early June: judges agree on winner.
11. early June: convenor contacts sponsors with name of winner, and obtains prize voucher.
12. mid June: convenor (or nominee) prepares a press release outlining the reasons for the award, and someone (one of the judges, the convenor of the conference, or an ADSA Executive member) tries to arrange for the news media to be present at the award ceremony. 
13. June-July, at conference: announce winner and present prize voucher. 

Criteria for judging

1. This award is designed to recognise research excellence in English-language articles anywhere in the world in the broad field of theatre and performance studies. Eligibility assumes that the author is a financial member of ADSA.
2. The article must be considered to have lasting merit. It might either deliver an informative and sustained new theoretical argument; or outline the possibility of a much larger study (i.e. provide the basis for a book); or report a detailed piece of original research that impacts on currently accepted knowledge. 
3. In the case of a jointly-authored article, all authors should be members of ADSA.