IBP 2021 Award Ceremony

Award Ceremony

ICAS participants could attend the award ceremony via a live stream on Tuesday. The live stream was accompanied by an introduction and interludes by Paul van der Velde, ICAS Secretary and ICAS Book Prize General Secretary. His speeches were, very appropriately, pre-recorded in the Japanese Garden of the Hortus botanicus in Leiden. 

We are happy to share the recording with anyone who could not be there:

Nearly 1000 submissions, nine languages

This year's IBP included two new languages, namely Japanese and Russian. The IBP 2021 now includes publications in English, Chinese, German, French, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Russian. With this multilingual approach, ICAS is increasingly decentring the landscape of knowledge about and in Asia. Moreover, ten institutions in Asia, Latin America and Europe either organised or sponsored the respective language editions. The secretariat of each edition, in cooperation with the IBP Secretariat at ICAS, put together a Reading Committee consisting of scholars in diverse disciplines, focusing on various regions and working on and originating from different continents. The reading committees together considered almost one thousand submissions. 
Read more: Nearly 1000 submissions in nine languages. The Ninth (2021) ICAS Book Prize Edition

As usual, prizes were awarded in each language edition for the best publications in the two categories of the Social Sciences and the Humanities.
You will find them along with the shortlisted books and accolades of each edition in The Newsletter 89 Summer 2021

Prize for articles

ICAS 12 also experimented with awarding prizes for articles.

Paul van der Velde:

Many times I was asked whether it would not be a good idea not only to include books but also articles in the IBP. In view of the fact that the organization of the IBP alone is already a quite daunting task, I always friendly rejected the idea. However, I was well aware that, certainly in the social sciences, a lot of the academic output is in articles. Therefore we welcomed the idea of the Association for Hong Kong Studies to have, on an experimental basis, an Hong Kong Articles Prize. 

Two prizes were awarded. See: IBP 2021 Hong Kong Article Prize

Farewell and thanks from Paul

Paul van der Velde will leave IIAS this year to enjoy a well-deserved and undoubtedly active retirement. This also means that this is his last year as Secretary-General of the IBP.  Paul stood at the cradle of IIAS, ICAS and the IBP. We here at IIAS have yet to grasp the full significance of his departure.

Paul van der Velde:

Slowly it is sinking in that this will be my last IBP as Secretary-General. I do that with a smile convinced that my successor Martina van den Haak, who was IBP Acting Secretary from 2008 to 2013, will do so with much gusto. She will work in cooperation with the secretaries of the language editions and with Paramita Paul, who has succeeded Sonja Zweegers as the editor of The Newsletter and as Secretary of the IBP English Edition. Many, many thanks, Sonny, for all the efforts in the past years.

A special thanks to Alex McKay who has been involved with the IBP almost from its inception and for the past four editions was the Chair of the Dissertation Reading Committee.

Needless to say, I would like to thank all IBP Secretaries, Members of the Reading Committees, the Authors who in the past have submitted their publications or dissertations, the Publishers who provided the copies of all these wonderful books and our sponsoring institutes. Many thanks and it will come as no surprise that I am eagerly looking forward to the 10th edition in 2023!