IAMCR awards in memory of Herbert I. Schiller, Dallas W. Smythe, Stuart Hall and Annabelle Sreberny are granted each year to graduate students and early-career scholars for work that reflects the critical traditions embodied by these four scholars.
IAMCR Prize in Memory of Annabelle Sreberny
Annabelle Sreberny significantly and tirelessly enhanced media studies scholarship, both in research and teaching, over a forty-year period. During this time her leadership in our field was also manifested through her long service in IAMCR, including as a member of the International Council, on the Publications Committee, one of the promoters of the Gender and Communication Section, Vice-President and, finally, as President from 2008 to 2012.
She was committed to global, feminist, justice-oriented critical media research and teaching, and was recognised worldwide as a leading figure in the field, as well as a model of socially engaged scholarship. Of particular note is the attention she gave to global media research, to feminist research and the analysis of social movements, and to the study of media in Iran.
The award in memory of Annabelle Sreberny is made in due recognition of her scientific contribution to the field of media and communication, of her role in advancing a global community of communication scholars and researchers from diverse regions (particularly younger researchers), and to her commitment to IAMCR as a core space that has welcomed and nurtured this community for decades.
IAMCR Prize in Memory of Dallas W. Smythe
Professor Dallas Smythe was a founder of the field of political economy of communication and a leading scholar and influence in national and international communication policy. Trained as an economist, Smythe's professional career included appointments at the Department of Labor and the Federal Communication Commission in the United States, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Regina. He was Professor of Communication at Simon Fraser University, Canada from 1976 till his death in 1992.
Dallas Smythe was an active member of IAMCR. He established the Communication Satellites Section which later became known as the Communication Policy & Technology Section and he was an active participant in the Political Economy Section.
Read Bill Melody's 1992 article "Dallas Smythe: A Lifetime at the Frontier of Communications" and see a video produced by Simon Fraser University in which Smythe talks about his work, including (at 7:30) about his involvement with IAMCR.
IAMCR Prize in Memory of Herbert I. Schiller
The Herbert Schiller prize was established at IAMCR's Singapore Conference to celebrate Herbert's lasting contribution to communications scholarship and to remember his work in helping to establish IAMCR as a open, hospitable and vital space of debate, as one of the founders of the Political Economy Section and as Vice President of the Association.
Herbert embodied the very best traditions of intellectual life, as a scholar, as an influential writer, as an engaged critic and public orator, and above all, as an inspirational teacher who encouraged younger scholars to develop work that challenges accepted orthodoxies and centers of power and opens up new questions for analysis and debate.
IAMCR Prize in Memory of Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1932 and attended Jamaica College. He won a Rhodes Scholarship and left Jamaica in 1951 to study in Merton College at Oxford University in England. His experiences and analyses of race, popular culture and anti-colonial struggles fashioned his early scholarship, leading to an exceptional and distinguished career. He is widely regarded as the founder of the modern discipline of 'Cultural Studies' and throughout his career he developed an impressive body of work on issues of cultural hegemony, identity and communication.
Hall's theoretical constructs, including original and influential ideas on encoding and decoding in communication discourses, multiculturalism and ethnicity in sociology, and his re-conceptualization of reception theory, among others, earned him wide respect and admiration by several generations of academics and communication scholars around the world.
The Stuart Hall Prize was established at IAMCR's Hyderabad Conference during a tribute to celebrate his lasting contribution to communications scholarship and to remember his work. See the videos of the tribute.
The 2025 Prize in Memory of Stuart Hall will be granted to papers that display scholarly excellence, are innovative in nature, and are accepted for presentation at the Singapore 2025 conference. Students and early-career scholars who are current members of IAMCR, will be eligible to apply.
IAMCR is pleased to announce that the 2023 Prize in Memory of Dallas W. Smythe will be awarded to Tianyang Fu (University of Chicago, US), Christopher Petersen (Lakehead University Orillia, Canada) and Guo Xiaoxin (School of Culture and Media, Central University of Finance and Economics, China).
IAMCR is pleased to announce that the 2022 award in memory of Herbert I. Schiller will be awarded to Siyuan Yin (Simon Fraser University) for her paper titled: "Situating Platform Gig Economy in the Formal Subsumption of Reproductive Labor: Transnational Migrant Domestic Workers and the Continuum of Exploitation and Precarity".
IAMCR is pleased to announce that the 2021 Prize in memory of Stuart Hall will be awarded to Hanna E. Morris for her paper Constructing ‘Rights’ and ‘Wrongs’ in Climate Media Discourse Through the Prism of American Exceptionalism. An honourable mention was also granted to Dr Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed.
IAMCR is pleased to announce that the 2020 Prize in Memory of Dallas W. Smythe will be awarded to Rana Arafat for her paper "Examining Online Diaspora Journalists’ Productions and Networks: A Case Study of Syrian Post-Conflict Advocacy Journalism".
IAMCR is pleased to announce that the 2019 award in memory of Herbert I.
Two early-stage media scholars, co-authors Toussaint Nothias and David Cheruiyot, will be awarded IAMCR's 2018 Stuart Hall Prize at the association's annual conference in Eugene, Oregon in June.
IAMCR is pleased to announce that the award committee for the 2017 prize in memory of Dallas Smythe has declared a tie, with the prize to be shared jointly by two authors: Hannah Spyksma (PhD Candidate, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia) and Lee McGuigan (PhD student University of Pennsylvania).
IAMCR is pleased to announce that the 2016 award in memory of Herbert I. Schiller will be presented to Kamilla Petrick, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Lakehead University in Ontario and a lecturer in Communication Studies at York University (Canada).
IAMCR is pleased to announce that the 2015 award in memory of Stuart Hall will be presented to Faith Kibere, a fourth year PhD candidate at the University of Leicester in the UK for her paper "The Politics of Representation in Kibera Slum, Kenya".
Benjamin Birkinbine, a doctoral student at School of Journalism & Communication of the University of Oregon, will be awarded IAMCR's 2014 Dallas Smythe Award for his paper Incorporating the Commons: Towards a Political Economy of Corporate Involvement in Free and Open Source Software.
Sandra Ristovska, a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania, has been awarded IAMCR's 2013 Herbert I. Schiller Award for her paper Strategic Witnessing in an Age of Video Activism.
Ristovska's paper examines the changing role of witnessing in light of the proliferating practice of institutional video activism. It first traces the concept of witnessing in media scholarship and documentary filmmaking and then presents an institutional analysis of the New York-based nongovernmental organization WITNESS.
IAMCR announced the winners of the Schiller and Smythe Awards at its 2011 Annual Conference in Istanbul.
The Herbert I Schiller award is named after a communication scholar whose critical studies of international communication and of the political economy of information substantially opened up intellectual debate within the U.S. academy and beyond, beginning in the late 1960s. Dallas Smythe's critical studies of the political economy of media have been foundational in that branch of study. Both of them were long-time activists withn IAMCR.
IAMCR announced the winners of the Smythe and Schiller Awards at its 2008 Congress in Stockholm on 23 July.
Sara Bannerman received the IAMCR Prize in Memory of Dallas W. Smythe for her contribution "Berne Buster: Canada and the Berne Convention, 1887-1908" and Cho-wen Chu was awarded the IAMCR Prize in Memory of Herbert I. Schiller for the paper "A comparative Review of Media Globalization in China and Taiwan".