Richard G. Condon Prize

2026 SPA Condon Prize: Call for Submissions

The Society for Psychological Anthropology solicits entries for the Richard G. Condon Prize for the best student essay in psychological anthropology. The prize is named for the late Richard G. Condon, whose work included the study of adolescence, family, and change among the Canadian Inuit.

For the purposes of this award, psychological anthropology is defined broadly to include interrelationships among psychological, social, and cultural phenomena. Essays will be judged on their relevance to psychological anthropology, organization, clarity, and their theoretical and methodological strengths.

The author must have been an undergraduate or graduate student during the 2025-2026 academic year. The author need not be a current member of the Society for Psychological Anthropology.

The winner will be awarded $500 and a one-year membership in the Society for Psychological Anthropology. The winning essay will be published in Ethos after working with the Editor for final preparation of the manuscript. The winner will be recognized at the SPA Biennial Meetings in May 2027.

Papers submitted for consideration must follow these guidelines:

  1. The submitted paper must not be published in any form, or currently under review for publication in any outlet in the U.S. or abroad.

2. Papers must not exceed 9,000 words inclusive of all references, endnotes and acknowledgements.

3. Papers must follow the American Anthropological Association style guide.

4. Submitted papers must be emailed as a single Microsoft Word document to the SPA Secretary, Devin Flaherty, at devin.flaherty@utsa.edu. The deadline to submit is August 15, 2026 (11:59pm PT).

Additional submission instructions:

  1. The subject line of the email should read “Condon Prize Submission.”
  2. In the body of the email, provide the author’s name, permanent (not institutional) mailing address, email address, student affiliation (university and department), and the title of the paper that is attached.
  3. Confirm student status in the body of the email and provide an estimated date of graduation.

Any questions about the prize can be directed to SPA Secretary, Devin Flaherty, at devin.flaherty@utsa.edu.

All award and selection committees abide by the SPA’s Conflict of Interest Statement and Recusal Policy.

2025Muhammad Osama Imran: “Through the Frayed Veil: Spectral Madness and Sufi Ethics in Pakistan.”
2024Lauren Medina: “Care, Violence, and the American Dream: Professionals’ Experiences of Double Binds and Moral Injury within Immigration Detention.”
2023Maija-Eliina Sequeira: “Learning about time: Reflections on the
Socialisation of Time-thinking among Children in Colombia and Finland.”
2022Pablo Seward Delaporte: “‘Life Started Hitting Her Like This, This, This:’ Vulnerability,
Relationality, and the Making of Hard Corporeal Selves.”
2021Audrey (AJ) Jones: “Improvising Care: A Theatrical Exploration of Turner Syndrome
Subjectivities.”
2020Parsa Bastani: “Feeling at Home in the Clinic: Therapeutics and Dwelling in an Addiction Rehabilitation Center in Tehran, Iran.”
2019No prize awarded
2018Courtney Cecale: “Moral Modes of Attention: From Addict to Ultramarathon Runner.”
2017Matthew McCoy: “’I Will Not Die On This Street:’ Thinking Things Over in Conflicted Belfast.”
2016Amir Hampel: “Equal Temperament: Autonomy and Identity in Chinese Speaking Clubs.”
2015Suma Ikeuchi: “A case for the fantasy of an audience: Debating Christian selfhood in multicultural Japan.”
2014Nofit Itzhak: “Making Selves and Meeting Others in Neo-Shamanic Healing.”
2013Jing Xu: “Becoming a Moral Child amidst China’s Moral Crisis.”
2012Sara Lewis: “Trauma and the Making of Flexible Minds in the Tibetan Exile Community.”
2011Saiba Varma: “The Silent Bio in Psychosocial: Counselors and Psychiatrists in Indian-administered Kashmir.”
2010Sonya E. Pritzker: “The Part of Me that Wants to Grab: Embodied Experience and Living Translation in U.S. Chinese Medical Education.”
2009Kristin Yarris: “The pain of ‘thinking too much’: Dolor de cerebro and social hardship among rural Nicaraguan women.”
2008No prize awarded
2007Sarah Henning David: “What’s Not to Know? A Critique of Pascal Boyer’s theory of religion through a reexamination of Emile Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life.”
2006Michael Baran: “Girl, you are not Morena.”

Merav Shohet: “Narrating anorexia: ‘Full’ and ‘struggling’ genres of recovery.”
2005No prize awarded
2004Julia Cassiniti: “Cultural Psychology of Buddhism in Thailand.”
2003No prize awarded
2002Eileen Anderson-Fye: “Never Leave Yourself: Ethnopsychology as Mediator of Psychological Globalization among Belizean Schoolgirls.”
2001Diana Smay: “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD): The Disease of Ritual.”
2000No prize awarded
1999Chris McCollum: “The Cultural Patterning of Self Understanding: Evidence from Middle-Class Americans’ Stories of Falling in Love.”
1998No prize awarded
1997Keith McNeal: “Queens in America: An Exploration of Cultural Models, Gay Drag, and Gender Ambivalence.”