Politics in Spires prize for best blog article - winners announced!

Politics in Spires is pleased to announce that the prize for the best blog published from November 2011 - January 2012 will be awarded to the joint authors of How are election preparations unfolding in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)? Hope or failure? Two perspectives Hubertus Juergenliemk (PhD student at POLIS, University of Cambridge and a Visiting Doctoral student at the University of Oxford), and Lindsay Scorgie (PhD student at POLIS, University of Cambridge). Please read their blog here.

Scot Peterson of the Oxford Politics in Spires Oversight Committee says, ‘The blog was really interesting, original and thought-provoking It was well argued and incorporated material from students’ field work for their degrees. This is exactly what we are looking for - congratulations!’

Congratulations also to Amber Murrey and to Erwin Kippenberg, who received honourable mentions for the following posts:

· ‘Connections between the Hydrocarbon Scramble and US Troop Deployment in Uganda?’ – Amber Murray (DPhil student in Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford). Please read the full text here.

· ‘Many Trails to Freedom: Islamic Democracy is not an Oxymoron’ – Erwin Knippenberg (MSc in Economics for Development in the Department of International Development (QEH), University of Oxford). Please read the full text here.

The Editorial Committee was pleased that two undergraduate students, Tim Wigmore ('How the ICC can help Kenya') and Abrar Nurani ('What Obama didn’t say about Iraq') have contributed to Politics in Spires and hopes that more undergraduates will be encouraged to do so.

The next round of the blog prize will run from February – April 2012: please see full details at http://politicsinspires.org/oxford-student-competition/. Please send blogs to Oxbridge.blog@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!