2nd year PhD Student is awarded prestigious prize

Second year Nottingham Theology and Religious Studies PhD student Sara Slinn has just been awarded a prestigious prize. Sara won the Michael Kennedy Prize, which is awarded annually by the Ecclesiastical History Society for the best paper given by a postgraduate student at the Society’s summer conference. Her paper will also be guaranteed publication in Studies in Church History.

Sara’s PhD is on the recruitment of non-graduates to the clerical profession in the period 1780-1840, and she is using large-scale databases to challenge the previously-held assumption that the Church of England became a largely graduate profession at this period. Her winning paper was on the little-known phenomenon of the ‘domestic seminary’, informal institutions which played a significant role in training non-graduate clergy in the Georgian Church. Sara’s doctoral supervisor, Dr Frances Knight, said that she was delighted with the news. “Sara faced very stiff competition from other postgraduate speakers at the conference, and I’m delighted that the editors and referees recognised that her paper was the most accomplished.”