PhD candidate Louise Swaffer was awarded the 2024 Atlantic Studies Early Career Essay Prize for her article “Women’s Protestant Foreign Mission Work and Settler State Formation in Canada: A Re-examination of the Scottish Diaspora.”
From the Atlantic Studies announcement:
The judges for the 2024 Atlantic Studies Early Career Essay Prize are pleased to select Louise Swaffer as the winner of the Award.
Based on extensive archival research, Swaffer’s essay, “Women’s Protestant Foreign Mission Work and Settler State Formation in Canada: A Re-examination of the Scottish Diaspora” (Vol. 21, no. 4), is a theoretically sophisticated case study of Women’s Protestant foreign missions in Canada, undertaken in a broadly comparative historical and global context of British Empire and diaspora. Clearly written and cogently argued, Swaffer demonstrates the intertwined relationship of Presbyterianism and (mild Lowland) “Scottishness,” of a “maternal” side to the British Empire, and of the role of the language of domesticity and gender inequality in its establishment. A particular touch is the inclusion of the “Scottish household” category, of becoming Scottish by marriage rather than being it by descent. This has much relevance to studies of ethnicity and gender that assign identity by ancestry only, not by choice of spouse. With its focus on the interrelationship of gender, empire, and religion, Swaffer’s essay can serve as a model for studies of many other groups.