SID Nederland Weblog

Student Essay Contest

Are you a student and currently enrolled in a Bachelor or Master’s Programme at an Higher Education Institution for 2011-2012? Join the SID Student Essay Contest!

The Essay Contest is organized together with VU University, but is open to students from other Universities and is integral to the SID Lecture Series 2011-2012 on “The State in a Globalizing World”. You can write an essay for up to three of the nine SID Lectures. Please scroll down to see the announcement and for more information on the participating lectures (or open the announcement in .pdf).

Essay Contest Winners

The first round in the 2011-2012 SID Essay Contest was won by Nina van Lanschot, Bachelor’s student in political science and language & culture of Africa at Leiden University. She wrote an essay entitled: ‘Powerful Regions and Failing States’. Her essay will be uploaded on this page soon.

SID Netherlands and VU University present:

>>SID Student Essay Contest << 

Always wanted to have dinner with a great thinker like Paul Collier, William Easterly, Martin Wolf or Ruud Lubbers? Write an essay in preparation of one of the SID-lectures and you might be joining the expert dinner with the main speaker or even win the SID Award.

For more than ten years SID Netherlands organizes monthly lectures at the VU University. International speakers are invited to share their views on issues related to international cooperation. The SID lecture series have focussed on themes such as democracy, religion, economic growth and migration. Global challenges such as climate change are being dealt with, as well as the provision of global public goods such as democracy, security, law and order.

In the 2011-2012 academic year, the monthly SID-lectures deal with the concept and role of the state in the current world order,  each with a different starting point and perspective. During this series there will be three opportunities to participate in the essay-contest by writing a personal account on why this lecture and the speaker is important for a) your study, and b) the problems in the world you think are most pressing. The writer of the best essay will be given the opportunity to act as second respondent to open the discussion, and to join the discussion dinner after the lecture. At the end of the year, the jury will assess which of the three winners wrote the best essay and who wins the SID Award. This award will be given during the annual SID Conference in The Hague. Selected essays might also be included in the compilation of the SID-lecture series, published by KIT Publishers. Being a nominee or, better yet, winning the SID Student Essay Contest looks excellent on your Résumé, demonstrating your persuasive writing skills and your interest in the topic.

A jury of experts will be carefully screening the essays. The jury includes Mr. Kees Kouwenaar (Director CIS) and Prof. Frank Biermann (professor of political science and environmental policy sciences, VU).

Rules and requirements for the SID Student Essay Contest

• You must be enrolled in a Bachelor’s or Master’s programme at a Higher Education Institution for 2011/2012.
• Submissions must be written in English and between 1200 – 1500 words, excluding bibliography, references and footnotes. All quotations or uncommon facts should be appropriately cited.
• Entries must be original, unpublished work written by contestants themselves. Your entry must include a statement that the essay is your own work.
• Your entry must be submitted electronically as a .doc, .docx or .pdf file to sid.award@vu.nl two weeks before the actual lecture.
• Your entry must clearly state your full name, university and the programme in which you are enrolled,  university email address,telephone number.
• Contestants have to be present at the related lecture.

You are only allowed one entry for each of the following lectures:

1.       January 16, 2012 – Alcides Costa Vaz – ‘Multipolarity of states or regions?’. Deadline submission essay: 2 January 2012

2.       March 26, 2012 – James Cameron – ‘‘The State and global common goods: the challenge of interdependency’. Deadline submission essay: 12 March 2012

3.       May 21, 2012 – Tak-Wing Ngo – ‘The relevance of the state for market and civil society’. Deadline submission essay: 7 May 2012

For each of these three lectures, there will be one winner who will have the opportunity to act as second respondent in the open discussion following the lecture and join the discussion dinner with the guest speaker and organizing committee. At the end of the lecture series, there will be three winners. In September 2012, only one of these three winners will be given the SID award.

Essays will be judged on the following criteria:

1. Effectiveness, insightfulness, creativity, and completeness.
2. Organization and development of ideas expressed, with clear and appropriate examples or references to support them.
3. Consistency in the use of language, variety in sentence structure and range of vocabulary, use of proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

For more information on the lecture series and specifically on the three lectures that are included in the essay contest, please visit www.sid-nl.org