Kent Law School Professor Davina Cooper has been awarded the Feminist Theory Annual Essay Prize 2016.

In selecting Professor Cooper’s essay ‘Bringing the state up conceptually: Forging a body politics through anti-gay Christian refusal’, the judge commended her “excellent scholarship.” The essay was shortlisted by the editors of Feminist Theory from amongst all essays submitted in 2015 before its selection for the prize by an external judge. The judge said the article was a pleasurable read, a feature that was noted as a “rare achievement and an immense strength.”
The editors and the judge acknowledged there had been many strong articles published in the journal in 2015 but noted that Professor Cooper’s work had stood out. Feminist Theory  is an international interdisciplinary journal engaged in debates about the diversity of feminism. It incorporates perspectives from across the broad spectrum of the humanities and social sciences and the full range of feminist political and theoretical stances.
Last year, Professor Cooper was awarded the Charles Taylor Book Award 2015  for her book Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces.
Next month Professor Cooper will be hosting a two-day workshop interrogating the question of whether states have a place within a transformative progressive politics. The workshop, to be held on Kent’s Canterbury campus on 19/20 May, will offer participants the opportunity to reimagine the concept of the state for progressive politics.