The winner is Dr Coreen McGuire. She spoke to History Scotland about her plans for the £500 research grant, which is part of the prize: ‘I was absolutely delighted to receive this news, and it was especially cheering to receive such a nice missive amidst the stricter stages of the lockdown.
‘I will visit 4-5 archives across Scotland which hold records of the schools for the deaf from the 19th century. I will interpret these archival collections through an epistemic injustice framework, arguing that 19th-century oralism was a paradigmatic case of epistemic injustice, and exploring the ways in which different areas of Scotland resisted this injustice.
‘Many scholars have explored the extent to which oralism was motivated by Christian ideology or have emphasised the crucial role of the Scottish-American telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell.