2018 Bithell Prize-winners Announced

Tuesday 5 February 2019

Mrs Margaret May, Ms Eleanor Gratton and Ms Nancy Wilson are the Bithell Prize-winners for 2018.

The Jethro Bithell Prize, for the best performance in a University of London MA or MRes with a minimum German component of 50%, was awarded to Mrs Margaret May, a student on the IMLR’s MRes course, for her dissertation ‘Objects and Jewish Identity in Fictional Works by Georg Hermann, Barbara Honigmann and Katja Petrowskaja’. The external examiner commented ‘I have rarely read a masters’ dissertation as well-written and persuasive as this’.

The Alice Emily Bithell Prize for the best performance in the modern literature papers of the University of London’s BA examinations was jointly awarded to Ms Eleanor Gratton (King’s College London) and Ms Nancy Wilson (Queen Mary University of London). Ms Gratton, who read German and French, achieved a grade of over 90% in the module ‘Writing in Tongues: Literature and Migration in the Modern German Context’. Ms Wilson, who read Film Studies and German, achieved 90% in her research project on Celan.

First awarded in 1977, the Bithell Prizes were established in memory of Dr Jethro Bithell, Reader in German and Head of Department at Birkbeck College, and his wife, Dr Alice Emily Bithell, both of whom were generous benefactors of the Institute of Germanic Studies, forerunner of the IMLR.