Category: Awards

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The ASPIRE Awards 2026

A year ago, at King’s College in London, the ASPIRE Network – a network for teaching-track academics working in Politics and International Relations – was launched. One of the pieces of work we wanted to do with ASPIRE was to recognise and amplify the often overlooked and under-appreciated work that teaching-track colleagues are doing in our field today. With that in mind, we decided to launch the ASPIRE Awards, which, we hope, recognise the breadth and depth of work that colleagues on Teaching & Scholarship contracts do. 

Today, we are delighted to announce the winners of the inaugural ASPIRE awards, celebrating the outstanding contributions of colleagues across teaching, scholarship, leadership, and support within the teaching track community.

The quality of nominations was exceptionally high, and we would like to thank everyone who took the time to submit nominations and to recognise the work of colleagues across the discipline. We, the ASPIRE board, had a really challenging task to pick winners for these awards, and it was a really inspiring experience to see all the incredible work that ASPIRE members are doing. 

The winners are as follows:

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Nominate an Early Career Instructor!

The Education and Learning in International Affairs Section of the International Studies Association is looking to recognize excellent educators among our early career colleagues. The nominee must be a member of ISA and the ELIAS section at the time of the award.

ELIAS Early Career Instructor Excellence in Teaching Award

Presented annually, the ELIAS Early Career Instructor (ECI) Award recognizes a section member early in their career for their efforts to be an effective teacher, defined as someone who reflects on their instructional practice, strives to improve, and embraces evidence-based and student-centered teaching practices. The recipient will receive a $100 USD cash prize and a certificate presented at the ISA Annual Convention.

The ELIAS ECI Award considers the following criteria in selecting the winner: 

  • Knowledge and use of effective practices in teaching and learning, including active learning approaches.
  • Learner-centered approach to teaching and learning
  • Reflectiveness on existing and future teaching practice
  • Alignment between stated intentions and actions on learning and teaching
  • Evidence of innovation, sharing teaching practice, publishing findings, giving workshops or other forms of collaboration in a community of practice.

Section members can nominate or self-nominate to the committee. Nomination packets should include: cv of nominee and a 1-2 page statement outlining how the nominee meets the award criteria.

After reviewing nominations, the committee may request additional resources, such as: a syllabus for a class the nominee has taught; artifacts such as assignments or activities; teaching philosophy statement; teaching evaluation summaries for two recent semesters;  and/or a letter of observation from a recent class.

The nomination deadline is April 30th. Nominations can be sent to the committee, Spyridon Kotsovillis, at spyridon.kotsovilis AT utoronto.ca. The committee also includes Kara Hoover (University of Chicago) and Amy Below (California State University, East Bay).