The Best Paper Prize

•   Speakers must be fully paid-up members of the SLS (where a paper has more than one author, all authors eligible for membership of the Society under its rule 3 must be members and must be fully paid up. The decision as to eligibility of any co-authors will be taken by the Membership Secretary, whose decision will be final).

•   Papers should be submitted as a word document and must not exceed 12,000 words including footnotes (as counted in Word; figures and tables are not included in the word count).

•   Papers must be uploaded to the paperbank by 11:59pm UK time on Friday 22 August 2025.

•   Papers must not have been published previously or have been accepted or be under consideration for publication.

•   Papers must have been accepted by a Convenor in a Subject Section and an oral version of the paper must be presented at the annual conference by at least one of the authors.

•   Where a Convenor or Final Panellist is unable to judge, for example, where there is a conflict of interest, they will nominate another member of the Section or Executive Committee member to act as an alternate (a conflict of interest includes, but is not limited to, where a Convenor, Chair or Judge is a colleague or PhD supervisor of an author).

•   The SLS adopts the same policy as Legal Studies as regards AI. The policy is available via this link.

The Best Paper by a Doctoral Student Prize

•   Speakers must be fully paid-up members of the SLS who are doctoral students (where a paper has more than one author, all authors eligible for membership of the Society under its rule 3 must be fully paid up members and all authors must be doctoral students, whatever their discipline. The decision as to eligibility of any co-authors will be taken by the Membership Secretary, whose decision will be final).

•   Papers must be submitted in word document format and should not exceed 12,000 words including footnotes (as counted in Word; figures and tables are not included in the word count).

•   Papers must be uploaded to the paperbank by 11:59pm UK time on Friday 22 August 2025.

•   Papers must not have been published previously or have been accepted or be under consideration for publication.

•   Papers must have been accepted by a Convenor in a subject section and an oral version of the paper must be presented by at least one of the authors at the annual conference.

•   Where a paper eligible for this prize wins the Best Paper Prize, the judges may at their discretion award the prize for Best Paper by a Doctoral Student to a different nominated paper.

•   The judges may announce a shortlist at their discretion with the winner to be announced by the first week in November.

•   Where a Convenor or Final Panellist is unable to judge, for example, where there is a conflict of interest, he or she will nominate another member of the Section or Executive Committee member to act as an alternate (a conflict of interest includes, but is not limited to, where a Convenor, Chair or Judge is a colleague or PhD supervisor of an author).

•   The SLS adopts the same policy as Legal Studies as regards AI. The policy is available via this link.

If you do have any queries please email Sarah Byrne on slsconference@mosaicevents.co.uk or call +44 (0) 1904 702165.