The International John Bunyan Society is pleased to announce that its newly renamed Roger F. Pooley Early Career Essay Prize has been awarded to Nathan Sherman (@nathansherman) for the essay: ‘The Wapping Baptists: The Varied Location of a Unified People’. The winner’s certificate and cash prize of £300 has been sent to Nathan by Professor Shannon Murray, IJBS President. The selection panel was chaired by David Gay, and its members were Rachel Adcock, Michael Davies and Naomi Pullin. Nathan’s winning entry will be published in the 2023 issue of Bunyan Studies: A Journal of Reformation and Nonconformist Culture.

Nathan Sherman is entering his third year of doctoral studies at the University of Leicester as a part-time, international researcher. He currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the U.S. where he is the pastor of a Baptist church. His research focusses on the congregational minute book of the Wapping Baptist church (1677-1711), as both a valuable window into the particular social and cultural realities of this east London people, but also as a significant literary artifact in and of itself.

The annual Roger F. Pooley Early Career Essay Prize is open to all international PhD students and to post-doctoral researchers within the first two years after their viva. Applicants must be members of IJBS. The prize is for outstanding scholarly work in the field of early modern religion and Dissent, including its literature, history and reception.