The International John Bunyan Society is pleased to announce that the 2025 Roger F. Pooley Early Career Essay Prize has been award to Matthew Leech-Gerrard for his essay “’The Spirit of the Martyrs Revived’: Early Quaker Uses of History.” The winner’s certificate and cash prize of £300 has been sent to Matthew by Professor Nathalie Collé, IJBS President. The selection committee was chaired by Bob Owens, and its members were David Parry and Daniel Runyon.

Matthew is a third-year DPhil student at the University of Oxford. His doctoral project explores the ways in which Protestant Nonconformists in Britain thought and wrote about the history of the Reformation in the latter half of the seventeenth century. He has also written an article on the late-Stuart pamphleteer, Edward Stephens, which will be published in a forthcoming issue of The English Historical Review. In addition to his doctoral research, he is a committee member of the Oxford Centre for Intellectual History and the editor of its blog.

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