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.

I’m looking forward to welcoming many of you to PEI in a few short weeks! Each Monday before we meet, I’ll post a few reminders, notes, and updates, but in the meantime, do send me any questions or worries you have (smurray@upei.ca).

The four most important things this week (with some more details below) are 

• Registration: closing midnight ADT on Wednesday June 4.
• Optional Excursion: Let Shannon know by June 6, please.
• Full conference schedule: online at https://johnbunyansociety.org/committees/the-conference-schedule/The Conference Schedule | The International John Bunyan Society
• Slides for talks: If you have PowerPoint slides for your talk, please bring them on a memory stick. There are laptops in each session room.

Registration:

Please register by June 4 if you mean to attend the conference. I am sorry that some of you have been having difficulties with UPEI’s new (and not very user-friendly!) registration system, especially international registrants, so if you’ve been unable to register, please let me know, and I will help you with a work-around. The registration link can be found here: johnbunyansociety.org/committees/registration/

Optional Excursion: 

No trip to the Island would be complete without a walk along the beaches at the National Park! We’ve arranged a bus to take us to the North Shore, and we’ll end the evening with some time at the Dunes Gallery and Gardens and then at the Dunes Cafe for dinner. You’ll pay $30 for transportation (pay at the conference registration desk) plus the cost of your meal at the Dunes. Guests are welcome, but space is limited, so do let me know (smurray@upei.ca) by June 6 if you plan to come. You can find more here: johnbunyansociety.org/optional-excursion-friday-june-20-4pm-8pm/.

Full Conference Schedule: the full schedule is downloadable at the web address above. If you notice any errors or changes we should make, please let me know.

SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN

Deadline: 27 June 2025

The International John Bunyan Society’s (IJBS) annual Roger F. Pooley Early Career Essay Prize recognises the cutting-edge research of junior scholars in the field of early modern religion and dissent.

Criteria:

• The competition is open to PhD students and post-doctoral researchers up to two years after their viva.
• To be eligible, applicants MUST be members of the IJBS. Membership enquiries can be made via the Society’s UK Treasurer, Rachel Adcock, at r.c.adcock@keele.ac.uk.
• Applicants can submit an essay of up to 8,000 words (e.g. part of a chapter, a draft of an article, or a written version of a conference paper) by 27 June 2025 as an email attachment. The word count includes footnotes, but excludes the title, bibliography, and any appendixes (which, however, should not be longer than the text of the essay).
• The author’s name, affiliation, and role (e.g. final-year PhD student) as well as the word count should be indicated on the title page.
• A brief biography outlining the applicant’s current research project (150 words) should also be included.

Submissions on any theme related to the Society’s scope will be accepted. However, we are particularly interested in submissions that align with the topic of the 2025 conference: “Nonconformist Teaching.” For more information, please see the call for papers.

All submissions will be judged by members of the Selection Committee, and candidates will be informed of the outcome via email no later than 28 July 2025. The winner will be announced at the 2025 conference, receive a certificate, a financial award of £300, one year’s free membership to the IJBS, and a year’s subscription to the Society’s peer-reviewed journal: Bunyan Studies.

Please send all submissions by 27 June 2025 to the Society’s General Secretary, Michael Arbino, via JohnBunyanSociety@outlook.com.

It is time for the yearly call for contributions to 2025’s The Recorder. Below is a list of submission types for the newsletter, which will be familiar to many of you. However, I should add that other categories are more than welcome in the pages of the Newsletter as well.

• Notes
• Short articles
• Creative productions
• Meditations/reflections/strategies on teaching and researching Nonconformists and Bunyan
• Reviews and/or descriptions of recent publications (yours or others’)
• Reports on past and upcoming events; photographs and retrospective commentaries are appreciated!
• Calls for papers
• Book, musical, and media reviews (if not already consigned for Bunyan Studies)
• Interviews
• Dissertations and post-doctoral research (abstracts, announcements, etc.)

Please send your submissions to Richard Bergen at the following addresses by August 1, preferably with a subject heading referring to The Recorder: rbergen@corpuschristi.ca; or richard.angelo.b@gmail.com. If you have any questions, please let me know!

Registration for the 2025 Bunyan Conference is now open here.

The cost to delegates is $350, which includes lunches, breaks, the opening reception, and one banquet ticket. You will have the chance to request extra banquet tickets when you register, for $65 each: don’t forget to choose your banquet meal and to identify any food allergies or preferences.

Apparently, the registration system isn’t straightforward for International registrants. You should give your own address for the billing address, but where it asks for “state” or “province,” look for the “—” option in the dropdown menu. Then give UPEI as the shipping address: 550 University Ave, Charlottetown, C1A 4P3. Let me know if you get stuck (smurray@upei.ca).

Graduate student presenters: There is a modest stipend to help with your travel, available through the Society. Contact the North American Treasurer, Margaret Breen (margaret.breen@uconn.edu), for more information.

Questions or worries? Write to Shannon Murray (smurray@upei.ca).

The tentative conference schedule is available here. If you have questions or worries, let me know at smurray@upei.ca. It’s shaping up to be a wonderful few days in PEI!

SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN

Deadline: 19 May 2025

The International John Bunyan Society’s (IJBS) annual Roger F. Pooley Early Career Essay Prize recognises the cutting-edge research of junior scholars in the field of early modern religion and dissent.

Criteria:

• The competition is open to PhD students and post-doctoral researchers up to two years after their viva.
• To be eligible, applicants MUST be members of the IJBS. Membership enquiries can be made via the Society’s UK Treasurer, Rachel Adcock, at r.c.adcock@keele.ac.uk.
• Applicants can submit an essay of up to 8,000 words (e.g. part of a chapter, a draft of an article, or a written version of a conference paper) by 19 May 2025 as an email attachment. The word count includes footnotes, but excludes the title, bibliography, and any appendixes (which, however, should not be longer than the text of the essay).
• The author’s name, affiliation, and role (e.g. final-year PhD student) as well as the word count should be indicated on the title page.
• A brief biography outlining the applicant’s current research project (150 words) should also be included.

Submissions on any theme related to the Society’s scope will be accepted. However, we are particularly interested in submissions that align with the topic of the 2025 conference: “Nonconformist Teaching.” For more information, please see the call for papers.

All submissions will be judged by members of the Selection Committee, and candidates will be informed of the outcome via email no later than 18 June 2025. The winner will be announced at the 2025 conference, receive a certificate, a financial award of £300, one year’s free membership to the IJBS, and a year’s subscription to the Society’s peer-reviewed journal: Bunyan Studies.

Please send all submissions by 19 May 2025 to the Society’s General Secretary, Michael Arbino, via JohnBunyanSociety@outlook.com.

The Greaves Prize Committee (Vera Camden, David Gay, and Neil Keeble) is pleased to announce the shortlist for the Richard L. Greaves Prize for 2025: Katie Calloway, Literature and Natural Theology in Early Modern England, (Cambridge UP, 2024); Crawford Gribben and John Tweeddale (eds.), The T and T Clark Handbook of John Owen (Bloomsbury, 2022); and John Morrill et al. (eds), The Letters, Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 3 vols (OUP, 2022). The winner will be announced at the banquet for the 2025 International John Bunyan Society conference, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, on June 19. Congratulations to all the authors and editors for this extraordinary work in history, literature, thought, practices and legacy of Anglophone Protestantism to 1700.

You can read the latest issue of The Recorder here

Call for nominations:

The Richard L. Greaves Prize was established in 2004 in honour of the memory of the first president of the International John Bunyan Society, Professor Richard L. Greaves (1938-2004), and of his unrivalled contribution to the understanding of early modern Protestant culture in general and of John Bunyan in particular.  It is awarded every three years by a Committee of the IJBS for an outstanding book-length work of scholarship devoted to the history, literature, thought, practices and legacy of Anglophone Protestantism to 1700.

The Prize is funded by a generous grant from the Greaves family.

To nominate a book published in 2022, 2023, or 2024, send the title and author’s name to Professor Vera Camden, Committee President (vcamden@kent.edu) by December 1, 2024.