2026 Sprout Award - Call for Nominations

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Justin Alger

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May 19, 2025, 7:53:33 PM5/19/25

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Dear colleagues,

The 2025 Harold & Margaret Sprout awardee was announced at the 2025 International Studies Association Annual Convention in Chicago. Congratulations to:

Award Winner: Simone M Müller, The Toxic Ship, University of Washington Press

Many thanks to all who have nominated books! The reputation of the Award is built on the high quality of your publications and your commitment to work with important scholars in the field.

Today I write to encourage you to submit books you have published or released during 2024-2025 for consideration for the 2026 Harold & Margaret Sprout Award, which was established in 1972 and named in honor of two pioneers in the study of international environmental problems. The Award is given each year for the best book in Environmental Studies by the International Studies Association (ISA), the world’s largest and most prominent scholarly organization dedicated to international studies. The Award is sponsored by the Environmental Studies Section, and is given to the best book in the field, one that makes a contribution to theory and interdisciplinarity, shows rigor and coherence in research and writing, and offers accessibility and practical relevance.

Nominated books should address some aspect of one or more environmental, pollution, or resource issues from a broadly international or transnational perspective, including works in (for example) global, interstate, transboundary, North-South, foreign policy, comparative, or area studies. Environmental subjects of books can include (for example) environmental law, diplomacy, transnational activism, natural resource use, global change, sustainable development, biodiversity, transboundary pollution control, and the like. For a list of previous winners of the award, please visit the website of ISA’s Environmental Studies Section.

Nominated works must be published during 2024 or 2025. Books with a 2026 copyright date are welcome provided that (printed) review copies can be sent by the nomination deadline. Each publisher may nominate more than one book, and books nominated last year can be re-nominated. The committee members will begin reading the books as soon as they arrive. The Committee must complete its review and reach a decision by Fall 2025; the 2026 award will be presented at the annual meeting of the ISA in Columbus, USA; March 22-25, 2026. Therefore, we need to receive notice of your nominations and receive hard copies of the nominated works by August 1, 2025. (Please note that committee members are located in different countries, which will require appropriate shipping arrangements so that books reach us on time.)

Should you have a book or books you would like to nominate, please submit a copy of the book to EACH member of the Award Committee. In order to obtain the mailing addresses of the current committee members, please contact the Sprout Committee chair Justin Alger. Please include a note or letter with the book(s) indicating that they are nominated for the Sprout Award so that we can distinguish them from other books we receive.

Thank you very much for your nomination(s). Please contact me if you have any questions about the award or the process.

Sincerely,

Dr. Justin Alger

Chair of the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award Committee

Current members of the Committee

Justin Alger

University of Melbourne

justin...@unimelb.edu.au

Elizabeth DeSombre

Wellesley College

edes...@wellesley.edu

Elizabeth Mendenhall