Alexander Beard (2020, History and Modern Languages) has been awarded the German History Society Prize for best undergraduate thesis – a competition across the UK and Ireland. His thesis was on Vietnamese contract workers in the GDR and was supervised by Professor Paul Betts at St Antony’s College, Oxford. He is currently undertaking an MPhil at Cambridge.

Alex was first inspired to research the history of migration to the GDR on his year abroad. He spent ten months in an eastern district of Berlin called Lichtenberg, where many Vietnamese who arrived in the 1980s – initially on temporary work contracts – still live. Like many, he had assumed East Germany to be a largely insular and homogenous state and was keen to explore the connections within the socialist world which made their journeys possible. He was also interested in the lived experiences of migrant workers, whose stories are largely omitted from narratives of life under state socialism and of reunification.

Alex said, “I am honoured to have been awarded this generous prize, which would have been impossible were it not for the support of my supervisor Paul Betts and the excellent history tutors at Univ. At a time when funding in the humanities is increasingly scarce, I feel very lucky to have had access to world-class resources at Oxford. The award is a huge encouragement as I complete my Master’s and hope to begin doctoral study later this year.”

Alex graduated with a first from Univ and was awarded the Gibbs Prize (proxime accessit) for the second highest performance of all joint schools candidates across the university in History papers, the Frederick H. Bradley Prize, the Frederick H. Bradley Thesis Prize and the Helen and Peter Dean Prize (Joint Schools). He also received a full scholarship from St John’s College, Cambridge for his MPhil.

The German History Society offers an annual prize of £300 for the best undergraduate essay on German History written by a student of history (single or joint honours, or in a cognate discipline) at a UK or Irish university.

Published: 18 February 2025

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