Congratulations to Dr José Ciro Martínez

Posted on 18 October 2024

2024 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner

photo of Jose

Senior Lecturer Dr José Ciro Martínez has been awarded a prestigious research prize by the Leverhulme Trust for his work on comparative politics and political anthropology of the Middle East.

The Trust’s Philip Leverhulme Prize scheme commemorates the contribution to the work of the Trust made by Philip, Third Viscount Leverhulme and grandson of William Lever, the founder of the Trust. The Trust awards just 30 of these prizes each year, worth £100,000 each. The fund may be used for any purpose that advances the prize winner’s research.

José will use the funding to further his research on his second book, provisionally entitled, Sovereign Haze: Hashish, Trafficking and the Illicit in the Western Mediterranean. The project explores practices of government and the exercise of authority in southern Spain and northern Morocco by way of the production and trafficking of hashish.

Professor Anna Vignoles, Director of the Leverhulme Trust, said:
“Now in its twenty-third year, this scheme continues to attract applications from extraordinarily high calibre researchers. Selecting only thirty winners gets more challenging each year, and we are immensely grateful to the reviewers and panel members who helped us in our decision-making. This year, the Trust has awarded prizes to academics working on an impressive breadth of topics, from ancient linguistics to the macroevolution of fossil fishes, cross-cultural diversity in learning to fashion and sustainability, political anthropology of the Middle East to climate physics. We are incredibly proud to support these researchers through the next stage of their careers.”