Seven prizes, five thousand dollars each — and no academic post required

What routes are open to a young researcher working in philosophy in Turkey who wants to be visible internationally?

The answer is usually confined to two items: send an article to a refereed journal, give a paper at a conference.

There is a third route, and in Turkey it is scarcely known at all: essay prizes.

The Sanders Prizes#

The Marc Sanders Foundation runs essay prizes, awarded every two years, across many of the central fields of contemporary philosophy. Each is administered by one of the leading philosophers in the field.

Seven fields, $5,000 apiece:

Metaphysics — Dean Zimmerman (Rutgers) Epistemology — Tamar Szabó Gendler (Yale) Philosophy of Mind — David Sosa (Texas, Austin) Metaethics — Russ Shafer-Landau (Wisconsin-Madison) Political Philosophy — Peter Vallentyne (Missouri) Philosophy of Religion — Dean Zimmerman (Rutgers) History of Early Modern Philosophy — Donald Rutherford (UC San Diego)

These are names at the centre of their subjects. It is worth recalling that Paulina Sliwa's paper in the Philosopher's Annual selection, which we covered this week, appeared in Oxford Studies in Metaethics, edited by Shafer-Landau — the same ecosystem.

The real news: who may apply?#

The conditions cover two groups:

• Researchers who took their doctorate fewer than fifteen years ago
• Students currently enrolled on a graduate programme

And then the crucial sentence: independent researchers may also be eligible.

In the Turkish context that is no small detail.

There are a great many researchers in Turkey who have completed a doctorate in philosophy, found no academic post, and go on doing philosophy while working at something else. Most international calls require an institutional affiliation; these prizes do not.

For the early modern prize, independent researchers are asked to apply directly to Donald Rutherford, editor of Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy.

The prize is worth more than the money#

Five thousand dollars is a respectable sum. But the real return lies elsewhere.

The winning essays are published in the relevant Oxford Studies volume.

The Oxford Studies series — in Metaphysics, in Epistemology, in Metaethics, in Political Philosophy, in Early Modern Philosophy — are among the most visible annuals in contemporary analytic philosophy. To appear in them is to enter the centre of the field directly.

The prize, in other words, is not a transfer of money but a channel of publication.

The Teo Grünberg Logic Prize, which we covered this week, is built on the same design: the winning paper is first published in an international journal, then represents Turkey in the World Logic Prizes Contest.

This is the common feature of a well-designed prize: a prize should be a door that opens, not one that closes.

The approaching deadline#

The closing date for the Prize in the History of Early Modern Philosophy is 1 October 2026.

The field is broad: seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy — from Descartes to Hume, from Spinoza to the eve of Kant, from Leibniz to Malebranche.

Colin Chamberlain's essay on Malebranche, "How to Eat a Peach", included in the Philosopher's Annual selection we noted this week, shows just how lively an area of argument this remains.

The APA graduate prizes#

The foundation also runs, jointly with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, a triennial graduate student prize for the best essays in mind, metaphysics, epistemology or ethics.

Winners receive $1,000 and the right to present their papers at the APA Eastern Division meeting.

Applications go directly to the APA Eastern Division Program Committee.

The foundation's other work#

The Marc Sanders Foundation does not merely give prizes. The work it runs under its Public Philosophy programme is of separate interest to a philosophy news site:

The Philosophy in the Media Initiative — a fellowship programme supporting philosophers' participation in public debate.

The National High School Ethics Bowl (NHSEB) — an ethics debating tournament for secondary school pupils.

MAP (Minorities and Philosophy) and Athena in Action — programmes addressing the imbalance of representation in the field.

The student congress at İstanbul Medeniyet University, which this column covered last month, was one of the rare examples to approach the NHSEB model, in that it was open to school pupils as well.

What does it mean for Turkey?#

Three practical consequences:

First: these prizes offer a channel of visibility that does not depend on holding an academic post.

Second: for someone who has just finished a doctorate, turning one chapter of the thesis into an article and sending it in is a concrete goal.

Third: they are a model that prizes founded in Turkey could follow. Tying a prize to a channel of publication makes it outlast its own award ceremony.

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Current conditions and closing dates for the prizes are published at marcsandersfoundation.org.