BSHS Ayrton Prize: Call for Entries

BSHS Ayrton Prize for Digital Engagement in HSTM

In 2015 The British Society for the History of Science launched the Ayrton Prize, a new award recognising outstanding web projects and digital engagement in the history of science, technology and medicine (HSTM). The prize name was chosen by members of the BSHS from a shortlist to recognize the major contributions of Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923) to numerous scientific fields, especially electrical engineering and mathematics, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The inaugural prize was won by the British Library for Voices of Science (http://www.bl.uk/voices-of-science) and we now welcome applications for the second Ayrton Prize, to be awarded to the best history of science web project of the past two years.

The deadline for submissions is 10 March 2017; for more details on how to enter, please visit www.bshs.org.uk/prizes/ayrton-prize.

To be eligible entries should:

  • Be a self-contained website (including blogs and other web-based projects), available in English, whose overall content is in HSTM, or a distinct HSTM subsection of a website, such as an online exhibition section of a museum website.
  • Have been created or updated with substantial new content within the last two calendar years (from the entry deadline).
  • Communicate HSTM to a non-specialist audience and/or make new resources available for the study of HSTM.
  • Reflect current best practice in the discipline.
  • Make effective use of the medium.

The Outreach and Education Committee will consider all entries and produce a shortlist which will then be open for vote to members of the BSHS. The project with the most votes will be the winner. In producing the shortlist the OEC will consider the following criteria:


  • Is the content accurate and supported by appropriate references to sources?
  • Does the project reflect current scholarship in HSTM?
  • Does the project display good digital design principles? Is it easily navigable and accessible?
  • Does it to do something technically or scholarly innovative?
  • Does it make effective use of the medium?
  • Is it useful to HSTM practitioners and/or is it informative and interesting to public audiences?
  • Are there clear and feasible plans to secure the longer-term future of the project?