SAGE Prize for Innovation/Excellence

The SAGE Prize for Innovation and Excellence is awarded annually to one paper in each of the BSA's prestigious journals: Cultural Sociology, Sociological Research Online, Sociology and Work, Employment and Society.

The prize will be awarded to the paper published in the previous year's volume judged to represent innovation or excellence in the field.

The prize is £250 worth of SAGE books or a free annual individual subscription to a journal of the winner's choice. All nominees for the prize will receive publicity from the BSA and SAGE Publications, and winners' papers will receive a period of free electronic access to their article (to encourage usage and citation). 

Click here for more information about the prize and judging process.

2025 Winners

Sociology

• Alexandrina Vanke (2024). Researching Lay Perceptions of Inequality through Images of Society: Compliance, Inversion and Subversion of Power Hierarchies. Sociology, 58(3), pp.587-604.

Work, Employment & Society (Joint Winners)

• Charles Umney, Mark Stuart, Ioulia Bessa, Simon Joyce, Denis Neumann and Vera Trappmann (2024). Platform Labour Unrest in a Global Perspective: How, Where and Why Do Platform Workers Protest? Work, Employment and Society, 38(1), 3-26.
• Louise Laverty, Katherine Checkland and Sharon Spooner (2024). Unpromising futures: Early-career GPs’ narrative accounts of meaningful work during a professional workforce crisis. Work, Employment and Society, 38(3), 809-825. 

2025 Nominees

Cultural Sociology

• Nina Margies (2024). Making Sense of Change: Emotive-Cognitive Reframing of Young People in Post-crisis Spain. Cultural Sociology, 18(2), 238-257. 

• Peggy Levitt and Andreja Siliunas (2023). Cultures of Cultural Globalization: How National Repertoires and Political Ideologies Affect Literary and Artistic Circulation. Cultural Sociology, 18(3), 332-353.

• Laura Eramian, Peter Mallory and Morgan Herbert (2023). Friendship, Intimacy, and the Contradictions of Therapy Culture. Cultural Sociology, 18(4), 507-527.

Sociology

• Ye Liu (2024). Virtues or Talent among Brotherless Daughters: A Study of How Patriarchal Gender Ideals Affect Gender Role Attitudes among Women from the One-Child Generation in China. Sociology, 58(1), 175-193.
• Patrick Rouxel and Tarani Chandola (2024). No Substitute for In-Person Interaction: Changing Modes of Social Contact during the Coronavirus Pandemic and Effects on the Mental Health of Adults in the UK. Sociology, 58(2), 330-350. 
• Alexandrina Vanke (2024). Researching Lay Perceptions of Inequality through Images of Society: Compliance, Inversion and Subversion of Power Hierarchies. Sociology, 58(3), pp.587-604. 
• Martina Yopo Díaz (2024). From God to Technology: Multiple Ontologies of Reproductive Time. Sociology, 58(4), pp.877-893. 
• Angela Martinez Dy, Dilani Jayawarna and Susan Marlow (2024). Racial Capitalism and Entrepreneurship: An Intersectional Feminist Labour Market Perspective on UK Self-Employment. Sociology, 58(5), 1038-1060. 
• Ashley Barnwell (2024). Family Estrangement and the Unseen Work of Not Doing Family. Sociology, 58(6), 1416-1431. 

Work, Employment & Society

• Charles Umney, Mark Stuart, Ioulia Bessa, Simon Joyce, Denis Neumann and Vera Trappmann (2024). Platform Labour Unrest in a Global Perspective: How, Where and Why Do Platform Workers Protest? Work, Employment and Society, 38(1), 3-26. 
• Sergio Destefanis, Fernando Mazzotta and Lavinia Parisi (2024). Goldin’s Last Chapter on the Gender Pay Gap: An Exploratory Analysis Using Italian Data. Work, Employment and Society, 38(2), 549-572. 
• Louise Laverty, Katherine Checkland and Sharon Spooner (2024). Unpromising futures: Early-career GPs’ narrative accounts of meaningful work during a professional workforce crisis. Work, Employment and Society, 38(3), 809-825. 
• Danat Valizade, Jennifer Tomlinson, Daniel Muzio, Andy Charlwood and Sundeep Aulakh (2024). Gender and Ethnic Intersectionality in Solicitors’ Careers, 1970 to 2016. Work, Employment and Society, 38(4), 952-975. 
• Alvin Hoi-Chun Hung. (2024). The Role of Boundary-Spanners in the Control of a Chinese Garment Factory in Myanmar. Work, Employment and Society, 38(5), 1333-1356. 
• Hyojin Cho, Susan J Lambert, Emily Ellis and Julia R Henly (2024). How Work Hour Variability Matters for Work-to-Family Conflict. Work, Employment and Society, 38(6), 1611-1635. 

Sociological Research Online

• Jaroslava Hasmanová Marhánková and Eva Soares Moura (2023). ‘What Can I Plan at This Age?’ Expectations Regarding Future and Planning in Older Age. Sociological Research Online, 29(1), 120-136. 
• Andrea Doucet and Janna Klostermann (2023). What and How are we Measuring When we Research Gendered Divisions of Domestic Labor? Remaking the Household Portrait Method into a Care/Work Portrait. Sociological Research Online, 29(1), 243-263.
• Susie Scott and Nina Lockwood (2023). Nested Narratives: Biographical Accounts of Unlived Experience Across Three Narrative Orders. Sociological Research Online, 29(2), 472-488. 
• Haitao Shi (2023). The Impacts of Guanxi: Drug Policing Under Police Professionalisation in China. Sociological Research Online, 29(3), 579-595.
• Katherine Twamley and Charlotte Faircloth (2023). Understanding ‘Gender Equality’: First-Time Parent Couples’ Practices and Perspectives on Working and Caring Post-Parenthood. Sociological Research Online, 29(3), 694-711. 
• Corine van Emmerik (2023). Ethical Reflexivity, Care, and Slippery Data: Lessons From Working With the Mass Observation Project. Sociological Research Online, 29(3), 758-766. 

Visit the SAGE Prize Winners Archive to see previous winners details.