AWARDS & COMPETITIONS
Photo credit: Anya Engel
Nominations
Nominations for the 2025 ALSA awards have been announced below.
Categories
ALSA Distinguished Book Award
ALSA awards the Distinguished Book Award to a monograph that makes excellent scholarly contributions to the field of Asian law and society. The award includes two years of free ALSA membership and U$300 cash.
Click here for the 2025 Call for Nominations.
2025 ALSA Distinguished Book Award Committee:
Sarah Biddulph (Chair), Melbourne Law School
Yuka Kaneko, Kobe University, Japan
Tu Phuong Nguyen, University of Melbourne
ALSA Distinguished Article Award
ALSA awards the Distinguished Article Award to recognise scholarly excellence in any area of Asian law and society. The award includes two years of free ALSA membership and U$300 cash.
Click here for the 2025 Call for Nominations.
2025 ALSA Distinguished Article Award Committee:
Amy Hueg-ling Shee (Chair), National Chung Cheng University
Qian Liu, University of Calgary
Kwai Hang Ng, University of California, San Diego
Hyangseon Ahn, University of California, San Diego
ALSA Graduate Student Article Award
ALSA awards the Graduate Student Article Award to a published journal-length article on Asian law and society by a graduate student. The award includes two years of free ALSA membership and U$300 cash.
Click here for the 2025 Call for Nominations.
2025 ALSA Graduate Student Article Award Committee:
Takayuki Ii, Senshu University
Nafay Choudhury, LSE Law School
AsianJLS-ALSA Graduate Student Paper Competition
Co-sponsored by the Asian Journal of Law & Society (AsianJLS), the Graduate Student Paper Competition recognises the best journal-length (but not yet published) paper in the field of law and society written by a graduate student and selects it for publication in AsianJLS. In addition to publication in AsianJLS, the award includes two years of free ALSA membership, U$150 cash from ALSA and U$150 of e-books provided by Cambridge University Press and the China Institute for Socio-Legal Studies (CISLS), Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The authors of the winning paper and honorary mention (if any) will also be offered the opportunity to work at CISLS either as student Research Associate or as Postdoctoral Fellow.
Click here for the 2025 Call for Submissions.
2025 AsianJLS-ALSA Graduate Student Paper Competition Committee:
Shitong Qiao (Chair), Law School of Duke University
Shen Wei KoGuan School of Law, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Matthias Vanhullebusch Faculty of Law, Hasselt University
Takeshi Akiba, Waseda University
Prize Winners 2024 Xinyi Ma, Peking University Law School
Previous Recipients
2024
Distinguished Book Award 2024
Winner: Kalyani Ramnath, Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962 (Stanford University Press, 2023)
Honorary Mention: Tu Phuong Nguyen, Law and Precarity: Legal Consciousness and Daily Survival in Vietnam (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Distinguished Article Award 2024
Co-Winner: Qian Liu "Relational Legal Consciousness in the One-Child Nation" Law & Society Review , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , June 2023 , pp. 214 - 233
Honorary Mention: Hyangseon Ahn & Kwai Hang Ng "Performing the Meaning of Money in the Trials of War Orphans Against Japan." American Journal of Cultural Sociology 12(4):1-28
Graduate Student Article Award 2024
Winner: The committee reviewed the entries and exercised its right not to name a recipient this year.
AsianJLS-ALSA Graduate Student Paper Competition 2024
Winner: Xinyi Ma (Peking University Law School) "Beyond Repeat Players: Judicial Suggestions for Tech Giants and Relational Governance in Chinese Courts"
Honorary Mention: Sampurna Das (Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi) "Tenure relations in river islands: Understanding land law and conflict in northeast India"
2023
Distinguished Book Award 2023
Winner: Ke Li, Marriage Unbound: State Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China, Stanford University Press, 2022.
Honorable Mention: Yasser Kureshi, Seeking Supremacy: The Pursuit of Judicial Power in Pakistan, Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Distinguished Article Award 2023
Winner: Claudia Junghyun Kim & Celeste L. Arrington, "Knowledge Production through Legal Mobilization: Environmental Activism Against the U.S. Military Bases in East Asia," (2023) 57:2 Law & Society Review 162-188.
Honorable Mention: Melissa Crouch, "Judicial Loyalty to the Military in Authoritarian Regimes: How the Courts are Militarised in Myanmar," (2023) 48:2 Law & Social Inquiry 632-659.
Graduate Student Article Award 2023
Winner: Sitao Li, “Face-Work in Chinese Routine Criminal Trials,” (2023) 57:2 Law & Society Review 254-275.
Honorable Mention: Amani Ponnaganti, “The Racialisation of Citizenship in Post-Colonial India,” (2022) 45:5 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 906-923.
AsianJLS-ALSA Graduate Student Paper Competition 2023
Winner: Junshu Ye & Xinrui Li (Guanghua Law School, Zhejiang University) for "Beyond Cultural Interpretivism: Analysis of the Deprivation of Land Rights of Married Out Women in Rural China."
Honorable Mention: Hongquan He (School of Law, Tsinghua University) for "The Effectiveness of Administrative Litigation Reform in China: A Case Study of 580,000 Judgment Records."
2022
Distinguished Book Award 2022
Winner: Deana Heath, Colonial Terror: Torture and State Violence in Colonial India, Oxford University Press, 2021.
Honorable Mention: Jinee Lokaneeta, The Truth Machines: Policing, Violence, and Scientific Interrogations in India, University of Michigan Press, 2020.
Distinguished Article Award 2022
Winner: Nafay Choudhury, "Order in the Bazaar: The Transformation of Non-State Law in Afghanistan’s Premier Money Exchange Market," (2022) 47 Law & Social Inquiry 292-330.
Graduate Student Article Award 2022
The committee reviewed the entries and exercised its right not to name a recipient this year.
AsianJLS-ALSA Graduate Student Paper Competition 2022
Winner: Achalie Kumarage (PhD Candidate, School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University) for "Collective Voice without Collective Bargaining: Pandemic Induced Wage Theft Claims and Worker Responses in Apparel Supply Chains."
Honorable Mention: Xiangyi Ren (PhD Student, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago) for “Divergent Forms of Knowledge Production and Law-Making in China."
2021
The awards were suspended in 2021 due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.
2020
Distinguished Book Award 2020
Winner: Anna High, Non-Governmental Orphan Relief in China: Law, Policy, and Practice, Routledge, 2020.
Honorable Mention: Erik Herber, Lay and Expert Contributions to Japanese Criminal Justice, Routledge, 2019.
Distinguished Article Award 2020
Co-Winner: Di Wang & Sida Liu, "Performing Artivism: Feminists, Lawyers, and Online Legal Mobilization in China" (2020) Law and Social Inquiry, 45(3) 678-705.
Co-Winner: Yonson Ahn, "Yearning for affection: Traumatic bonding between Korean 'comfort women' and Japanese soldiers during World War II" (2019) European Journal of Women's Studies 26(4) 360-374.
Graduate Student Article Award 2020
Winner: Arushi Garg, "Consent, Conjugality & Crime: Hegemonic Constructions of Rape Laws in India." (2019) Social & Legal Studies. 28(6):737-754.
Honorable Mention: Di Wang, "Jia, as in Guojia: Building the Chinese Family into a Filial Nationalist Project" (2020) China Law and Society Review. 5(1)
2019
Distinguished Book Award 2019
Winner: Lynette J. Chua, Politics of Love in Myanmar: LGBT Mobilization and Human Rights as a Way of Life, Stanford University Press, 2018.
Honorable Mention: Tamir Moustafa, Constituting Religion: Islam, Liberal Rights, and the Malaysian State, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Distinguished Article Award 2019
Winner: Yun-chien Chang & Xu Ke, "Decentralized and Anomalous Interpretations of Chinese Private Law: Understanding a Bureaucratic and Political Judicial System" (2018) Minnesota Law Review. 110.
Honorable Mention: Shitong Qiao, "Fragmented Laws, Contingent Choices: The Tragicomedy of the Village Commons in China," (2019) 29 Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law 235-275.
Honorable Mention: David Johnson and Jon Fernques, "Governing through Killing: The War on Drugs in the Philippines," (2018) Asian Journal of Law and Society, 5(2), 359-390.
Graduate Student Article Award 2019
Co-Winner: Tobias Smith, "Body Count Politics: Quantification, Secrecy, and Capital Punishment in China." (2020) Law & Social Inquiry, 1-22.
Co-Winner: Qian Liu, "Legal Consciousness of the Leftover Woman: Law and Qing in Chinese Family Relations." (2018) Asian Journal of Law and Society, 7-27.
Honorable Mention: Ayako Hatano, "Can Strategic Human Rights Litigation Complement Social Movements? A Case Study of the Movement Against Racism and Hate Speech in Japan," (2019) University of Pennsylvania Asian Law Review 228-274.
Honorable Mention: Hai Jin Park , "Class Action Scarcity: An Empirical Analysis of the Securities Class Action in Korea," (2019) European Business Organization Law Review.
2018
Distinguished Book Award 2018
Winner: Kwai Hang Ng and Xin He, Embedded Courts: Judicial Decision-Making in China, Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Honorable Mention: Mary E. Gallagher, Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers, and the State, Cambridge University Press, 2017
Honorable Mention: Patricia Sloane-White, Corporate Islam: Sharia and the Modern Workplace, Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Graduate Student Article Award 2018
Co-Winner: Vivien Chen, "Law and Society in the Evolution of Malaysia’s Islamic Capital Market Regulation." (2017) Asian Journal of Law and Society, 4(1), 133-156.
Co-Winner: Ching-Fang Hsu, The Political Origins of Professional Identity: Lawyers, Judges, and Prosecutors in Taiwan’s State Transformation. (2018) Asian Journal of Law and Society, 1-26.
Honorable Mention: Rahela Khorakiwala, "Legal Consciousness as Viewed through the Judicial Iconography of the Madras High Court." (2018) Asian Journal of Law and Society, 5(1), 111-133.
2017
Distinguished Book Award 2017
Winner: Nick Cheesman, Opposing the Rule of Law: How Myanmar's Courts Make Law and Order, Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Honorable Mention: Matthew S. Erie, China and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Honorable Mention: Sida Liu and Terence C. Halliday, Criminal Defense in China: The Politics of Lawyers at Work, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Graduate Student Article Award 2017
Winner: Yung-hua Kuo & Po-liang Chen, "Identity Laws and Privacy Protection in a Modern State: The Legal History Concerning Personal Information in Taiwan (1895-2015)," (2016) Washington International Law Review 25(2), 223.