We have three awards announcements to share:
The Bibliographical Society of Canada (BSC) is pleased to announce that Liu Jinxingqi has been awarded the 2025 Emerging Scholar award.
Liu Jinxingqi is a PhD candidate in Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta, working in the fields of book history and print culture, whose research examines print cultural production during the Cold War, with particular attention to literary magazines, publishing networks, and the material and institutional conditions through which texts circulated.
Liu Jinxingqi’s project, A Collaborative Print Network in the Cultural Cold War: ‘Literary Review’ and Modernism in Taiwan (1956-1960), examines a covertly funded Chinese-language periodical produced under USIS Taipei, in collaboration with Taiwanese artists and intellectuals in the early Cold War, as a case study in the ‘many hands’ that participated in the formation of modernist print culture in Taiwan.
The Awards Committee was particularly impressed by the depth and rigor of Liu Jinxingqi’s archival research, particularly declassified USIS/USIA records, as well as by the project’s original approach to print networks and cultural mediation. By bringing together bibliographical analysis with Cold War cultural history, the project offers a nuanced account of how modernist literary production in Taiwan emerged through transnational collaboration, institutional constraint, and material print practices.
The Emerging Scholar Prize promotes the work of a researcher who is beginning a career in the fields of book history and bibliography broadly defined, including study of the creation, production, publication, distribution, transmission, history, and uses of printed books, manuscripts, or electronic texts.
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The Bibliographical Society of Canada (BSC) is pleased to announce that Beatrice Perusse has been awarded the 2025 Conference Mobility award.
Beatrice Perusse is a current student in the Master of Information program at the University of Toronto, and is a candidate in the Book History and Print Culture program. Her research focuses on the production of syllabic text at missionary printing presses in 19th century Rupertsland.
Beatrice Perusse’s paper, Indigenous and European Collaborative Labour at Fur Trade Printing Presses, centres on ongoing research surrounding the labour of Indigenous Christians at Fur Trade post printing presses. Specifically, it focuses on the work of Cree, Métis, and Inuit missionaries at Anglican run printing presses at Oxford House (Bunibonibee), Moose Factory, and Baffin Island (Qikiqtaaluk).
The Conference Committee was particularly impressed by the depth of Perusse’s research, as well as by her focus on Indigenous collaboration and labour within early Canadian print culture. Her work brings original insight to the study of missionary presses by foregrounding Indigenous participation, expertise, and agency, and by situating these contributions within the material and institutional histories of print production.
The BSC/SBC’s conference mobility award replaces the Graduate Student Award previously offered by Congress and provides $300 to a student to assist with costs and expenses related to attending the conference.
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The Bibliographical Society of Canada (BSC) is pleased to announce that Colleen Thumlert has been awarded the 2025 Greta Golick Award.
Colleen Thumlert holds a Master of Information in Library & Information Science from the University of Toronto’s iSchool and completed the collaborative specialization in Book History and Print Culture. Her research interests centre on the materiality of the book, book microbiomes, and interdisciplinary approaches to book history informed by ecology and the life sciences. She currently works at York University and volunteers at the Toronto Botanical Gardens’ Weston Family Library, where she assists with the creation of an archive and prepares historical bibliographies for items in the rare book collection.
Colleen Thumlert’s project, Microbiome & Big Annotations: Markings Worth Examining, explores how book history can benefit from knowledge production in microbiology and from ecological principles, approaching books as microbiomes that contain unique ecosystems of living and non-living inhabitants shaped by their materiality.
The Conference Committee was particularly fascinated by the project’s highly original and imaginative approach to book history. By bringing together bibliographical study, microbiology, and ecological thinking, Thumlert offers a distinctive perspective and opens up new methodological possibilities for the field, prompting fresh questions about materiality, preservation, and interpretation.
Colleen will be invited to publish a revised, article-length version of her abstract in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, subject to peer review. The prize also includes a grant of $250 to be used to help the recipient attend the annual Conference or to meet costs associated with research.
The Greta Golick Award has been given annually since 2022 to recognize and support the education of graduate students and early career researchers by facilitating their participation in the Society’s annual Conference. The award is named in honour of Dr. Greta Golick (1956–2018), whose scholarship and teaching are remembered with admiration and gratitude. Inaugurated with a residual sum given to the BSC by the Canadian Association for the Study of Book Culture (CASBC) at its dissolution, the award fund is augmented by generous donations in Dr. Golick’s memory.