The annual Verso prize for Cultural and Critical Studies is awarded to the top student graduating from Birkbeck’s MA Cultural and Critical Studies. This year, the prize goes to student Elle Aspell-Sheppard for her excellent project on “post-truth” and its effects on politics, using the specific example of Donald Trump’s electoral campaign. The external examiner described the essay as a “beautifully written piece of work, which brings Hannah Arendt’s thought successfully into the present moment…a thoughtful argument is advanced around the idea of post-truth as a contemporary keyword”. Speaking is an extract from the winning dissertation.
