Rex Nettleford Prize for Year 12 Students: Essays on Colonialism and its Legacies

About the Essay Competition

In November 2021, Oriel College inaugurated the Rex Nettleford Essay Prize for year 12 students. Now in its fourth year, we are delighted to announce that entries for the 2025 competition are now open.

The prize is intended to encourage students to engage with the legacies of colonialism in all its forms – historical, political, economic, social, cultural. Colonialism is a major theme in British history. Its legacies are all around us. By writing an essay for the prize, a student has an opportunity to uncover the enduring influence of colonialism in our society and culture and to address some of the difficult and uncomfortable questions that it poses.

Whilst interest in British colonialism and its legacy provides the specific context for these prizes, colonialism is an activity with a much longer and more geographically diverse extent. Essays can address any relevant aspect, historical phase, cultural manifestation or geographical centre of colonialism, ancient or modern.

The prizes will be awarded on the occasion of an annual lecture also on the topic of ‘Colonialism and its Legacies’, which will take place on Thursday, 22 May 2025. In a new addition this year, one of the two prizes awarded will be given to the best entrant from one of Oriel College’s link schools. These are non-selective state schools in Walsall, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Kensington & Chelsea, and Richmond upon Thames.

The prizes and annual lecture series are dedicated to Oriel alumnus Rex Nettleford, in recognition of his distinguished contributions in the fields of scholarship, culture, and education.

Rex Nettleford

Ralston “Rex” Nettleford (3 February 1933 to 2 February 2010) was an author, academic, dancer, and activist.

Born in Falmouth, Jamaica, Nettleford grew up in the country and graduated with a degree in History from the University of the West Indies. In 1957, he received a Rhodes Scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford and obtained an MPhil in Political Science. He returned to Jamaica in order to take up a position at the University of the West Indies, where he was Vice-Chancellor from 1998 to 2004.

In his academic work, Nettleford focused on issues of cultural identity particularly in the wake of colonialism. He repeatedly stressed “the importance and force of the exercise of the creative intellect and the creative imagination […] in shaping a new and civilised society out of slavery, colonialism and their aftermath, and building democratic nations out of erstwhile colonial fiefdoms”; “for the arts are a form of action.”

Rules of the Competition

The Rex Nettleford Essay Prize is an essay writing competition open to all UK students in Year 12. There are two equal prizes of £250 awarded to the competition winners. At least one of these prizes will be awarded to a pupil from one of Oriel’s link schools, which are non-selective state schools in Walsall, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Kensington & Chelsea, and Richmond upon Thames.

The purpose of the Prize is:

To promote awareness among students in Year 12 of issues relating to colonialism and its legacies.
To encourage students in Year 12 to develop their abilities for independent research and thought.
To support teachers of able pupils by providing interesting and challenging further work and by bringing such students into contact with Higher Education.
To encourage able students to consider applying to study subjects in the Humanities and Social Sciences, either at Oxford or at another university, by giving them experience of the type of work involved.
To further the College’s outreach work by encouraging participation from our link schools.
To recognise the effort and achievement of the most successful submissions by a prize and commendations.

Note: the judges will not able to provide feedback on submissions.

Assessment Criteria

Entrants should be in Year 12 (or equivalent) at a UK school or college.
Students must address a topic that is not directly related to their A level course.
The judges will look for a clear grasp of issues addressed, clarity in structuring and presentation of the argument, a critical approach to primary and secondary source materials, and originality of thought.

How to Apply

Essays should be no more than 2,500 words in length and should be on ONE of the given questions below.
The candidate may answer the question they select from the perspective of any discipline of their choosing (e.g. History, English Literature, Economics, etc.) but they must indicate at the head of their essay which discipline they have chosen.
Essays should be word processed and submitted to outreach@oriel.ox.ac.uk with the subject line ‘Nettleford Prize’. Submissions should be in PDF format and attached as a copy to email. Essays that are submitted as cloud files will not be considered.
A font size not less than 12pt should be used; page margins should be set to no less than 2.54cm.
Essays should be accompanied by a bibliography, which does not count towards the word limit.
Entries must be sent with a completed entry form, which is available to download below. This entry form must also be signed by a teacher to certify that the essay is the student’s original, unaided work and that it does not directly relate to the syllabuses of the A Level subjects they are studying. Submissions sent with incomplete entry forms may not be considered.

Essays must be received by 10am on Friday 21 February 2025.

If you are unable to provide a teacher reference due to the disruption of the half term holiday, as long as all other parts of the application are provided ahead of the deadline, students may be permitted to provide the teacher reference after their initial submission, no later than 5pm Tuesday 25 February. Please contact outreach@oriel.ox.ac.uk if your submission has been affected.

Prizes will be awarded at Oriel College on the occasion of the Rex Nettleford Lecture on Thursday, 22 May 2025.

Download the entry form

Questions for the 2025 Competition

Candidates must answer ONE of the following questions. Candidates should feel free to focus their answer in terms of its historical period, geographical centre and cultural range.

How have language policies implemented during colonial rule influenced contemporary linguistic hierarchies, cultural identities, or literatures? Discuss specific examples.
What can attention to gender reveal about the functioning of colonialism and/or its legacies? Discuss specific examples.
Should religious groups apologise for converting indigenous peoples from traditional belief systems?
Pick a particular narrative of colonialism and analyse its effects as a narrative. For instance, you might consider the way your chosen narrative distributes attention (what does it foreground, and how?), or how it shapes the ways people understand the legacies of colonialism today (including how to remember and/or address those legacies). Potential narratives could include a historical story told about colonialism or a novelistic, poetic, or cinematic depiction of colonialism and/or its legacies.

Useful resources for essay writing

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) – open access, peer-reviewed journals in all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and humanities

JSTOR – an open access platform for scholarship, primary sources, and research collections

Open Library of Humanities – a non-profit, open access publisher of humanities and social sciences journals

Internet Archive – a non-profit library of texts, movies, websites, and more