The Brian M. Keenan Prize

The Keenan Prize is an independent $1,500 cash prize that awards Canadian undergraduate papers on the topics of social and political philosophy, philosophy of history and philosophy of law. It is funded and run by its student board with help from donors to Dr. The Brian M. Keenan Fund held with the Winnipeg Foundation.


2022 PRIZE NOTICE:

We regret to inform you that the 2022 prize will not be issued due to an error in data management and storage. All applications and anonymized papers are unretrievable and we are unable to notify the applicants. This issue was caused by user error, and is not the behaviour of a bad actor. We sincerely apologize for the oversight and take seriously the privacy and integrity of applicant data.

As a volunteer board, we made changes to our processes in 2022 that resulted in the accidental deletion of applications. As such there will be no winner announced from the 2022 applicants. The board will continue to make every attempt to recover the 2022 files. If we unable to recover the applications and files, we will issue two prizes in 2023: one which extends the graduate restriction by one year; and, one standard prize. We will also reach out to our undergraduate department network in Canada.

Applications Open to May 31st

Nicholas Duguay is the winner of the 2021 Keenan Prize for the paper The Problem of Stability: A Case for Civic Friendship in the Rawlsian Society.

Learn more about Dr. Brian M. Keenan through his students and colleagues, and the spirit of our independent student-run award for undergraduate students in Canada.

Open each year from February to May, the winners are announced each October. Learn about the criteria, selection process, and policies of the prize.

Contributions to the prize can be made to The Dr. Brian M. Keenan Fund, facilitated through the Winnipeg Foundation.


Questions?

Contact info@keenanprize.com for more information