The Dr Greg Wells prizes for the best intermediate-year essay, final-year essay, and dissertation reward scholarly work of outstanding merit, quality and value in the field of Medieval and Renaissance studies by undergraduates of the University of Warwick. The initiative for the prizes was taken thanks to a charitable donation to the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance by the late Dr Laurence Gregory (Greg) Wells (d. 2017), a former, mature MA and PhD student in the Arts Faculty.

For the 2016-17 prize, the Centre received no less than 13 of the very best essays and dissertations on Medieval and Renaissance subjects (broadly conceived) written for undergraduate modules in the departments of Classics, English, History, and History of Art, and the French and Italian sections of the School of Modern Languages. Choosing the winners therefore proved highly challenging. The winning scripts all displayed a remarkable depth of knowledge, an excellent deployment of primary and secondary reading, and originality as well as (all else being equal) scope for comparative or interdisciplinary approaches, and were awarded to:

JOHANNA SINCLAIR for the best intermediate year essay on ‘Conceptions of Ideal and Virtuous Governments in the Early Sixteenth Century Renaissance Gasparo Contarini’s treatise on Venice and Thomas More’s Utopia.’ 

BRYONY WELLS for the best final year essay on ‘Combative Poetics: Polemical Strategies in Belleau’s ‘Dictamen metrificum de bello huguenotico’, and Rabelais’ Gargantua.’ 

EMMA BUCHANAN for the best final year dissertation on ‘Lero, Lero, Lilliburlero’: An Invitation to Engage with the Music of our Past.’