Success for Leeds alumni in Early Career Publishing Prize

Congratulations to our alumni winners of the prestigious prize.

The Leeds Early Career Publishing Prize celebrates doctoral research and supports authors to publish an open access monograph – a valuable opportunity to increase the audience of their research.

The second iteration of the prize, launched in 2025, was open to University of Leeds doctoral graduates. Entrants submitted a proposal explaining how they would turn their doctoral research into a book and a sample chapter of that book.

Each winner will receive a £250 cash prize and their proposal will be considered for publication by White Rose University Press (WRUP).

The Libraries extends huge congratulations to the three alumni named as prize winners: 

• Corey Hartley, School of Languages, Culture and Societies, with their proposal of ‘Rewriting the Fiction of Gender Binary: Literature, Trans* Narratives, and Limits of Representation’
• Xueni Yang, School of English, with their volume of ‘Ecology of the Monstrous: Bodies, Affects, and the Anthroponce’
• Gummo Clare, School of Media and Communications, with their proposed volume ‘London Jazz Now: conviviality and co-option in contemporary music scenes’.

Hartley said: “I am genuinely delighted to receive the Leeds Early Career Publishing Prize. As a trans woman working in academia, I have spent years navigating spaces that were not designed with people like me in mind. This is why open access matters to me. It opens the door a little wider. It lets ideas travel beyond institutional walls and into the hands of readers who might be searching for language, for validation, or simply for proof that their experiences belong in scholarly conversations. 

I hope this monograph will hold space for that kind of recognition. Working with White Rose University Press feels like an exciting next step in bringing a project to life that is rigorous, welcoming, and unapologetically queer.”

Xueni Yang shared their reaction: “It is a great honour to be selected for the publishing prize! I am a strong believer in open access, as I trust it will benefit both individual researchers and communities by allowing new knowledge and ideas to be shared more freely across borders. I’m excited about the possibility of publishing with WRUP, whose commitment to open and accessible knowledge aligns closely with my own aspiration to foster a more equitable scholarly environment.”

We were very excited to see the quality and range of the submissions to the 2025 Leeds Early Career Publishing Prize. The proposals from the shortlisted prize winners were incredibly engaging, well-constructed and demonstrated a real understanding of what is required to share their research in monograph form. We are so pleased to have the chance to support them through the peer review and commissioning process and are looking forward to working with them all.

Proposals that move successfully through peer review and are commissioned for publication will be available through the WRUP website once published.