Student award honours distinguished Professor of English Literature

School announces Martin Coyle Year One Student Experience Award

The School of English, Communication and Philosophy is delighted to announce a new award in recognition of inspirational Emeritus Professor Martin Coyle.

The Martin Coyle Year One Student Experience Award will be open to current Undergraduate students, with three prizes reflecting the discipline areas of the School: English Literature and Creative Writing, English Language and Linguistics and Philosophy.

Students should submit a short piece of writing (750-1000 words) on the subject of ‘My Year One’ to reflect their first year at the School. Entries can be personal, reflective and fun, expressing the experience of the first year at university in its widest sense, and giving a personal sense of the journey of development that marks this important year.

Prize winners will receive their £100 Blackwell’s book vouchers at an award ceremony at the end of the academic year. The judging panel will consist of Student Representatives, School staff and Professor Martin Coyle.

Professor of English Literature Martin Coyle retired from the School in September 2020, following 47 years of service.

In his near half century at Cardiff, he edited the influential Macmillan New Casebooks Series – driving the dissemination of new modes of literary practice with long-term collaborator and colleague John Peck. His contribution to the series, on Hamlet, remains a powerful study of the play. These guides to Practical Criticism, to Literary Terms, and to Shakespeare – Martin’s great love – were familiar in every University library and on reading lists internationally. Most influential was their Student’s Guide to Writing, written in the later 1990s.

The distinguished academic’s untiring commitment to students of English Literature has been a hallmark of his career, with impact far beyond the University lecture theatre. Martin would periodically receive letters from prisoners expressing their deep appreciation for his guide to writing – speaking movingly of how improvements in their writing had opened up new opportunities they never believed they would have.

Submission is now open for the 2021 Martin Coyle Year One Student Experience Award.

Entries should be submitted via email by noon on the last Friday of the Easter vacation.