BFE Student Prize
2025 Competition
Following the BFE Annual Conference at the University of Cambridge, April 2025, the BFE Student Prize panel was very impressed with the standard of submissions which evidence a continual growth in strength from student contributions at the BFE conferences. They particularly valued papers which presented rich ethnography, building on existing studies, emplaced within a global historical context, and situated within current debates in the field.
Out of the submissions one paper stood out above the rest, which the prize panel selected unanimously as worthy of the BFE Student Prize 2025: Daniel Lee for the paper “On the Ambivalent Futures of Queer Nightlife in South Africa: Venue insecurity or liberatory mobilities?”. The prize panel commends this paper for its ability to move fluently between the minutiae of ethnographic detail and link it to the larger complex setting of queer communities in post-Apartheid South Africa. Showing a deep sensitivity to local politics and intersectional ethics, the paper draws on and offers new insights into contemporary debates in EDM studies, queer theory and ethnomusicology, raising many important questions and leaving the listener/reader wanting to learn more.
Congratulations to Daniel, and many thanks to our 2025 prize panel: Yuiko Asaba, Martin Stokes and Thomas R. Hilder (chair)