To support the next generation of socio-legal scholars studying topics related to Asia, the Asian Journal of Law and Society (AsianJLS) and the Asian Law and Society Association (ALSA) have jointly established an annual competition for the best paper in the field of law and society written by a graduate student.

1. Eligibility: To be eligible for this competition, a paper must meet the following criteria.

A. The author is a candidate/student enrolled in a postgraduate degree program in law, social sciences, or other related disciplines in an institution of higher education at the time of submission;

B. For a co-authored paper, all authors must comply with item A above;

C. The paper was written and completed during the author's/authors' candidature in the above-mentioned postgraduate program;

D. The paper must be written in English;

E. The paper should be on a topic related to law and society in Asia, but excellent papers on socio-legal theory, method, or comparative topics between Asia and other regions will also be considered.

2. Submission procedure: Send submissions to as a Microsoft Word document to student-award@asianjls.org. In the submission email, please indicate that (1) you intend to be considered in the competition, (2) you are currently a student in a postgraduate program, and (3) you have not submitted your article to the AsianJLS or any other journals for publication. Submissions are limited to one paper per student. Submissions must include a title page with the author’s institutional affiliation, mailing address, email address, an abstract of no more than 200 words, and a word count of the paper. The total length of submissions, including footnotes and references, must not exceed 10,000 words.

3. Deadline for submission: 11:59 PM, 31 July 2023 (Shanghai time, GMT+8)

4. Announcement of results: Around mid to late September 2023.

5. Award ceremony: An award ceremony will be held at the closing session of the 2023 ALSA Annual Meeting on December 16, 2023, at Sunway University, Malaysia.

6. Award benefits: The Winner paper will be published in the AsianJLS after revisions. If there is any Honorable Mention paper, the paper will be invited for submission to the AsianJLS (with no guarantee of publication). The Winner recipient will receive a cash prize of U$150 from ALSA and U$150 worth of book vouchers provided by the China Institute for Socio-Legal Studies (CISLS), Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Winner and Honorable Mention recipients will receive free ALSA membership for the two calendar years of 2024 and 2025. They will also be provided the opportunity to work at CISLS either as student Research Associate or as Postdoctoral Fellow.

The 2022 AsianJLS-ALSA Graduate Student Paper Competition Committee

Celeste Arrington (Chair), George Washington University

Achalie Kumarage, Australian National University

Xifen Lin, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Benjamin Schonthal, University of Otago

Matthias Vanhullebusch, Shanghai Jiao Tong University