Winning and short-listed entries from the 2007 Feminist and Woman's Studies Association annual student essay competition

This special issue of the Journal of International Women’s Studies showcases the winning and short-listed entries from the 2007 Feminist and Women's Studies Association (FWSA) annual student essay competition. A cornerstone of academic feminism in the UK and Ireland since its inception in 1987, the FWSA is dedicated to the development of feminist research and pedagogy across the disciplines. As feminism broadens and diversifies in response to changing social, political, and cultural circumstances, the FWSA remains committed to the task of developing new points of contact between scholars; as an organisation, it sponsors a biennial international conference, a postgraduate seminar series, and has recently launched a book prize to recognise scholarship that innovative, interdisciplinary and grounded in feminist theory and practice. Since its launch in 2002 the annual student essay competition has attracted a growing number of entrants each year; in collaboration with JIWS it has come to play an increasingly key role in recognising and promoting academic excellence in the field. Open to candidates at all British and Irish universities, the essay competition seeks to encourage and support original, interdisciplinary work by an emerging generation of feminist scholars. This special issue, then, provides a unique forum for new feminist voices, and works to illuminate the vibrant landscape of feminist scholarship in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The essays printed here are genuinely reflective of the high quality of the submissions to the competition, and of the exciting undergraduate and postgraduate work that is currently being produced under the rubric of feminist and women's studies.