Merton PPE students net essay prizes

Second year PPE undergraduate students Benedict Holden and Josh Parikh have each been awarded a prize for essays on politics and philosophy respectively.

Benedict has been awarded the Q-step First Year Political Analysis Essay Prize. This university-wide prize is awarded to the best assignment submitted last year for the new quantitative Politics component in the first year. In making their award, the judges picked out two elements of Benedict's work: his rigorous analytical critique of previous knowledge on the impact of institutions on economic outputs, focusing on several aspects of research design (sampling, measurement, and controls); and his original, out-of-the-box, and empirically-valid ideas on how to improve existing research.

Josh was awarded the Philosophy of Religion essay prize, run by InterVarsity Press and the Tyndale Fellowship, making him IVP Young Philosopher of Religion 2015. Josh's essay concerned the Problem of Evil, in relation to God's existence: he argued that the Problem of Evil holds no weight against God's existence, due to the necessity of moral knowledge in making such an argument, an entity only possible if God exists. 19-year-old Josh's win is particularly impressive, as the competition is open to any philosopher up to 32 years of age, and was won two years ago by current Oxford tutor Vince Vitale. Josh has been invited to present his essay at the Tyndale Fellowship's conference next year.