cept essay prize 2022

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Pranav Kuttaiah

My research is about migration, labour markets, and the politics of urban citizenship in the Global South.

2021-26 Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study 

2021 Laureate, Fondation Palladio 

2019-21 JN Tata Memorial Scholarship 

2020 CEPT Essay Prize Finalist

2013, 2014 AH Ansari Memorial Prize 2015, St. Xavier's College Gold Medal 

Kuttaiah, P. (2022). To Go or Not to Go: Unpacking Mobility Decisions in Mumbai During the COVID-19 Lockdown of 2020. NCCR -- On The Move Working Paper #30

Kuttaiah, P. (2020). Of Travels and Travails: Stories of Migration, Work and Hope from an Indian smalltown. In A. Srivathsan, S. Khanwalkar, & K. Mehta (Eds.), Dwelling in Asian Cities: CEPT Essay Prize 2019 (pp. 73-84). Ahmedabad, Gujarat: CEPT University Press.

Kuttaiah, P. (2019). Kaala and Raees: A Film Review. Urbanisation (SAGE), 4(1). doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/2455747119878345 

Kuttaiah, P. (2018). Are Linguistic Nationalisms Killing South Indian Federalism? Economic & Political Weekly, 53(46). 

Feb 18th: MSP procurement need not be an all or nothing intervention

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Policy Engagements and Blogs

Writing urban india fellowship mentees.

The following candidates were selected as mentees for Writing Urban India Fellowship anchored and funded by the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Urban Studies Foundation (USF) respectively:

Shweta Rani is currently a faculty at the Centre for Writing and Pedagogy (CWP), Krea University. She is an anthropologist whose research lies at the intersection of medical anthropology, science and technology studies, urban studies, and ecological anthropology. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics. Her thesis is titled ‘The Urban and the Pathological: Delhi through Epidemics’. She is dedicated to exploring and expanding the possibilities of academic writing in Hindi. Her popular writing has appeared in Hindi dailies such as Jansatta. Her recent academic writings in English have appeared in journals like EPW and Contributions to Indian Sociology.

9. Siddardha Darla

10. Sila Mishra

11. Ankur Jaiswal

12. EP Sarfas

13. Ritika Rajput

14. Urmila Sahoo

15. Vidya Mary George

16. Shahana Purveen

17. Meenakshi Dubey

Meenakshi works with a holistic vision to explore history , memory & past narratives of the cultural sites and adheres to responsive praxis whilst engaging with ‘architecture’ in an expanded condition.

18. Manjula Bahuguna

19. Chandanapriya Dhanraj

20. Vikas Sehra

Navroz Dubash is a Professor at CPR’s Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment. His research interests include climate change, energy, air pollution, water policy, and the politics of regulation in the developing world. In this interview as part of the Leading Policy Conversations series, he discusses the climate-related challenges India confronts in 2022.

What do you think will be the climate-related challenges for India in 2022?

The past year was dominated by short term considerations of battling COVID-19, but at the end of the year, climate change re-emerged, driven by a high profile global meeting at Glasgow. In the build-up, countries were pressed to upgrade their national climate pledges. Our Prime Minister announced that India will reach net zero emissions by 2070, along with a series of other announcements.

In 2022, our challenge will be to figure out a way of credibly work toward these announcements, but also to clarify and deepen our collective understanding of their implications. A high carbon route to industrialisation is no longer desirable or possible, because a high-carbon path is a technologically backward path, and one that is likely to undercut India’s competitiveness. India has to embrace low-carbon development, but also has to do so while eradicating poverty, creating jobs, and building a just society. This is not an easy set of challenges.

2021 also threw up diplomatic challenges, as developed countries put a great deal of pressure on developing countries to update pledges. Yet, finance support from the north was limited, as were indications of leadership on carbon reducing policies. In 2022, climate negotiations will start a ‘global stocktake’ to assess progress. India will have to position ourselves for this process. It is not enough to claim the importance of climate equity; we will have to show what this means in terms of emission futures and development needs in different countries.

Finally, 2021 saw climate damages in India, as well as around the world. Climate change, it would seem, is no longer a future problem, but a now problem. Like other countries, India needs to reckon seriously with the ravages of climate impacts when we make development decisions.

How should policymakers address these challenges in the year?

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Home / Faculty / Krishnapriya Rajshekar

Krishnapriya Rajshekar

Aside from being an architect, Krishnapriya is also an academician. Some of her core interests as an architect focus on the overlaps between architecture, literature, visual culture, and the city. She explored this concept in her Master’s thesis, ‘The Art Biennale Phenomenon: In Conversation with the City’. Another thesis she wrote was presented at the Center for South Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Back in 2015, Krishnapriya had started exercising her literary bent by working with Design Detail, a Cochin-based architecture magazine. Here, she was an integral part of the writing and editorial teams. Krishnapriya now brings this vibrant mix of knowledge to the WCFA.

Awards & Recognition

Krishnapriya’s list of recognitions includes:

– Winning the CEPT Essay Prize 2018, instituted by CEPT University, Ahmedabad.

– Her selection to present her graduate thesis titled “The Art Biennale Phenomenon: In Conversation with the City” at the 46th Annual Conference on South Asia in October 2017.

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Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest

Students      >      Essay Contests      >     Atlas Shrugged

✓    Open to all high school, college, and graduate students worldwide.

Annual Grand Prize

June 14, 2024

Summer Entry Deadline

Book Length

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Fill out the contact form below, and we’ll email you with more information about this year’s contest—including instructions on how to enter.

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We’ll email you more information about this year’s contest—including instructions on how to enter. In the meantime, please let us know at [email protected] if you have any questions. We’re happy to help.

What is Atlas Shrugged?

The astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world—and did.

Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged is unlike any other book you have ever read. It is a mystery story, not about the murder of a man’s body, but about the murder—and rebirth—of man’s spirit.

How It Works

Every three months there is a new seasonal entry round, with its own unique essay prompt. You may compete in any or all of these entry rounds.

The top three essays from each season will be awarded a cash prize. The first-place essay from each season will advance to compete for the annual grand prize.

The first-place essay from each season will be eligible to contend for the annual first-place title, with the opportunity to secure a grand prize of $25,000.

Challenging Essay Topics

Each entry round features a unique topic designed to provoke a deeper understanding of the book’s central themes and characters.

Essays must be written in English only and be between 800 and 1,600 words in length.

Questions? Write to us at [email protected] .

• Summer Prompt
• Fall Prompt
• Winter Prompt

The essay prompt for our fall entry period has not yet been determined. We will post it here as soon it’s available.

The essay prompt for our winter entry period has not yet been determined. We will post it here as soon it’s available.

Grand Prize

Master our grading standards.

Essays are judged on whether the student is able to justify and argue for his or her view, not on whether the Institute agrees with the view the student expresses. 

Our graders look for writing that is clear, articulate, and logically organized.  Essays should stay on topic, address all parts of the selected prompt, and interrelate the ideas and events in the novel. 

Winning essays must demonstrate an outstanding grasp of the philosophic meaning of Atlas Shrugged .

Organization

Understanding, contest timeline, discover the power of atlas shrugged.

Atlas Shrugged  is a mystery novel like no other. You enter a world where scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, and inventors are inexplicably vanishing—where the world is crumbling.

And what you discover, by the end, is an uplifting vision of life, an inspiring cast of heroes, and a challenging new way to think about life’s most important issues.

Learn more and request a free digital copy of the book today.

Learn from Past Winners

Curious to know what makes for a winning essay in the Atlas Shrugged   contest? Check out some of the essays written by our most recent grand-prize winners. 

To varying degrees, they all display an excellent grasp of the philosophic meaning of Atlas Shrugged .

Click here to see the full list of 2022 contest winners.

Jacob Fisher

Graduate Student

Stanford University

Stanford, California

United States

Mariah Williams

Regis University

Denver, Colorado

Nathaniel Shippee

University of Illinois

Chicago, Illinois

Samuel Weaver

St. John’s College

Annapolis, Maryland

Patrick Mayles

Graduate student

Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Christina Jeong

College Student

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, Indiana

Improve Your Writing Skills

Other than endorsing perfect punctuation and grammar in English, the Ayn Rand Institute offers no advice or feedback for essays submitted to its contests. However, we do recommend the following resources as ways to improve the content of your essays.

The Atlas Project

Writing: a mini-course.

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We’ll send you periodic reminders about the contest deadlines, as well as helpful resources to ensure you get the most out of your experience reading and writing about Ayn Rand’s  Atlas Shrugged .

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Atlas Shrugged is a mystery novel like no other. You enter a world where scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, and inventors are inexplicably vanishing—where the world is crumbling.

What you discover, by the end, is an uplifting vision of life, an inspiring cast of heroes, and a challenging new way to think about life’s most important issues.

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Essay Prize Winners Announced

We are delighted to announce the winners of this year’s Philosophy Essay Prize.

THE ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL BERKELEY UNDERGRADUATE PRIZE FOR ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN EXCELLENCE

The Berkeley Prize has been suspended for the 2023-2024 academic year.

Explore the past 25 years of the Prize through the pages below.

About the prize.

The international Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence (BERKELEY PRIZE) was founded by Raymond Lifchez , Emeritus Professor of Architecture and City & Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley College of Environmental Design (CED), through the result of a generous gift to the CED's Department of Architecture by the late Judith Lee Stronach.

Student Participants

Awards granted, individual winners, berkeley prize through the years.

Question To Past Winners: How do you think the Prize has influenced your professional life as an architect or in any other profession or career pursuit?

Benard Acellam, Assistant Architect at DE-ZYN FORUM LTD; Assistant Lecturer in Architecture at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda; BP Essay Prize Winner, 2015.

Essay Prize

Each year, the PRIZE Committee selects a topic critical to the investigation of the social art of architecture and poses a Question based on that topic. Full-time undergraduate students in an architecture degree program or majoring in architecture in accredited schools of architecture throughout the world, including Diploma in Architecture students, may submit a 500-word essay proposal responding to the Question. Entries by teams of two students are encouraged and the second team member can be an undergraduate studying in fields related to architecture.

Philipp Goertz, Graduate Student at RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; BP Travel Fellow, 2018

Travel Fellowship

Semifinalists who select this option are invited to submit proposals demonstrating how they would use the opportunity to travel to an architecturally-significant destination of their choosing, preferably to participate in a hands-on service-oriented situation. This is an exciting opportunity to explore a different part of the world and to participate in an organized project that will assist the winner in gaining a deeper understanding of the social art of architecture.

Past Fellowships

Community service fellowship competition.

Semifinalists who select to compete for a Community Service Fellowship are invited to submit proposals demonstrating how they would use the opportunity to initiate a program or join an on-going program that reflects the content of their Essay proposals. This is an exciting opportunity to explore how to start and/or to participate in an organized project that will assist in the overall understanding and application of the social art of architecture.

Architectural Design Fellowship

From 2008 to 2011 the BERKELEY PRIZE Committee offered students the opportunity to compete in the Architectural Design Fellowship Competition to foster the study of the social art of architecture by helping to sponsor local and regional architectural student design competitions that were run by students themselves. This competition challenged the candidates to produce a thorough and practical proposal for a design competition that would benefit their community and bring attention to the resources available to the community from their school.

Teaching Fellowship

From 2013 to 2014 a new BERKELEY PRIZE Teaching Fellowship was offered to undergraduate architecture studio design faculty from around the world. The primary goal of this Fellowship was to support innovative thinking by faculty as they work to focus their students' attention on the social, behavioral, and physical characteristics of the users of the buildings and spaces being designed.

Each year the Berkeley Prize Committee invites a distinguished professor or scholar in the field of architecture or the related social sciences to write about some aspect of the year's Berkeley Prize topic.

• They are meant to help focus students' thoughts on the issues surrounding the year's Question.
• They are a model for excellence in writing.
• They exhibit both how defined and how broad the range of possible response to a Question.

The social art of architecture encompasses a large field of inquiry that links design studies to people studies. In an ever-growing corpus of published work, researchers from a variety of disciplines work with architects to investigate how to make architecture better for all people. The various topics of the history of the BERKELEY PRIZE give a glimpse into the range of these studies. Each year, the PRIZE publishes "resources" to help participants further understand the specific topics. Included in The LIbrary is a selection of these resources as well as other articles and links that detail why architecture is and must be, first and foremost, about people.

Committee Members

Click on the individual photos to see the member's full profile.

Benard Acellam

Elaine Addison

Andrew Amara

Sangeeta Bagga

Erick Bernabe

Aleksis Bertoni

Paul Broches

Himanshu Burte

Thea Chroman

Benjamin Clavan

Roddy Creedon

Howard Davis

Charles Debbas

Lynne Elizabeth

Teddy Forscher

Dorit Fromm

Thomas Gensheimer

Ann Gilkerson

Alex Gonzalez

Nicole Graycar

Zachary Heiden

Ocean Howell

Neelakshi Joshi

Rachel Kallus

Daniel Karlin

Thomas-Bernard Kenniff

Barbara Knecht

Aboubacar Komara

Scott Koniecko

Malini Krishnankutty

Raymond Lifchez

Ian Mactavish

Christine Macy

Padma Maitland

John Q McDonald

Jason Miller

Anusha Narayanan

Maire O'Neill Conrad

John Parman

Helaine Kaplan Prentice

Ushna Raees

Clare Robinson

Daves Rossell

David Salazar

Magdalena Saura

Corey Schnobrich

Anthony Schuman

Murray Silverstein

Avikal Somvanshi

Preeti Talwai

Philip Tidwell

Robert Ungar

Leslie Van Duzer

Jan Wampler

Matt Werner

Cynthia Whitehead

Keith Wilson

Friedner Wittman

Bahram Hooshyar Yousefi

Ghina Kanawati, Architect and Researcher at CatalyticAction, Beirut, Lebanon; BP Essay Winner, 2018

Berkeley Prize In The News

Conversations on social justice and design.

The College of Environmental Design and the Department of Architecture hosted a day-long symposium in April 2022 titled Conversations on Social Justice and Design , to honor Professor Emeritus Raymond Lifchez, Founder and Chair of the BERKELEY PRIZE. The symposium featured a spectacular list of speakers who have been instrumental leaders in shaping contemporary practices addressing social justice, particularly in universal design.

Speakers included Darren Walker, Maddy Burke-Vigeland, Jeffrey Mansfield, Elaine Ostroff, Valerie Fletcher, Victor Pineda, and Susan Schwelk with a keynote talk by Christopher Downey, our inaugural Lifchez Professor of Practice in Social Justice.

Conversations on Social Justice and Design Part I

Conversations in Social Justice and Design Part II

Conversations on Social Justice and Design Part II

Conversations on Social Justice and Design Part III