Article Prize

BILA offers an annual article prize, which is aimed at motivating newcomers to BILA:

The rules for the prize are as follows:

  •  To be awarded by the BILA Committee at the same time as the BILA Book Prize (in the Autumn),
  • All articles published in BILA Journal since the award of the last prize to be considered.
  • To qualify, an article must have been written by an author who is not a member of the BILA Committee, or any BILA sub-committee, and who has not previously written for the Journal or been a speaker at a BILA event.
  • No application is necessary: all qualifying articles will be considered.

The proposed successful author will be contacted in advance to check whether he or she accepts the prize

The Committee in its absolute discretion may decide that the prize shall not be awarded in any year.  The decision of the Committee on any matter relating to the prize shall be final. 

2025 BILA Journal Article Prize Winner

At a prize-giving ceremony on 3rd December 2025, Professor James Davey, the immediate past President of BILA was pleased to award the 2025 BILA Journal Article Prize to Kathleen Defever for her article ‘Access to Insurance and Economic Inclusion: Microinsurance as a Fundamental Right?’.  The article is published in issue No. 137 (2025) of the BILA Journal.
Kathleen is a Doctoral Fellow in Insurance Law at Ghent University in Belgium. Her article examines how microinsurance supports fundamental rights, such as the right to property, the right to equality, the right to socioeconomic well-being, the right to self-determination, and the right to development. She develops a sophisticated and rigorously researched argument of microinsurance as fundamental human right that considers the characteristics of insurance and microinsurance, and how fundamental rights are defined, granted, and enforced.

BILA Article Prize: 2025 Winner

2025 BILA Journal Article Prize Winner
Kathleen Defever for her article,

Access to Insurance and Economic Inclusion: Microinsurance as a Fundamental Right? 

Published in issue No 137 of the BILA Journal

Photograph: (from right to left): Manoj Vaghela (Chair of BILA), Alison Green (Chair of the BILA Charitable Trust), 

Professor James Davey (Immediate Past President of BILA), Kathleen Defever (BILA Article Prize Winner), and Tim Hardy (Deputy Chair of the Trust).

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