Announcing the winner of The Loop’s 2023 Best Blog Prize

We are thrilled to congratulate Brandon Mack on winning the Loop Best Blog Prize for his piece Black, Queer, Trans, Disabled Lives Matter! Empowering identities to transform democracy.

In 2022, The Loop inaugurated its annual Best Blog Prize to reward a contribution of exceptional value. It has now conferred its second £500 prize on the author of a blog piece judged by our independent jury to be the best in that calendar year.

This prize allows the Loop's team to showcase articles with particular relevance to current events; honour pieces likely to influence political opinion; and highlight those which might appeal to a readership beyond academe.

After careful deliberation and a rigorous scoring process, the jury has chosen to award the 2023 prize to Brandon Mack’s contribution to the Loop's popular 🎭 Democratic Transformations series.

In the winning piece, Brandon draws on his activist experience with Black Lives Matter to argue for intersectionality and diverse histories as the backbone of democracy.

► Read the full story of the 2023 prize on The Loop, as told by Managing Editor Kate Hawkins.

Our winner

Brandon Mack is a doctoral student at the University of Houston studying Higher Education Leadership and Policy Studies. His research focuses on LGBTQ+ support services at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Brandon's research on effemiphobia has been featured in a GLAAD Media Award winning article, and he has presented at national conferences such as the National LGBTQ+ Task Force: Creating Change and the National Black Justice Coalition’s Out on the Hill.

He is a commissioner on the Harris County LGBTQIA+ Commission and a member of the City of Houston LGBTQ+ Advisory Board.

 @thebrandonmack

From our jury

In their laudatory comments, the jury offered the following:

Brandon Mack’s blog piece examining Queer, Trans, and Disabled lives in the Black Lives Matter movement is a compelling, gut-wrenching read. His article, published at a time when the struggle for social rights was upstaged by war, tackles issues often ignored in conventional studies of social movements. What sets Brandon’s piece apart is the way he blends theoretical critique of democracy with personal narratives of activism. His post is a call for democratic societies to pay attention to the intersectionality of social movements – and, specifically, to the fight and contributions of communities too often ignored.

Writing about the intersection of individual and collective identities is not an easy task. However, the author’s personal narrative – rare in academic writing – allows Brandon to call out the weaponisation of democracy against people’s identities and experiences. Through first-hand experience, Brandon shows how activism can challenge current systems.

Conventional political science often struggles to accept personal narratives. Brandon’s article shows how personal experiences are deeply embedded in the political world, and how they can affect structures beyond our control.

Marianna Karakoulaki, Chris Gilson, Danielle Pullan – 2023 Prize Jury

Read the two shortlisted articles

Keywords: Democracy, Gender, Activism