At RUSI’s Annual Chief of the Defence Staff Lecture, Turner Ruggi and Joe Reilly were announced as the winners of the 2023 Trench Gascoigne essay prize.
The Trench Gascoigne Essay Prize is RUSI’s annual competition for original writing on contemporary issues of national and international defence and security. Dating back to 1874, the Prize reflects and reinforces the Institute's status as a uniquely placed platform for free-thinking debate on defence and security.
Turner Ruggi, an undergraduate student in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, won in the category “Students currently in full-time education” for his essay entitled “Counterstrategies to economic warfare: a strategic framework in a world of weaponised interdependence”.
Joe Reilly, a Midshipman in the Royal Navy and Research Analyst at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre, won in the category “Individuals in the first 15 years of their military career” for his essay entitled ‘Perfidious Albion’? British foreign policy in an age of strategic choice’.
Both prizes were presented by Admiral Sir Tony Radakin KCB ADC – following his lecture and discussion around the contemporary security and defence challenges facing the UK – and awarded on the basis of their originality, logical argument, sound analysis, style, clarity and conciseness.