2025 Blaine Essay Prize Awarded
One of the foundations of Millbrook School’s academic programming is the Blaine Essay Prize, awarded each year to a graduating VIth former who writes the best essay on an issue of contemporary or historical significance. On Tuesday, six 2025 Blaine essay prize finalists gathered with their teachers, friends, and families in Pulling House for the presentation of the award by this year’s adjudicator, Dr. Jennifer Dorsey, a history professor and the director of the McCormick Center for the Study of the American Revolution at Sienna College.
Dr. Dorsey congratulated the finalists for their thought-provoking scholarship, highlighting the well-crafted arguments presented in each essay. She then presented the 2025 Blaine essay prize to Hannah Crystal ’25 for her examination of the role of influencer marketing in disrupting advertising monopolies.
“This is what good scholarship does. It teaches us something, but it also challenges us to do our own work to know the truth,” Dr. Dorsey said of all the essays presented. “We scholars, we work together to uncover the truth one little bit at a time… We each do our part with our research and our writing to shed light on the truth.”
Following the presentation, the finalists attended a dinner in their honor in the Class of 2018 Meeting Room. Below is a list of the finalists and their compelling work:
- Hannah Crystal – The Rise of Influencer Marketing: Reintroducing Competition
- Anel Cabrera – Baddies or Wifeyssss? Disidentifying Femininity and the Cost to Feminist Unity
- Licette Jaya – Climate Refugees: Expanding Global Responsibility in the Era of Environmental Displacement
- Kelly Kwok – Culture and Kinship in Economics
- Matea Podgursky – The Multifaceted Roots of Religious Extremism: Social, Political, and Psychological Drivers of Scriptural Misinterpretation
- Evan Sun – The Etiology of Attractive Faces in the Mate Selection Process
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