As a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at Kings College London Department of War Studies, Polly Corrigan delivered a lecture in early 2019 on gender and espionage entitled The Lady Vanishes – calling attention to a significant gender imbalance both within intelligence itself and academic intelligence and security.
In the months before her death in December 2019 (and while undergoing chemotherapy), Polly worked with WIN (Women’s Intelligence Network) and KISG (Kings Intelligence Studies Group) to set up a prize that would help to reverse this gender gap. On her death in December 2019, WIN and KISG went ahead with the plan, with colleagues expressing determination to remember Polly in this way at her funeral wake.
Sponsored by Intelligence and National Security (INS), ‘the world’s leading scholarly journal on the role of intelligence in international relations’, the Prize, first awarded in 2022 and now in its third iteration, is now firmly entrenched as a celebration female scholarship in this field. Judges and prize-winners alike recognise Polly as a major inspiration in changing the gender balance bringing equality in this field.
All in the family? Polly herself named her cousin Jess Wade, a physicist at Imperial College who is well known for writing Wikipedia entries for female scientists, as the inspiration for the 2019 lecture. ‘Jess’s work made me have a look at women working in intelligence research. Otherwise it wouldn’t have occurred to me there would be a gender imbalance. I was horrified at what I found,’ I recall her saying, speaking at a family gathering.
The Polly Corrigan Book Prize: 2026, 2024, 2022
The 2026 Award: Winner to be announced shortly. WAtch THIS SPACE
Shortlist:
Spying on Muslims in colonial Mozambique 1964-74. Sandra Araujo. Bloomsbury
Agent Z, the untold story of courageous WW2 resistance figher Elzbieta Zawacka. Clare Mulley. W&N.
Her Secret Service. The forgotten women of British intelligence. Claire Hubbard-Hall. W&N
Mission to Mao, US intelligence and the Chinese communists in World War II. Sara B. Castro. Georgetown University Press.
The 2024 Award
The Polly Corrigan Book Prize Winner 2024 was awarded to Sophie Duroy for her book The Regulation of Intelligence Activities under International Law. She received the award at a ceremony on January 20th, 2025 at Kings College London and online.
Now Intelligence & National Security has published a roundtable review today of Duroy’s book with six leading academics contributing detailed insights into the book and with Duroy herself having the opportunity to respond.
Claudia Hillebrand, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Cardiff University, summarised the scope of the work. ‘Today’s intelligence services do not act in a lawless, unregulated vacuum, neither at home nor in the international sphere. But how effective is the regulation of their activities; and how does international law influence state behaviour in intelligence matters? These are key questions addressed by Sophie Duroy in her meticulous The Regulation of Intelligence Activities under International Law.’
Paul McGarr lecturer in intelligence studies at KCL said the book ‘will set scholars talking. It is, in short, a work that the late Polly Corrigan could have been expected to approve of and to admire. There can be no higher praise,’ he added.
Sophie herself also paid tribute to Polly in her response to the Roundtable. ‘Polly’s work and the Women in Intelligence Network she helped to build embody the same spirit of intellectual curiosity, feminist commitment and cross- disciplinary engagement that I hope my research contributes to in some small way. To have her name attached to my work, and now to this conversation, is a privilege and a reminder of the collective effort required to make women’s voices more visible within intelligence studies,’ she said.
Polly would have been proud of these comments and so very pleased that her efforts have been recognised and, more importantly, acted upon in such an amazing and fruitful way.
Read the full Roundtable review here:
The Polly Corrigan Book Prize 2024 Shortlist:
- The Regulation of Intelligence Acitvities under International Law. Sophie Duroy. Published by Elgar International Law.
- Espionage. A concise history. Kristie Macrakis. MIT Press
- Nothing is Beyond Our Reach. Kristie Macrakis. Georgetown University Press
- Oil. Emma Ashford. Georgetown University Press.
- Paer Hitt. Betsy Rohaly Smoot. University Press of Kentucky.
Judging Panel
Paul McGarr, Lecturer in Intelligence Studies, King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence.
Kate Vigurs, Visiting academic at Department of Political & Internaitonal Studies at University of Warwick. Author of Mission France- The True Story of the Women of SOE
Dr Claudia Hillebrand, Senior Lecturer in INternational Relations at Cardiff University
Dr Stephen Marrin, Director and Professor in James Madison University’s Intelligence Analysis program.
Jane Feinmann, freelance journalist. Mother of Polly Corrigan
Polly Corrigan Book Prize 2022. WINNER: Dr Molly Pucci, Security Empire.
Dr Molly Pucci, Assistant Professor of Twentieth Century European History at the University of Dublin for her book, Security Empire, The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe (Yale-Hoover).
Polly Corrigan Memorial Blog 