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JOHN LOCKE INSTITUTE

GLOBAL ESSAY PRIZE ([link removed])

Dear students,

My name is Professor Terence Kealey, and I am the Chairman of Examiners at the John Locke Institute. ([link removed])

The John Locke Institute's Global Essay Prize is acknowledged as the world's most prestigious essay competition. We welcome tens of thousands of submissions from ambitious students in more than 150 countries, and our examiners - including distinguished philosophers, political scientists, economists, historians, psychologists, theologians, and legal scholars - read and carefully assess every entry.

I am delighted to announce that today we have published the questions for our 2025 Global Essay Prize ([link removed]) . There are three questions in each of our seven subject categories - philosophy, politics, economics, history, theology, psychology, and law; for students who are fourteen years old, or younger, we also have a choice of seven questions in our 'Junior' category. Last year thirty-five thousand students signed up for the Global Essay Prize, and this year we expect there to be even more than that. So why do so many people enter our competition?

I think there are at least three reasons:

1. Firstly, in order to write a persuasive answer to an interesting question, you must think hard about the question, read widely, and then think carefully about what you have read. You must make up your mind what the right answer is, and then organise and present your thoughts in a way that might induce your readers to change their minds. The intellectual virtues do not come naturally; they come, if they come at all, as a result of practising - practising reading, practising thinking and practising writing.

2. Secondly, once you have thoroughly researched the question you have chosen to answer, it is rewarding to have a piece of written work that reflects your best efforts. You can include your essay in applications for academic or professional positions. And if your essay is awarded a commendation, or indeed a prize, you can and should include that in your resume.

3. Finally, if your essay is short-listed for a prize, you will receive an invitation to join us for a weekend academic conference and Awards Dinner at Grosvenor House in London. At this event you will have a chance to meet hundreds of exceptional students from more than eighty different countries. Finalists in recent years have told us that the experience of coming to this very special weekend has inspired them to explore further the world of ideas and the life of the mind in new and important ways.

I hope that, when you look through our 2025 questions, you find at least one question that grips your imagination, inspires you to learn more and motivates you to write an essay to share with me and with my team of examiners.

Who knows? Perhaps I'll have the good fortune to see you in London in a few months!

Best wishes,

Professor Terence Kealey, D.Phil. (Oxon)

Chairman of Examiners

2025 ESSAY QUESTIONS ([link removed])
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