Prizes and Awards 2009
The EU Profiler
The award-winning| EU Profiler voting advice application (VAA) for the European Parliament elections of June 2009 was the first Europe-wide tool of its kind.
The research project is based at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) and is directed by SPS Profesor Alexander Trechsel. It was developed under the auspices of EUDO, in a consortium with the Amsterdam-based company Kieskompas and the NCCR Democracy (University of Zurich/Zentrum für Demokratie Aarau)/Politools network. More than 120 academic collaborators contributed to the project and currently the huge amount of data that was generated by coding the parties and by the users filling in the questionnaire is being analysed by the research team. When the EU Profiler tool was online from 23 April until the elections it attracted more than 2.5 million users.
The EUI ranked amongst the best according to the CHE ExcellenceRanking 2009
The Department of Political and Social Sciences has distinguished itself for its international character and the optimal results obtained in its research.
The complete results of the survey| have been published in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit.
The criteria for the selection by the Center for Higher Education Development are the high numbers of publications and citations, "highly cited books" as research indicators, student mobility, teaching staff mobility, and the number of projects in the Marie Curie research promotion programme of the EU.
What is special about the CHE ExcellenceRanking? It defines "stars" rather than ranking positions. It is about detailed analysis rather than general ranking. The results of the research are deliberately not added together to give a total number of points.
The reason for this is that there is simply no "best" higher education institution, either for a single discipline, let alone for all disciplines. The ranking is intended for all students/researchers planning to earn a master or doctoral degree and who are looking for a suitable institution for their research.
For more information visit the CHE ranking|
Tiago Fernandes
Tiago Fernandes (Ph.D. 2009) was awarded a research and teaching Fellowship (2009-2011) at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, USA.
Tiago Fernandes was also awarded the Gulbenkian Foundation Best Article Award. It distinguished the best article published by young Portuguese social scientists in all social science fields (except economics) during 2007-2009. The article is «Authoritarian Regimes and Pro-Democracy Semi-oppositions. The end of the Portuguese dictatorship (1968-1974) in comparative perspective», Democratization, Vol. 14, No. 4, 2007.
Frank Foley
Dr. Foley (Ph.D. 2008) was awarded the Zukerman Postdoctoral Fellowship (2008/09) at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Co-operation (CISAC), where he is working on a comparative analysis of British, French and American counterterrorism.
http://cisac.stanford.edu/people/frankfoley/|
Igor Guardiancich
Igor Guardiancich (Ph.D. 2009) has received the 2008/09 Junior Scholar Award by the Italian Review of Public Policy (Premio giovani studiosi 2008/09, Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche) for a comparative paper on pension reforms in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe.
Silja Häusermann
Silja Häusermann’s Ph.D. thesis “Modernization in Hard Times: Post-Industrial Pension Politics in France, Germany and Switzerland”, defended in Zurich, was awarded the Jean Blondel Prize for the best Ph.D. of 2008 by the European Consortium of Political Research, and the Ernst B. Haas Prize of 2008 for the best dissertation in European politics by the American Political Science Association. Silja is currently an SPS Max Weber Fellow.
http://www.mwpweb.eu/SiljaHaeusermann/|
Adrienne Héritier
Adrienne Héritier was elected Chair of the European Union Studies Association (EUSA) at the Marina del Rey Conference for the period 2009-2011.
John Loughlin
John Loughlin (SPS 1982), Professor of European Politics at Cardiff University since 1985, has received an Honorary Doctorate from the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Umea, Sweden in October 2009. The Faculty has conferred conferring this honour "in recognition of his great contribution to research in the fields of European politics and regional and local governance".
Philippe C. Schmitter
Prof. Schmitter, emeritus professor at European University Institute (EUI), is the winner of The Johan Skytte Prize in political science 2009. Prof. Schmitter receives the prize for his path-breaking work on the role of corporatism in modern democracies, and for his stimulating and innovative analysis of democratization.
http://skytteprize.statsvet.uu.se/|
He has also been awarded the Mattei Dogan Prize of the Foundation Mattei Dogan awarded by the International Political Science Association for High Achievement in Political Science. The Prize is offered to a scholar of high international reputation in recognition of his/her contribution to the advancement of political science. The prize is awarded every three years at the World Congresses of the International Political Science Association (IPSA).
http://www.ipsa.org/site/content/view/360/87/lang,en/|
Dorota Szelewa
Dorota Szelewa (Ph.D. 2009) received a two-year fellowship to the Post-doc Program of the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences at the University of Bremen and Jacobs University
Alex Wilson
Alex Wilson (Ph.D. 2009) has been awarded the Journal of Regional and Federal Studies Graduate Prize for the best conference paper produced in this field in 2008. The paper compares multi-level negotiations to reform regional statutes of autonomy in Spain, and is co-authored with Andreu Orte, a graduate student at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.