Prizes and Awards

Elisa Volpi

Elisa Volpi has been awarded the 2020 Jean Blondel PhD Prize for her doctoral thesis The Politics of Turning Coat: A Comparative and Historical Analysis of Party Switching.

The Jury's verdict:
‘The jury appreciates the innovative character of Elisa's doctoral thesis, both empirically and theoretically... 
The research design is clearly explained, and the methodology is convincingly justified. The discussion indicates a strong grasp of the epistemological and methodological aspects. The jury values the excellent structure of the manuscript, and the level of development of the arguments. The jury strongly appreciates the impressive compilation of the unique data set allowing for this research. It also values the clear and precise writing, its fluidity, and the fact that the manuscript is a pleasant read. The narrative is clear and communicates the ideas and the findings in such a way that it is accessible to a wide audience.'  

The award was presented to Elisa virtually, and short video was created to celebrate along with the Jury Chair, Petra Meier and Elisa's thesis supervisor, Stefano Bartolini.

Elias Dinas

Elias Dinas has been selected as co-winner of the 2020 Michael Wallerstein Best Article Award (APSA Political Economy Section) for the paper: Dominik Hangartner, Elias Dinas, Moritz Marbach, Konstantinos Matakos, Dimitrios Xefteris: "Does Exposure to the Refugee Crisis Make Natives More Hostile?". The Michael Wallerstein Award is given for the best published article in Political Economy in the previous calendar year.

Björn Bremer

Björn Bremer (EUI Ph.D. 2019) has been awarded the Linz Rokkan 2020 Prize for his dissertation titled "Austerity from the Left: Explaining the Fiscal Policies of Social Democratic parties in Response to the Great Recession"

The Committee's judgement: "In this thesis, Björn Bremer asks why social democrats accepted austerity as a response to the Great Recession instead of a Keynesian approach. He breaks with prior research that has suggested that pressures from financial markets, EU and IMF explain this acceptance, pointing out that also in countries where such pressures were weak, austerity was nonetheless embraced. Björn argues that social democrats responded to fiscal consolidation being popular among electorates as well as in mainstream economics at the time. 
The dissertation addresses an important policy question, as austerity was a very costly policy choice and social democrats' embracing of it in the end hurt them. The exposition of the argument throughout the thesis is very clear. In the dissertation Björn uses an impressive array of research methods to convincingly evidence this argument."

More information

Arnout van de Rijt

Arnout van de Rijt receives the Robert K. Merton Award for his paper on self-correcting dynamics in social influence processes, published in the American Journal of Sociology 124(5), 2019

Javier Ruiz Soler

Javier Ruiz Soler has been awarded the Prize for the Best Ph.D. Dissertation in Political Communication by the Association for Communication in Politics (ACOP). In his work "Is Twitter the New Coffee House?" he examines the importance of the European political Twittershpere regarding its contribution to the development of the European public sphere and a European demos.

Tobias Widmann

The winner of the 2019 Rudolf Wildenmann Prize is Tobias Widmann from European University Institute.

His prizewinning paper How Emotional are Populists Really? Discrete Emotions in the Communication of Political Parties and their Influence on Information Diffusion was presented at the 2019 Joint Sessions of Workshops in Mons, Belgium.

Arnout van de Rijt

Arnout van de Rijt receives the "ISSI Paper of the Year Award - 2019" for his article on "The Matthew effect in science funding". The prize will be handed out on 5 September 2019 in Rome.

Adrienne Héritier

The Hertie School of Governance has awarded its 2019 Michael Endres Prize to two political scientists: Adrienne Héritier, Emeritus Professor of Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, and Kathleen Thelen, Ford Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 

More information & Pictures from the Ceremony

Julia Schulte-Cloos

EUI-SPS Ph.D. 2019 received the SAGE Award for the best article published in Volume 19 for her contribution ‘Do European Parliament elections foster challenger parties' success on the national level?’ which appeared in European Union Politics 19(3). The award winners will receive a free subscription to the journal.

Marco Valbruzzi

Marco Valbruzzi has been awarded the Linz Rokkan Prize for the best doctoral thesis in the field of political sociology for his EUI doctoral dissertation, Government alternation in Western Europe: a comparative exploration. 

The Prize has been awarded during the Conferring Ceremony on 14 June 2019.

More information

Martín Portos Garcías & Macarena Ares Abalde

Martín Portos Garcías awarded the Juan J. Linz Best Dissertation 2017 Prize for his dissertation on Voicing outrage, contending with austerity. Mobilization in Spain under the Great Recession.

Macarena Ares Abalde received a honorable mention for her her thesis A new working class? A cross-national and a longitudinal approach to class voting in post-industrial societies. Click here for more information.

Samuel D. Schmid 

Samuel D. Schmid, Andrea C. Blättler, and Joachim Blatter awarded the JCMS 2017 Best Article Prize for ‘Democratic Deficits in Europe: The Overlooked Exclusiveness of Nation‐States and the Positive Role of the European Union’ (Vol 55, Issue 3).

Click here for more information.

Anne Christine Holtmann

Anne Christine Holtmann (Ph. D. 2017) has been awarded the German Prize from the Körber-Stiftung for her dissertation on "Why are children from disadvantaged families left behind?" which has been defended on 30.10.2017 under the supervision of prof. Fabrizio Bernardi.

She has been also awarded the ECSR Best Ph.D. prize in 2018.

More information and Abstract

Diego Gambetta

The Robert K. Merton Best Paper Award 2018 International Network of Analytical Sociology (INAS) awarded to Ozan Aksoy and Diego Gambetta.

“Behind the Veil: The Strategic Use of Religious Garb”European Sociological Review 32(6), 2016.

The paper focuses on a socially and politically relevant social phenomenon, i.e. veiling among Muslim women. The authors investigate the association between this behavior and exposure to the potential secularizing effect of modernization dynamics, addressing the apparent paradoxical observation that educated, urban, and middle-class women seem more kin to veil. To explain this puzzle, the authors postulate a signaling mechanism according to which highly-educated women are more likely to be exposed to "risky" social settings where they feel more urged to signal their religiosity through veiling. The authors assess the existence of a statistical signature of this mechanism studying cross-sectional data on Muslim women in Turkey and Belgium as well as Muslim women in 25 other countries. Through carefully specified structural equation modeling, where religiosity is treated as a latent variable, they provide convincing empirical evidence in favor of the postulated mechanism. View more

Tomasz Pawel Wozniakowski

Tomasz Pawel Wozniakowski (Ph.D. 2018) has been awarded the  Supranational Political Economy Prize 2017 for his thesis on  Towards Fiscalization of the European Union? The European and American Fiscal Unions in a Comparative Historical Perspectives, which he defended under the supervision of Alexander Trechsel. 

Adrienne Héritier

Public Administration researcher Adrienne Héritier will receive an honorary degree from Leiden University. The award is for her groundbreaking work in the field of multilevel governance, decisionmaking and institutional theory at the European level. She will be awarded the degree on the dies natalis of the University, 8 February 2018.

Fabrizio Bernardi

Professor Fabrizio Bernardi has been awarded the " 2017 RC28 Significant Scholarship Award" prize for his article " Compensatory Advantage as a Mechanism of Educational Inequality" by the Research Committee 28 on Social Stratification and Mobility of the International Sociological Association.

The prize has been awarded to him during the RC28 meeting, held at Columbia University in August 2017.

Adrienne Héritier

Adrienne Héritier is the 2017 recipient of the International Public Policy Association's (IPPA) Career / Lifetime Achievement (Singapore, June 2017).

Hanspeter Kriesi

Hanspeter Kriesi has been granted the  Mattei Dogan Foundation Prize, which is awarded biennially for a major contribution to the advancement of political sociology. 

The $3,000 prize is presented to either an individual scholar with an ensemble of outstanding scientific publications and constructive professional achievements, or to a team of researchers currently enjoying a high reputation in the international community of political sociologists.

Charlotte Haberstroh

Charlotte Haberstroh (Ph.D. 2016) has been awarded the Linz Rokkan Prize in Political Sociology for her thesis on The Politics of Equal Opportunities in Education. Partisan governments and school choice reform in Sweden, England and France 1980 – 201 0, which she defended under the supervision of Pepper Culpepper and Sven Steinmo as co-supervisor. 

The prize will awarded during the Conferring Ceremony on 9 June 2017.

Anna auf dem Brinke

Anna auf dem Brinke (Ph.D. 2015) has been awarded the Linz-Rokkan Prize in Political Sociology for her dissertation entitled " The Political Economy of Financial Risk and Preferences", which she defended under the supervision of Prof. Pepper Culpepper.

Anna will receive her award on the occasion of the Annual Conferring Ceremony at the European University Institute on 10 June 2016.

Hanspeter Kriesi

Each year the Francqui Foundation appoints, at the suggestion of the Universities, a number of Francqui Chairsto renowned academics. The goal of a Chair is to enable the invitation of a Professor from a Belgian or a foreign University, for a series of public lectures. This year Hanspeter Kriesi is invited by Institute for Social and Political Opinion Research to give lectures in Leuven, Antwerp, Brussels and Louvain-la-Neuve.

Theresa Kuhn & Florian Stoeckel

Florian Stoeckel ( SPS MW Fellow 2014-2016) has been awarded with his co-author Theresa Kuhn ( SPS Ph.D. defended in 2011) the Best Paper Prize 2015 by the "Journal of European Public Policy (JEPP)". 
The article entitled " When European Integration becomes costly: the euro crisis and public support for European economic governance", was published in 2014 issue  21(4): 624–41.

The JEPP editors about their choice:

"We looked for papers that stood out in terms of theoretical and methodological sophistication and that made an original and significant contribution to the field.The article by Theresa Kuhn and Florian Stoeckel fitted all these criteria. In it, they analyse support among citizens for further economic integration in the European Union, an issue that has become highly relevant following the global financial crisis. On the basis of a careful analysis, they show that support for further economic integration is determined by a different set of factors than support for the EU in general. This finding has important implications for our understanding of public support for European integration.In short, the article makes a convincing, original and important argument about one of the key issues of European public policy today. It therefore justly deserves to win JEPP's 2014 best article award."

Nisida Gjoksi

Nisida Gjoksi has been awarded the Political Science Association 2015 Prize “ Best Paper for Early Researchers” of the Specialist Group in “Executive politics and Governance" for her paper " Leviathan on paper and party patronage in practice: contested civil service reforms in Albania and Macedonia 2000-2010".
The group on " Executive Politics and Governance" is a specialist study group supported by the UK's Political Science Association, reflecting on the challenges of governing in the 21st century, by combining the study of bureaucracy, government formation and operation, the study of policy instruments and the study of different modes of governing.

Additionally, Nisida Gjoksi has been awarded a six months Fulbright Schuman Fellowship from September 2015 onwards, as a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Political Science in Columbia University under the supervision of Professor Isabela Mares.

Raphael Reinke

Raphael Reinke (Ph.D. 2014) has been awarded the Linz-Rokkan-Prize in Political Sociology for his dissertation on: " The Politics of Bank Bailouts". The award took place at the occasion of the Annual Conferring Ceremony at the European University Institute, on 12 June 2015.

Andrea Gilli

2015 EDA-Egmont PhD prize awarded

The European Defence Agency and the Egmont Institute are proud to announce that the 2015 EDA-Egmont PhD prize has been awarded to Mr. Andrea Gilli for his research work on armaments cooperation. ( EUI-SPS Ph.D. 2014).

The EDA-Egmont PhD prize was created in 2013 to stimulate research in the field of European defence, security and strategy. The prize rewards research work undertaken as part of a PhD thesis carried out at a recognised academic institution. 

The 2015 was awarded to Andrea Gilli, Post-doctoral Fellow, Center for Security Studies, Metropolitan University Prague, for his thesis entitled “ Unipolarity, Technological Change and Arms Manufacturing: Industrial Alliances in the European Defense Industry”

Alexander Stummvoll

A. Alexander Stummvoll receives a Vatican foundation Centesimus Annus Prize for his thesis entitled " A Living Tradition: The Holy See, Catholic Social Doctrine, and Global Politics, 1965-2000" (SPS thesis defended in 2012). 

More information  

Nele Leosk

Nele Leosk has been awarded a seven months Fulbright Schuman Fellowship which she took up in January 2015. 

Tomasz Woźniakowski

Tomasz Wozniakowski has been awarded a five months Fulbright Schuman Fellowship which he took up in January 2015 and on 3 June 2015 he has been awarded the " College of Europe - Arenberg European Prize".

Johan Christensen 

Johan Christensen (Ph.D. June 2013) has been awarded the  Linz-Rokkan-Prize in Political Sociology for his dissertation titled: "Economists and Neoliberal Reform: Profession and Power in Tax Policy-Making, 1980 - 2010". The award was presented to him at the occasion of the Annual Conferring Ceremony of the EUI, on 13 June, 2014.

Christian Reus-Smit

Christian Reus-Smit (former professor at the Political and Social Sciences Department, EUI and currently Chair of IR at the University of Queensland, Australia) has been awarded the 2014 Susan Strange Prize.The prize was awarded on 19 June 2014 in Dublin at the British International Studies Association Conference. The prize is awarded 'for the best book published in any field of International Studies during the course of the 12 months up to 31 December 2013. The aim of the Prize is to honour the work of Susan Strange and also to recognise the best current work being conducted in the discipline.

Adrienne Héritier

Adrienne Héritier, Joint Chair with the RSCAS and the Department of Political and Social Sciences in Comparative and European Public Policy has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Université Catholique de Louvain in a ceremony that took place on 13 March.

Olivier Roy

Olivier Roy will be awarded the  Anna Lindh Journalist Award on 23 October 2013 at the Thomson Reuters Foundation in London for his long-term work that has helped to clarify the Mediterranean landscape and make sense of the changes taking place.

"The prize in this case is not awarded to a professional journalist, but to someone who has contributed to render the world in which we live more understandable".

Dorothee Bohle and Bela Greskovits

Dorothee Bohle and Bela Greskovits (both CEU, Budapest) and former Fernand Braudel Fellows of the Political and Social Sciences Department, have been awarded the Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research 2013 in recognition of their book "Capitalist Diversity in Europe's Periphery". The prize award ceremony will take place at the International Social Science Council's Conference in Montreal, 13-15 October, 2013.  Stein Rokkan Prize Awards

Giulia Andrighetto

Giulia Andrighetto (Research Fellow on Sven Steinmo's ERC project "Willing to Pay? Testing Institutionalist Theory with Experiments") has been awarded the "[email protected]" Prize for the best researcher under 35 in the field of Humanities, Social Sciences & Cultural Heritage. The prize was jointly sponsored by the  National Research Council (CNR) and the  Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, and was aimed at acknowledging the commitment of so many young researchers, giving them greater visibility and promoting talent and excellence in Italian science. The award ceremony will take place on 18 November 2013 at the National Research Council's headquarters in Rome.

Rainer Bauböck

In recognition of his achievements as a scholar, the Austrian Academy of Sciences elected Rainer Bauböck as a corresponding member abroad, on 19 April 2013.

Edoardo Bressanelli

Edoardo Bressanelli (Ph.D. March 2012) has been awarded the  Linz-Rokkan-Priize in Political Sociology for his dissertation titled: "After the Big Bang Enlargement: The Institutionalization of the Europarties and the Party System". The award will be presented to him at the occasion of the Annual Conferring Ceremony of the EUI, on 14 June, 2013.  

Pepper Culpepper

Prof. Pepper Culpepper has been awarded the XVIIth Stein Rokkan Prize for his work " Quiet Politics and Business Power - Corporate Control in Europe and Japan" by  International Social Science Council (ISSC).  The award will be presented to him at the next World Social Science Forum in Montréal, Canada, on 13-15 October 2013.

Theresa Kuhn

Theresa Kuhn (Ph.D. 2011) was awarded two prizes in 2012 for her Ph.D. thesis "Individual Transnationalism and EU Support. An Empirical Test of Deutsch's Transactionalist Theory".

The  Linz-Rokkan Prize in Political Sociology is awarded annually for the best EUI thesis in political sociology and it has been sponsored by Prof. Richard Rose, a holder of an Honoris Causa Degree from the EUI and a founding father of postwar political science in Europe. 

The Theseus Prize for Promising Research on European Integration distinguishes an excellent piece of work of a junior researcher.

Theresa defended her thesis in July 2011 under the supervision of Martin Kohli.  Abstract

Sonia Pires

Sonia Pires was awarded the Best Ph.D. Dissertation Prize in Political Science by the  Portuguese Political Science Association. Sonia successfully defended her thesis "Immigrant Political Mobilization. The cases of Portugal and Italy" in May 2010 under the supervision of Donatella della Porta.

Yvette Peters

Yvette Peters (Ph.D 2011) has been awarded the François Mény Prize for the Best Comparative Studies of European Institution for her dissertation entitled "Patterns of Change. A Study of the Relation Between Political Participation and Institutions".(Supervisor A. Trechsel)

Sven Steinmo

Prof.  Sven Steinmo was offered a Senior Research Fellowship at  Nuffield College, Oxford University, from 1 October 2012 for a two-year period. Prof. Steinmo holds the Chair in Public Policy and Political Economy at the European University Institute, and is currently engaged in a series of research projects addressing three inter-related themes: evolutionary theory and the social sciences, the political economy of aging and experimental methods in the social sciences.

Christian Thauer

Dr. Christian Thauer (Research Associate, Free University, Berlin) (Ph. D. 2010) will be recognized as the recipient of this year's IPE Best Dissertation Award. Title:  "Corporate Social Responsibility In The Regulatory Void ? Does The Promise Hold? Self-Regulation By Business in South Africa and China." San Diego, April, 2012.

Jonas Radl

2011 Research Prize of the German Pension Insurance Agency (Deutscher Rentenversicherung Bund)

Jonas Radl has been awarded the 2011 Research Prize of the German Pension Insurance Agency for his dissertation "Retirement Timing and Social Stratification: A Comparative Study of Labor Market Exit and Age Norms in Western Europe" defended at the EUI in September 2010.  The award ceremony took place in Berlin on 8.12.2011.

Jonas is currently Investigado Posdoctoral "Juan de la Cierva" (Postdoctoral Researcher) at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid.

Clara Portela

Clara Portela has been recently awarded the 2011 THESEUS Prize for Promising Research on European Integration.

THESEUS is a European Studies network, composed of Sciences Po-Paris, Universitaet Koeln, the Thyssen Foundation and the Belgium-based TEPSA network.

The award conferral took place in Cologne in the context of a conference.

Nikoleta Yordanova

EUSA Prize for Best Dissertation

The European Union Studies Association (EUSA) Prize for Best Dissertation in EU studies has been awarded to Nikoleta Yordanova, who successfully defended her thesis at the EUI in June 2010. Nikoleta’s thesis was entitled Legislative Organisation of the European Parliament: The Role of Committees and marks a substantial contribution  not only to the literature on parliaments in general and the European Parliament in particular, but also to the  understanding of the democratic deficit in Europe and how it might be tackled. Nikoleta is currently employed as a Research Fellow at the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) Center 'Political Economy of Reforms' at the University of Mannheim, Germany.

Ilias Ntinas

Ilias Ntinas (Department of Politcal and Social Sciences) was awarded the first Linz Rokkan Prize for the best EUI thesis in the field of political sociology engaging with a theme in the broadly defined fields of the works of  Juan Linz and Stein Rokkan.

The title of his thesis, defended in 2010, is: "The Impressionable Years: the Formative Role of Family, Vote and Political Events during Early Childhood".

Ilias received his award at the Annual Conferring Ceremony on 10 June 2011.

In 2009, Ilias  was also awarded the John Sullivan Award for the best paper presented by a graduate student on an Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behaviour Panel at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Political Sciences Association.

Donatella Della Porta

Donatella della Porta  has been awarded the  Fondation Mattei Dogan  and  European Consortium for European Research  (ECPR) Prize in European Political Sociology for 2011. The Prize Jury stated that her "work across a whole range of key sub-fields in the discipline (civil society, political violence, policing and public order, terrorism, and most prominently social movements) as well as professional engagement as the coordinator of several European research projects (on democratization, contentious politics and social activism) greatly impressed the jury and affirmed the high standards of this prestigious award".

Nicolas Chaignot

Nicolas Chaignot (Ph.D. 2010)  has been awarded the prize "Le monde de la recherche universitaire" in the human and social sciences categoria, for the 14th edition (2010-2011) organized by the French newspaper "Le monde". This prize rewards his Ph.D. Thesis "Esclavages et modernités: la servitude volontaire comme problématique du capitalisme contemporain" ( abstract).

Luis de la Calle Robles and Sergi Pardos Prado

Luis de la Calle Robles (Ph.D. 2009) received the Juan J. Linz prize for 2009-2010 awarded by the  Political and Constitutional Studies Centre in Spain for his dissertation entitled "Accounting for Nationalist Violence in Affluent Countries".

On the same occasion another former EUI researcher,  Sergi Pardos Prado (Ph.D. 2010), received the Special Mention for this prize. Sergi's doctoral thesis was entitled: "Beyond Radical Right: Attitudes towards Immigration and Voting Behaviour in Europe". 

Sven Steinmo

The 2011 Gunnar Myrdal Prize,  is awarded to " The Evolution of Modern States:  Sweden, Japan and the United States" by  Sven Steinmo, (Cambridge University Press, 2010). This impressive monograph on the comparative history of Japan, Sweden and the United States draws on insights from evolutionary approaches to make up for important shortcomings in the existing literature on political economy, globalization and historical institutionalism. With this breathtaking synthesis of the complex challenges of a fast changing globalizing world, Sven Steinmo helps us to challenge the conventional convergence view to explore how those three different capitalist democracies have evolved along different trajectories that allow them to respond differently to globalization.

 Jean-Christophe Graz, European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy, EAEPE Prize Committee Coordinator

Sven Steinmo

The 2011 European Research Council Advanced Grant has been awarded to Sven Steinmo, for his project "Willing to Pay? Testing Historical Institutionalism with Experiments".

The project will combine experimental techniques and methodologies with classical historical analysis in order to test and explore the relationships between institutions, policy regimes and citizen’s policy choices in different welfare states. The research will extend the current work in experimental economics and cognitive science by designing experiments that are modeled on real world institutions and policy choices in several different countries.

The research will focus on two sets of redistributive policy issues: Taxation and public pensions in five democratic nations: Sweden, Italy, Britain, Hungary and the United States. The basic point will be to build a series of scenarios that will allow us to test how different institutional contexts frame or shape citizens’ decisions and thereby better understand how they perceive and process different policy choices and trade-offs.

Manuele Citi

Manuele Citi (Ph.D. 2009) was awarded a fellowship for independent research in the social sciences (FSE) offered by the Danish Research Council. He will take up his position in February 2011 for a duration of 2 years

Tiago Fernandes

Tiago Fernandes (Ph.D. 2009) was awarded the best Ph.D. dissertation prize by a Portuguese in the last two years (Portuguese Political Science Association)

His current affiliation: research and teaching Fellowship (2009-2011) at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, USA.

Chris Hanretty

Chris Hanretty (Ph.D. 2009) has been awarded the François Mény Prize for the Best Comparative Study of European Institutions for his dissertation entitled "The Political Independence of Public Service Broadcasters".

Costanza Hermanin

Costanza Hermanin won a Fulbright Fellowship that she takes up in December 2010 for a duration of ten months.

Ilias Ntinas

Ilias Ntinas (Ph.D. 2010) has been awarded the John Sullivan Award for the best paper presented by a graduate student on an Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behaviour Panel at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Political Sciences Association.

Thomas Paster

Thomas Paster (Ph.D, 2009) received the Erwin-Wenzl-Prize 2010 for his PhD thesis. The prize is  awarded by the St. Magdalena Educational Centre by the  government of Upper Austria. He is one of six laureates, selected among 192 nominations from all disciplines. The prize is awarded for outstanding work by researchers from Upper Austria.

In his thesis, which he defended at the European University Institute in June 2009, he investigated under which conditions German employers accepted social policy reforms. He is currently working as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany.

Chiara Ruffa

Chiara Ruffa won a Fulbright Fellowship that she will take up in December 2010 for a duration of ten months.

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.

Frédéric Mérand and Antoine Vandemoortele

Frédéric Mérand and Antoine Vandemoortele (Ph.D. candidate)« L'Europe dans la culture stratégique canadienne, 1949-2009 », Etudes internationales, volume XL, no 2.

Recipient, inaugural Paul-Painchaud award for best article published in the journal Etudes internationales in 2009

http://www.hei.ulaval.ca/publications/revue_etudes_internationales/prix_paulpainchaud/

Joost van Spanje

Joost van Spanje (Ph.D. 2009) has been awarded the 2010 Dutch Political Science Association Best PhD Dissertation Prize. His dissertation, Pariah Parties, which was defended at the EUI in 2009, was selected from 52 political science dissertations nominated from that year. In his study, Joost investigates under which circumstances other parties systematically boycott a rival party in their party system, and whether or not such a cordon sanitaire strategy affects a targeted party's electoral support. Joost is currently employed as a post doctoral researcher at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam. 

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 project is based at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and directed by Prof. Alexander Trechsel. It was developed under the auspices of EUDO, in a consortium with the company Kieskompas and NCCR Democracy (University of Zurich/Zentrum für Demokratie Aarau)/Politools network.

When the EU Profiler tool was online from 23 April until the elections it attracted over 2.5 million users.

The EUI ranked amongst the best according to the CHE Excellence Ranking 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.

CHE ExcellenceRanking defines "stars" rather than ranking positions.  It is about detailed analysis rather than general ranking. The results are deliberately not summed to give a total number of points.

The reason is that there is simply no "best" higher education institution, either for a single discipline or all disciplines. The ranking is intended for all students/researchers planning a master or doctoral degree and looking for an institution for their research.

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.

Fernandes was also awarded the Gulbenkian Foundation Best Article Award for the best article published by young Portuguese social scientists in the social sciences (except economics) in 2007-2009. See «Authoritarian Regimes and Pro-Democracy Semi-oppositions. The End of the Portuguese Dictatorship (1968-1974) in Comparative Perspective», Democratization, 14 (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.

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 EUI, won the Johan Skytte Prize in political science 2009 for his path-breaking work on the role of corporatism in modern democracies, and for his stimulating and innovative analysis of democratization.

He also received the Mattei Dogan Prize awarded by the International Political Science Association to a scholar of high international reputation in recognition of their contribution to political science. This is awarded every three years at the World Congresses of the International Political Science Association (IPSA).

Dorota Szelewa

Dorota Szelewa (Ph.D. 2009) received a two-year fellowship to the Post-doc Programme 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.