Carlos J. Gil Hernández has won the European Consortium for Sociological Research 2021 Prize for the Best Dissertation of the Year for his thesis Cracking Meritocracy from the Starting Gate: Social Inequality in Skill Formation and School Choice . Carlos’ thesis was defended in October 2020 in the EUI's Department of Political and Social Sciences, under the supervision of Professor Fabrizio Bernardi.
The ECSR 2021 Prize for the Best Dissertation of the Year was officially announced on the 8th of October 2021, during the plenary section of the ECSR 2021 annual online conference.
Every year the ECSR prize is awarded to the best theoretically based empirical study in sociology. Candidates for the prize can be nominated only by institutions that are part of the ECSR. Currently the ECSR includes over 100 institutions across Europe.
Carlos J. Gil Hernández works as a Social Scientist at the European Commission, Joint Research Centre. His research interests include skill formation, intergenerational social mobility, economic inequality, and social policy. He has been an external consultant for the EUROFOUND and the Spanish Foresight Unit. His work has been published in journals and editorials such as Sociology of Education, European Sociological Review, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, American Behavioral Scientist, Demographic Research, and Stanford University Press.