History researcher Asensio Robles Lopez awarded paper prize

The Transatlantic Studies Association (TSA) has awarded History researcher Asensio Robles Lopez the DC Watt Prize for the best paper presented by an early career scholar at their annual conference.

His paper Between détente and the shock of the global. The late Franco regime and its meaning for transatlantic relations (1975) analysed how a seemingly marginal international actor such as the Franco regime influenced transatlantic relations in 1975.

Robles Lopez showed how the imminent death of General Francisco Franco pushed US and Western European policymakers to test the limits of their divergent understandings of the Cold War, in the context of a transnational Southern European crisis and of the global recession and energy crisis.

As winner of the prize, Asensio will have the opportunity to organise a panel for the next annual TSA conference. His paper will also be reviewed for potential publication in the Journal of Transatlantic Studies.