Irene Pañeda-Fernández has been awarded the 2023 ESR Prize for the Best Article of the Year for her article titled, Natural disasters and preferences for redistribution: the impact of collective and abrupt disruptions. The prize is awarded annually for an article that demonstrates rigorous empirical-theoretical sociological research. The article was selected from among the sixty articles that were published in the latest volume of Europe's flagship journal in Sociology, European Sociological Review.
The article is a chapter in her EUI dissertation, which she successfully defended in 2022, under the supervision of SPS Professor Arnout van de Rijt. In the article, Pañeda-Fernández shows that more surprising disasters, such as earthquakes, increase victims' support for policies and viewpoints that favour greater redistribution from rich to poor, while more predictable disasters, such as hurricanes, do not. Pañeda-Fernández argues this is because the latter are more likely to trigger narratives of personal responsibility and preparedness.
One of the PhD examining board members, Professor Jennifer Heerwig (SUNY-Stony Brook), shared her reaction to the research:
"Pañeda's brilliant thesis stands out to me for its extremely high quality and remarkable originality. Pañeda was able to apply cutting-edge causal inference techniques, a huge range of data sources, and sophisticated spatial analysis techniques to investigate attitudes towards inequality. It remains one of the best theses I've read."
Irene Pañeda-Fernández' thesis is available in open access in Cadmus, the EUI's research repository.