Stefano Bartolini, Professor Emeritus in the EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences, is the recipient of the 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award by the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). The biennial prize is awarded to a scholar who has made an outstanding contribution to European political science and carries a fund of £4,300.
The jury left no room for doubt, praising a career that has fundamentally shaped European political science. "Stefano's research has been deeply engaged with the development of European political science as a field of study and a scholarly community," the jury noted. "In doing so, he has helped bridge national traditions and foster a genuinely European intellectual space, making his influence substantive and institutional."
Across all five judging criteria – scholarly contribution, discipline-shaping impact, European relevance, institution building, and sustained lifetime achievement – he received the highest possible evaluation.
Bartolini began his career as Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna and at the EUI, before holding full professorships at the Universities of Trieste, Geneva, and Bologna. He returned to the EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences as Full Professor in 1994, and from 2006 to 2013 led the Robert Schuman Centre, before retiring in 2019 as holder of the Peter Mair Chair in Comparative Politics.
Reflecting on his long relationship with the ECPR, Bartolini shared: "I feel honoured by an award I would not have achieved without the institution that now bestows it on me."
The ECPR award adds to a distinguished list of honours. Bartolini previously received the UNESCO Stein Rokkan Prize for the Social Sciences (1990), the Gregory Luebbert Prize of the American Political Science Association in Comparative Politics (2001), and the APSA best book prize for European Politics (2002). He was elected to the Academia Europaea in 2022.
The EUI congratulates Professor Bartolini on this well-deserved recognition of a remarkable scholarly career.
The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) is an independent scholarly association established in 1970, supporting and encouraging the training, research, and cross-national cooperation of political scientists across Europe and beyond.