Since October 2003, the ECPR has awarded an annual Ph.D. prize for the best thesis in politics (broadly conceived to include International Relations, Political Theory and Public Administration) nominated by a full member institution that, with revision, could be published as a monograph. The €1,000 award is presented at the Joint Sessions of Workshops in the following year.
Submitting a nomination
To nominate, please email a formal nomination letter from the Official Representative or Head of Department of the full member institution at which the doctorate was conferred, to prizes@ecpr.eu.
Nominations must be submitted as two separate PDF files as follows:
- Formal nomination letter that details the name of the nominee, their institutional affiliation, contact details, dissertation title and supervisor/promoter.
- A document containing:
-15 pages text of summary with maximum five pages of references
-Annex I: table of contents for full dissertation as figured in PhD officially submitted for defence
-Annex II (only for PhDs based on a compilation of articles): information on status of publication: in review process/published and journal
Eligibility
- The thesis must have been examined and deemed to have passed between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2020. However, the doctorate need not have been officially conferred during this period.
- Only ECPR full member institutions can nominate candidates for the prize, and the thesis nominated must have been submitted at that institution.
- Each ECPR full member institution can nominate one candidate for the prize.
- The nomination must come via the ECPR Official Representative or the Head of Department.
- The thesis shall be the work of a single author.
The topic of the thesis should fit broadly within the field of political science and political thought. For example, work on political economy should draw substantially on relevant political science literature as well as on any economics literature, likewise work on comparative constitutions should draw substantially on relevant literature from political science as well as from law, and so on.
Exclusions
- Self-nominations are not accepted.
- Members of the ECPR Executive Committee, ECPR Director, or Editors of any ECPR books, journals or blog are not eligible for this prize.
Shortlist
The documents will be used to select a shortlist (usually of five candidates). The authors of the shortlisted theses will then be asked to provide an electronic copy of their complete thesis.
