The IPSA Guillermo O'Donnell Award for Latin-American Scholars is meant to reward a Latin American scholar with residence in the region who is working on pioneering and innovative research in political science. The award recipient is invited to attend the upcoming IPSA World Congress and present a lecture. The award was launched at the 2023 World Congress in Buenos Aires.
Prize: $3,000 USD (1 recipient)
The prize offers $3,000 USD for the IPSA World Congress for one winner. The cash prize is the total award; no further reimbursement is to be awarded to one winner.
Condition: The award recipient is to attend the upcoming IPSA World Congress and present a lecture to receive the monetary award. Remote participation will be possible only when the event is fully virtual for the Congress in question.
Application Procedures
The following are the criteria for the award:
a. Academic/Education Criteria:
- Scholars with a completed PhD;
- No age requirement.
b. Demographic/Geographic Eligibility:
- The recipient must be a Latin American scholar with residence in the region;
- The recipient must have resided in this region for a minimum of 5 consecutive years;
- The following are considered as part of Latin America:
- All countries in South America, including Brazil;
- All countries in Central America and the Caribbean, including Mexico and Puerto Rico.
c. Condition: the award recipient is to attend the upcoming IPSA World Congress and present a lecture to receive the monetary award.
Submitting Applications
The application period for the IPSA Guillermo O'Donnell Award for Latin-American Scholars is closed.
Application deadline: 1 March 2025
Applicants for the award are expected to submit the following supporting documents (in PDF format only) in order to complete the application.
- a curriculum vitae,
- a statement of the nature of the research project and an explanation as to why this work is innovative;
- a letter of reference from an academic familiar with the applicant’s work certifying his or her academic status and indicating his or her suitability for the award;
- a representative sample of written work whose length should not be greater than a scientific journal article;
- a letter confirming institutional affiliation as proof of residence in the Latin American region.
The IPSA Committee on Organization, Procedures and Awards (COPA) will assess candidates’ written work.
Guillermo O'Donnell Award Recipients
2025 Carlos Pereira, Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV)
Carlos Pereira is a Professor at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV EBAPE), Rio de Janeiro, a weekly op-ed columnist for the newspaper Estado de São Paulo (Estadão), and a Senior Fellow at the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI). He holds a PhD in political science from the New School / New York University and completed postdoctoral work at the University of Oxford.
He was a Visiting Professor at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (2022-2023); Edward Laroque Tinker Visiting Professor at Stanford University (2017); Visiting Scholar at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin (2016-2017); Visiting Fellow in Foreign Policy and Global Economics at the Brookings Institution (2010-2011); and Resident Fellow at the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation, Italy (2008). He also served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University (2005-2011) and as a Professor at the São Paulo School of Economics at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV EESP). He worked as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of São Paulo (USP) and at Colby College in Maine, USA.
He has extensively published in several academic refereed journals, including the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Government and Opposition, Governance, Regulation & Governance, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Journal of Democracy, Latin American Politics and Society, among others. He is the author of four books: Regulatory Governance in Infrastructure Industries (2006, The World Bank Press), Making Brazil Work: Checking the President in a Multiparty System (2013, Palgrave Macmillan), Brazil in Transition: Beliefs, Leadership and Institutional Change (2016, Princeton University Press), and Why Brazilian Democracy Didn’t Die? (2024, Companhia das Letras).
