At the ECSR Annual Conference, held at  Trinity College Dublin from 15-17 June 2026, the winners of the ECSR Prize for the Best PhD Thesis of the Year were officially announced.

The 1st prize was awarded to Gaia Ghirardi (European University Institute, Florence) for her thesis “Interaction of Family Socioeconomic Status and Genotype in the Intergenerational Transmission of Educational and Health Inequalities”. 

The 2nd prize was awarded to Vanessa Wittemann (University of Cologne) for the thesis titled “Reframing Reproduction: A Prospective Approach to the Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Attainment and Political Orientation” and 3^rd prize to Kerstin Ostermann (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg) for her thesis “Spatial Inequality and Social Outcomes Using Georeferenced Data to Explain the Spatial Dimension of Networks, Social Norms, and Context Effects.”

The winner of the first prize received a cash award of €500, while the runners-up received €300 and €200 respectively. 

This year, 17 institutions submitted a candidate for the best PhD prize. Members of the ECSR Board shortlisted 3 candidates based on extended abstracts. An expert panel, consisting of Prof. Wiebke Schulz (Universität Bremen, Socium), Prof. Dimitris Pavlopoulos (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Prof. Anna Baranowska-Rataj (ECSR board & Umeå University) read the shortlisted PhDs and chose the winners.

All awarded theses are recognized for their significant contributions to sociological research and to advancing the life course perspective in comparative research.

The call for nominations for theses defended in 2026 will be announced in February 2027.

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The ESR Best Article of 2025 Award was presented to Kathryn Christine Beck for her paper “The Later the Better? A Novel Approach to Estimating the Effect of School Starting Age on ADHD and Academic Skills.” 

Two articles received runner-up recognition (in alphabetical order):

Maria Rubio-Cabañez for “Stratifying Cities: The Effect of Outdoor Recreation Areas on Children’s Well-being.”
Jan Saarela, Martin Kolk, and Ognjen Obućina for “Kinship, Heritage, and Ethnic Choice: Ethnolinguistic Registration Across Four Generations in Contemporary Finland.”

The committee choosing this years best paper consisted of Prof. Michelle Jackson (Stanford University), Dr. Eleonora Vlach (Associate Editor of the ESR and post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Sociology of Goethe University in Frankfurt) and Prof Jorge Rodríguez-Menés (Member of the ECSR board and Professor of Sociology and Criminology at UPF).

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At the ECSR Annual Conference, held at Trinity College Dublin from 15-17 June 2026, the winners of the ESR Best Reviewer Award were announced.

The winners of the ESR 2025 Best Reviewer award are (in alphabetical order): Ea Hoppe Blaabæk, Fabian Kratz and Anna Zamberlan.

European Sociological Review awards the Best Reviewer Award since 2024. Nominations are made by the Associate Editors. The criteria of the award are the quality and timeliness of the review(s) in the previous year, as well as the overall reviews record.

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The presentation offers a broad reflection on recent developments in social stratification research, with particular attention to the opportunities and challenges associated with new forms of data, prediction, causal inference, and research synthesis and transparency.

The post Moris Triventi’s slides from the ECSR keynote speech appeared first on ECSR.

The programme featured lectures by Fabrizio Bernardi (UNED), Per Engzell (University College London), Cristina Iannelli (University of Edinburgh), Philipp Lersch (Humboldt University of Berlin), Lidia Panico (Sciences Po), and Jonas Radl (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid).

Sixteen doctoral and early-career researchers from universities across Europe presented their ongoing work and received feedback from the keynote speakers and members of the Spring School’s scientific committee.

The post Throwback to ECSR-CA-NASP Spring School 2026 appeared first on ECSR.

Deadline for application: 1 Mai 2026.

For full information about the call for applications see here.

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Under this call, applicants may apply for support for one of two event formats:

• Thematic Conferences
• Junior Network Workshops

Applications must be submitted by July 31, 2026, for conferences taking place in 2027.

See more information here.

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The ESR Best Article of 2025 Award was presented to Georg Kanitsar for his paper “Leaving the bike unlocked: trust discrimination in inter-ethnic encounters”. The jury praised the paper’s innovative approach and its contribution to advancing research on trust and inter-ethnic relations.

Two articles received runner-up recognition (in alphabetical order):

• Filippo Andrei, Davide Barrera, Krzysztof Krakowski and Emilio Sulis for “Trust intermediary in a cryptomarket for illegal drugs”
• Helen Kowalewska and Agnese Vitali for “The female-breadwinner well-being ‘penalty’: differences by men’s (un)employment and country”

The winner receives a cash prize of €500. In addition, the winning article and the two runners-up are made freely available in open access on the European Sociological Review website (Oxford University Press) for one month.

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At the ECSR Annual Conference, held at the University of Cologne from September 3–5, 2025, the winners of the ECSR Prize for the Best PhD Thesis of the Year were officially announced.

The 1st prize was awarded to Said Hassan for his thesis “Residential Segregation, School Contexts, and Educational Inequalities”. 

Two theses received 2nd prize recognition (in alphabetical order). Kasimir Dederichs, “Who (else) is Involved? – How Voluntary Associations Connect and Separate Us” and Chen-Hao Hsu, “Employment Instability, Family Formation, and Motherhood Penalties: Comparative and Life Course Perspectives”.

The 3rd prize was awarded to Filippo Gioachin for his thesis “Life Chances and Life Courses: Institutional Transformations and the Social Stratification of Contemporary Life Course Inequalities”.

The winner of the first prize receives a cash award of €500. All awarded theses are recognized for their significant contributions to sociological research and to advancing the life course perspective in comparative research.

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This years winners are: Said Hassan, Katya Ivanova and Nicole Schwitter. 

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