The panel of the 2024 PolGRG Undergraduate Dissertation Prize (Semra Akay, Shawn Bodden, Olivia Mason, Luke Temple) is delighted to announce its winning entry.

The prize received entries from 12 UK universities (Queens Belfast, Glasgow, Durham, Nottingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Lincoln, Southampton, Oxford, Leeds, Exeter, Royal Holloway).

Topics covered climate strategy, national identity, low traffic neighbourhoods, Ukrainian refugees, the UK Levelling Up policy, immigration, geopolitics, Palestinian solidarity, protest and politicisation to name a few. The work was of excellent quality and we have two highly commended entries alongside our winner:

The Winner

‘It’s a Constant Reminder that I am Not Like Everyone Else’: Investigating the Exclusionary Manifestations of the Common Travel Area (CTA) Restrictions for Non-CTA Nationals Resident in Northern Ireland

Aoife Greenburg (University of Leeds)

This project skilfully demonstrates how CTA restrictions impact various individuals’ sense of belonging and practices of citizenship by conducting in-depth interviews with both CTA and non-CTA nationals. The discussion employs and effectively handles a range of concepts, such as globalisation, migration, borders, citizenship, and belonging. These are used to enrich the analysis and reveal an active hierarchy of mobility in Ireland. Overall, the panel was very impressed by the execution of this outstanding and well focused piece.

Highly Commended (listed alphabetically):

Get to Work, Comrade! Playing with the Border in Papers, Please

Eve Castle (University of Exeter)

This dissertation on the indie computer game Papers, Please is superbly written, with ideas of affect, ludic geographies, and imaginative and moral play very effectively explored in a nuanced and insightful way.

Performing Geopolitics: Narrating Croatia’s emergence on the European Stage through the European Song Contest.

Faye Paizes (Royal Hollaway, University of London)

This dissertation traces narratives of national and European identity in and surrounding Croatia’s Eurovision performances over the last three decades. A mixed-methodology is used to excellent effect to connect historical instances in Eurovision to comment on geopolitical conflict (i.e. in the Balkans) with contemporary concerns and debates (i.e. in Ukraine).