The panel of the 2023 PolGRG Undergraduate Dissertation Prize (Jonathan Harris, Semra Akay and Luke Temple) is delighted to announce its winning entry.
The prize was delayed owing to the UCU Marking and Assessment Boycott over the summer of 2023. The prize also received fewer entries than average for recent years, coming from only 5 UK universities (Cardiff, Leicester, Manchester, Nottingham, and Oxford). Nonetheless, the entries continued to be of an excellent standard and were a pleasure to review. They were reflective of a variety of themes and approaches within the subdiscipline, focusing on legal geographies, popular culture, social inequality, citizenship and diaspora.
The Winner:
Strategic Citizenship and the “Wandering Jew”: Emotion, Identity, and Memory in Brexit-Related Pre-Holocaust Citizenship (Re)clamation
By Jessica Ebner-Statt (University of Oxford)
This well-argued essay presents a unique, timely, innovative case study of strategic citizenship considered through a well-structured research project. Ebner-Statt uses her own experience of re-claiming for Austrian citizenship as the descendant of Jewish refugees as an effective springboard for a clearly articulated research project that innovatively brings together citizenship studies and emotional geography, extending the disciplinary understanding of the operation of power within contemporary citizenship acquisition.
Each chapter is well-organised, with clearly developed arguments from the abstract to the conclusion. Its methodology demonstrates a considered approach that balances ethical and epistemological concerns with practical limitations. The data is used very effectively, and the discussion is insightful. It has a clear contribution to make, and is close to publishable quality. Overall, the panel was very impressed by the execution of this outstanding piece.
Highly Commended:
“Powerless to the law”? Exploring the legal geographies of women’s homelessness in Wales
By Juliet Knapton (Cardiff University)
This dissertation is ambitious, using an innovative and ethically principled methodology combining quantitative data analysis of FOI data with expert interviews, and theoretical ‘vignettes’ to tease out differences in the application of legal and policy instruments to homeless women in Wales. It makes a significant contribution to the literature on legal geographies by delving into the divergent experiences of women facing homelessness.