BIGSSS Best Paper Award 2025 › view all

We are pleased to announce this year’s winners of the BIGSSS Best Paper Award, which was presented at our Meeting of Members on May 14th. The award honors the authors of outstanding academic papers.

The selection committee, which had the challenging task of selecting the best paper, was composed of faculty members Judith Vey, Mandi Larsen, and Sophia Hunger, as well as our fellows Gonzalo Arèvalo Iglesias, Sophia Roppertz, and Adekunle Adedeji.

We are proud to recognize the outstanding work of our doctoral fellows and extend our warm congratulations to:

Laudatory speeches were written by Sophia Roppertz, Adekunle Adedeji, and Gonzalo Arèvalo Iglesias, highlighting the significance of the winning papers and the authors' contributions to their fields.

We want to thank Sophia, Adekunle and Gonzalo for their inspiring words. We also extend our sincere appreciation to all fellows who submitted papers. Your contributions made the selection process highly competitive and reflect the impactful research conducted here at BIGSSS.

Once again, congratulations to Hudu Banikoi and Gamze Ipek!

Abstracts

Banikoi, H. (2024): Legal pluralism, ideology, and institutional change: the evolution of institutions for coastal resource governance in Ghana. In Journal of Institutional Economics 20 (32).

Co-management regimes are institutional innovations that hold the promise of achieving sustainable common-pool resource governance. However, the transition to such institutional regimes in coastal resource systems has faced challenges in many countries. This article examines the processes and outcomes of such institutional changes in coastal fisheries in Ghana, where the transition to co-management was unsuccessful. Combining theoretical perspectives from legal pluralism in legal anthropology and ideational theories of institutional change within institutional economics, the paper uses process tracing to examine the role of ideology and historical institutional dynamics of the resource context in the institutionalization and failure of co-management arrangements for governing coastal fisheries. The study finds that ideological conflicts and historical legacies of legal pluralism hindered the practice and outcomes of coastal fisheries co-management in Ghana. The article argues for particular attention to the historical institutional dimensions and underlying worldviews of the resource context in institutional interventions for sustainability in coastal resource systems.

Ipek, G.;  Drobnič, S.; Boehnke, K. (2024): Work-family interference and life satisfaction: the role of lifegoals. In Community Work & Family, 1-23.

The interface between work and family domains has received considerable scholarly attention in recent decades due to its substantial impact on outcomes related to work, family, health, and well-being. However, individuals experience this impact differently, with some demonstrating resilience while others are more vulnerable to negative effects. In this study, we investigate the role of individuals’ life goals and gender in the work-family interface, using the framework of the work-home resources model and selfregulation theory. Using Structural Equation Modeling with data from Waves 8 and 10 of the German Family Panel (pairfam), we found that life goals significantly moderate these effects: individuals prioritizing agentic goals feel the detrimental impact of work-to-family interference (WtFI) on life satisfaction more intensely than those who prioritize communal goals and those whose goals are balanced. In contrast, the effect of family-to-work interference (FtWI) on life satisfaction was significant only for individuals prioritizing communal goals, with no significant moderation effect observed across the other life goal groups. We observed no significant gender difference in the impact of either WtFI or FtWI on life satisfaction. We also discuss potential theoretical and practical implications in light of our findings.