BIGSSS Best Paper Award 2026 › 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 20th. 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 Sarah Berens, Fabian Dehos and Cornelius Puschmann.

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

Sophia Landzettel for her single-authored paper on “Conditional solidarity towards families with children - A conjoint experiment”. 
Sophia Landzettel

And Ernest Ayumu for his paper co-authored with Austin Dziwornu Ablo and Bjorn Enge Bertelsen ​“Meeting Ghana's housing needs: '(un)affordable' public housing in a rapidly urbanising context​”.

 
Ernest Ayumu

Due to the exceptionally high quality of submissions this year, the selection committee decided to recognize two outstanding contributions with an Honorable Mention in the Single-Authored Paper Award category.

The Honorable Mentions were awarded to Rida Bano for her manuscript, “Beyond Ambivalent Sexism: Ideological Pathways to the Tolerance of Violence Against Women in Pakistan”, and to Timo Wiesner for his publication, “Rising Inequality: Is the Public Response Really Lacking? A Comparative Longitudinal Analysis of Perceived Inequality and Evaluative Attitudes”, published in the international peer-reviewed journal Socio-Economic Review.

Laudatory speeches were held by Regina Arant and Sana Zainab, honoring the achievements of these excellent pieces of research, their relevance and significant contribution.

We would like to thank Regina Arant and Sana Zainab for their inspiring words. We also sincerely thank all fellows who submitted papers. Your contributions made the selection process exceptionally competitive and showcase the high-quality and impactful research being conducted at BIGSSS.

Once again, congratulations to Sophia Landzettel and Ernest Ayumu!