Mattei Dogan Foundation Prize

Nominations open: Monday 27 November 2023.
Nominations close: Friday 22 March 2024.

Submitting a nomination

To nominate, please email a formal nomination letter from the Head of Department or person in an equivalent position (including Official Representatives of ECPR institutions, though membership is not required) of a professional association, university or research centre to prizes@ecpr.eu 

Two or three Political Sociologists may also jointly nominate a candidate.

Nominations must include:  (as separate PDF files)

• The formal nomination letter (Document 1)
• Letters of recommendation from scholars who need not necessarily be ECPR members. (Document 1)
• A biography and bibliography of the nominee (Document 2)
• Evidence of the visibility of the nominee in the literature (Document 2)

The prize is awarded exclusively on scientific and academic criteria, at the exclusion of any ascriptive characteristic.

Eligibility

• All scholars residing in European countries are eligible, regardless of ECPR Membership.
• Cohesive teams of several researchers are eligible for this award and are considered alongside individual nominations. At least half of the team must meet all eligibility criteria.
• Candidates should be less than 75 years old on 1 January of the year of the prize, because it is presumed that at this stage in their careers, the eminent scholars have already seen their merits recognised and recompensed.  In exceptional cases, the ECPR Executive Committee may forgo this requirement.
• The age condition is not applicable to the former members of the ECPR Executive Committee, or those co-nominated with them.

Exclusions

Self-nominations are not accepted.

Members of the ECPR Executive Committee, ECPR Director, or Editors of any ECPR books, journals or blog are not eligible for this prize.

• Members of the Executive Committee and the Director become eligible after three buffer years, and editors after one.

Prize Jury

The jury for the 2024 comprises:

• Anne Rasmussen, Chair, member of the Executive Committee
• Vincent Hoffman-Martinot, President of the Mattei Dogan Foundation
• Alon Helled, University of Turin
• Tatjana Sekulic, University of Bicocca-Milan
• David Swartz, Boston University

Announcement

The winner will be announced in summer 2024.

2022 – Olivier Fillieule

We are honoured to award the 2022 Mattei Dogan Foundation Prize to Olivier Fillieule, of the University of Lausanne.

A professor of political sociology at the Institute for Political Studies of the University of Lausanne and senior researcher at the CNRS, Olivier Fillieule is a member of CRAPUL (Research Centre for Political Action) and LIVES (Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research).

He has conducted his research in four directions: the dynamics of social and political mobilisations; state management of social conflicts in democratic and authoritarian contexts, and internationalisation of modes of control; the sociology of commitment and activist careers, including disengagement; and the methodology of social movement studies.

His work has covered various empirical types of contentious politics, from 1968 to the campaigns on AIDS, from alter-globalist to environmental activism, from the Arab Spring to the Yellow Vests, and he has written and published widely in both French and English.

We have created this short video to share the special moment with our community.

From our jury: '…A highly productive scholar, Olivier Fillieule has given a most valuable contribution to core issues in political sociology. Particularly important are his contributions to the analysis of social movements and protest, including path-breaking research on street demonstrations as a repertoire of contention, the policing of protest, and the micro-dynamics of mobilizations'

Read full laudation

In his own words: 'I am grateful for this prize, which rewards work carried out in collaboration with many colleagues to whom this award also belongs; I am proud of this prize which, beyond my person, salutes a collective undertaking for the development of social movement studies in Europe.'

2020 – Niilo Kauppi

We are delighted to reveal that the 2020 Mattei Dogan Foundation Prize  has been awarded to Niilo Kauppi, in recognition of his significant contribution to the development of this area of the discipline over more than three decades.

Niilo is Visiting Professor at the Swedish School of Social Science of the University of Helsinki, Director of Research (on leave) at CNRS in France, and affiliated with Sciences Po Strasbourg.

In conferring the award, prize jury Chair Mary Farrell recognised how ‘Niilo has provided leadership in several organisations responsible for advancing knowledge of political life in Europe’.
Niilo KauppiIn his own words

'"One is never safe from good news", as they say in France! I am surprised and deeply honoured to have been awarded this prize. For me, the ECPR and its political sociology community have been a real intellectual home, providing a highly stimulating environment for explorative and creative work. I look forward to taking part in future endeavours to further develop European political sociology.'
About Niilo

Niilo received his PhD from the University of Helsinki in 1991 and has continued to serve the European academy with distinction throughout his professional academic career.

He has an impressive record of collaboration in research, teaching, and other professional activities across universities in Luxembourg, Lausanne (IEPI), Tallinn (University of Technology), and Paris (EHESS). From 2015 to 2019 he was Distinguished Professor at the Department of Social Science and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä. During 1999ꟷ2000 and 2002ꟷ2003 he was visiting professor at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard.

Niilo’s career demonstrates his dedication and service to the profession, reflected in a variety of roles including President of the Finnish Political Science Association (2003ꟷ06), founder and chair of our Standing Group in European Political Sociology (2010), and Associate Director of the Centre for European Political Sociology at Sciences Po Strasbourg from 2007ꟷ2012.

Between 2012 and 2015, Niilo served as ECPR’s vice-chair, with responsibility for our General Conference, Publications, and Standing Groups portfolios, and from 2005ꟷ2009, he was an Executive Committee member of EPSA.

He has collaborated on numerous research projects around Europe and been awarded grants from a number of European research funding bodies, and from the European Commission’s multi-annual Framework Programme.

Niilo’s contribution to the European scholarly community is reflected in the evaluation of research programmes for leading funding bodies, including the European Science Foundation, Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) Paris, Leverhulme (UK), European Research Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Niilo has been influential in nurturing the next generation of researchers through his teaching, supervision of doctorates and postgraduate theses. He has also been a key influence in communicating the broad contours of European political sociology through his many publications, agenda-setting initiatives and organisational leadership, playing a vital role in shaping the research agenda for a future generation of scholars.
Personal research interests

Niilo’s current research interests range from intellectual and political radicalism to European politics and global governance.

Influenced especially by Bourdieu and Weber, analysing subjects ranging from the rise of ‘French theory’ to that of datafication, Niilo’s long-term theoretical project centres on the political sociology of knowledge and power.

Niilo Kauppi is a regular commentator on French and European politics on Finnish TV and radio.

2017 – Hanspeter Kriesi

The 2017 Prize was awarded to Hanspeter Kriesi, who since 2012 has been Stein Rokkan chair at European University Institute, Florence. He gained his PhD in Sociology from the University of Zurich in 1976 and became professor of collective political behaviour at the University of Amsterdam in 1984, before being appointed full professor at the University of Geneva in 1988. In 2002, Hanspeter Kriesi took up the chair in comparative politics at the University of Zurich.

The jury noted: ‘Hanspeter Kriesi helped redefine and relaunch the field of political sociology. His research ranges across social movements, corporatism, direct democracy, elections, populism, and the political consequences of economic crises. His study of a dramatically evolving society has energised a number of research areas with contributions on the challenges – such as immigration, Euroscepticism, and globalisation – facing European society today.

In awarding this prize, we recognise his prolific and much-cited academic output, the quality of his theoretical and empirical contributions over several decades, his leadership and collaborative engagement with senior and junior scholars alike.’

2015 – Maurizio Cotta

The 2015 Prize was awarded to Maurizio Cotta, University of Sienna. In its motivation, the jury referred to the various significant contributions Professor Cotta has made to European political sociology, through his research and other academic activities. The Jury also noted his important contribution to the field of political sociology via his works on elites, in the footsteps of Mattei Dogan.

Maurizio has co-edited several volumes on elites in Italy and Europe; has lead several significant European research projects (EUENGAGE, INTUNE) that have dealt with elite attitudes towards European integration and the links between public opinion and political and social elites; and has contributed to the revival of the comparative study of parliamentary elites both in Western and Eastern Europe.

Maurizio Cotta is Professor of Political Science at the University of Siena and Director of the PhD programme in Comparative and European Politics and of the Master programme 'Politics in Europe'. Professor Cotta was a member of the ECPR's Executive Committee between 1994 and 2000 and Chairman of the Italian Political Science Association (2001—).

His main research interests are in the field of the comparative study of political elites and political institutions and of Italian politics.

2013 – Virginie Guiraudon

The 2013 Prize was awarded to Virginie Guiraudon, who at the time of winning was Research Director at Sciences Po Paris Center for European Studies. The Jury felt that Professor Guiraudon has made a significant contribution to European political sociology, through her impactful research and academic activities.

A recipient of several other prestigious prizes, including the George Lavau award for best PhD on French contemporary politics (Harvard 1999) and the CNRS bronze medal, Professor Guiraudon has published widely on European public policies, citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism in Europe. Among her professional engagements, Professor Guiraudon was a founder of the political sociology research network of the European Sociological Association, she sits on the editorial board of European Political Science Review, and she is a member of the Executive Committee for the Council for European Studies.

Virginie Guiraudon holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University. She has been a Marie Curie professor at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence (Italy), Visiting Professor at the UCLA (USA), Doshisha University (Japan), UNISA (South Africa) and the CEPC (Madrid). Her main interests lie in the comparative politics of immigration, citizenship and ethnicity.

2011 – Donatella della Porta

The 2011 Prize was awarded to Donatella della Porta, whose scholarly contributions to political sociology have ranged across a wide number of key sub-fields in the discipline. These include civil society, political violence, policing and public order, terrorism – and most prominently social movements, including its domestic, European and global dimensions. Her professional achievements include being the coordinator of several comparative European research projects on democratisation, contentious politics and social activism. Most recently, she has started a major European Research Council project entitled 'Mobilising Europe for Democracy', which will deal with civil society participation in democratisation processes in Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.

Donatella is professor of sociology in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute. She has directed the Demos project, devoted to the analysis of conceptions and practices of democracy in social movements in six European countries. She is now starting a major ERC project Mobilising for Democracy, on civil society participation in democratisation processes in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.

Her main fields of research are social movements, the policing of public order, participatory democracy and political corruption.

2009 – Richard Rose

The 2009 Prize was awarded to Richard Rose. A founding father of the ECPR, he has been one of the biggest names in political science and 'political sociology' since the late 1950s and early 1960s.

He has written frequently and across the range and has published on Northern Ireland, the United States, English and British Politics, and most recently post-Communist politics. He has been widely translated and served the profession across the world.

Parties and Elections in New European Democracies (with Neil Munro) was published by ECPR Press in April 2009.

2007 – Giovanni Sartori

The 2007 Prize was awarded to Giovanni Sartori (1924–2017). Sartori graduated in Political and Social Sciences at the University of Florence in 1946 where, after qualifying for teaching History of Modern Philosophy and Doctrine of the State, he became a lecturer in Modern Philosophy (1950–56) and Political Science (1956–63), and professor of Sociology (1963–66). After becoming full professor of Political Science and teaching at Florence University from 1966 to 1976 he taught also at the European University Institute (1974–76) and later became professor of Political Science at Stanford University (1976–79).

Latterly, Professor Sartori was Albert Schweitzer Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at Columbia University, New York, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Florence. After having given a vital contribution to the development of the Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, Professor Sartori was the founder and longtime director of the Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica (1971–2003).