News
Wageningen Social Sciences Publication Awards 2013
The jury, consisting of Rob King, professor of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota and member of the WASS International Advisory Board, Laan van Staalduinen, Director of the Social Sciences Group, and Arthur Mol, Director of WASS, received 7 eligible submissions for the Best WASS Publication 2013 for first authors above the age of 35 and also 7 submission for the Most Promising WASS Publication for first authors under 35. They were extremely pleased with the high quality of the submissions and the wide spreading over various WASS groups and disciplines. So it was a joy to read all the submissions; however, it made the selection of the winners very difficult.
WASS Best Publication Award
The WASS Best Publication Award goes to Ewout Frankema, for the paper “Structural Impediments to African Growth? New Evidence from Real Wages in British Africa, 1880-1965”, written together with Marlous van Waijenburg and published in The Journal of Economic History. The jury found this a strong, highly original, and beautifully written research paper with surprising results, and published in an excellent journal. The paper shows how historical research can contribute to understanding of current path-dependencies of African economic development and the current upsurge in African economic growth. As such it speaks to a variety of other social science disciplines studying Africa.
WASS Most Promising Publication Award
The Most Promising WASS Publication Award will go ex aequo to two junior scientists, as the jury found it impossible to choose between two excellent but very different papers.
The first winner is Omid Noroozi for the co-written publication “Argumentation-based computer supported collaborative learning (ABCSCL). A systematic review and synthesis of fifteen years of research”, published in Educational Research Review. The jury found this a real tour de force, in which a highly relevant and rapidly developing new field of argumentation-based learning via computers was shaped, structured and ordered, while also setting out the research agenda for the future. It was well written and already in such a short time heavily seen and cited. A typical example of excellent scholarship based on library and desk research
The second winner is Maarten Voors for the co-written publication “Violent Conflict and Behavior: A Field Experiment in Burundi”, published in American Economic Review. This is—in contrast to the former winner—a strong field-based and experimental research paper. The jury celebrates the solid and careful field work with behavioural experiments, the rigor in its analysis and the intriguing and original results. It shows the causal impact of exposure to violence in civil war on changes in human behaviour that are of key importance for human development. Moreover, it was published in an excellent journal and already well noted by peers.
Together, the two papers represent two important and strong lines in WASS research.