Winning Young Scholars Think Pieces Published

From over 70 submissions to the first edition of the Young Scholars Think Piece Series, the UNRISD jury has selected four think pieces to be published on the Institute’s web site. The jury, composed of academic experts and publication professionals, met several times to evaluate all submissions and then scrutinize the short-listed entries.

“It was not at all an easy task to choose between them,” says UNRISD Research Coordinator Katja Hujo. “Once we got down to the last few entries, the quality was so impressive and the topics of the think pieces so varied, it was hard to narrow it down further.”

Selection was based not only on quality and research relevance, but also on innovation and originality. Many of the submissions were based on original field work carried out by the young researchers, often focusing on areas of research which have so far been neglected in the literature. A key strength of the winning entries is that they highlight approaches to research which are often acknowledged as important but rarely feature prominently in the study of extractive industries. Others stand out for their unusual combination of analytical foci.

The following think pieces were selected as outright winners:

• Duygu Avci: “Paving a national avenue on top of a complex network of trails: Contentions around mineral extraction in Ecuador.”
  (Turkish, studying at Erasmus University Rotterdam)
  
• Michael Marchant: “Corporate social responsibility and oil in the Niger Delta: Solution or part of the problem?”
  (South African, studying at the University of Edinburgh )
  
• Karolien van Teijlingen: “The extractive industries, power struggles and the battle of ideas.”
  (Dutch, studying at the University of Amsterdam )
  
• Martin Tengler: “Activists and extractive industries: An alliance against social development?”
  (Czech, studying at the University of Oxford)
  
  

UNRISD would like to congratulate all the winners on the originality of their work and on submitting well-argued, convincing think pieces. They have been published on the UNRISD web site and are being promoted on UNRISD’s social media channels. The winners also receive a pdf certificate in recognition of their participation and achievement.

An opportunity for four runners-up

In response to both the overall quality of the submissions and to requests for feedback received in a survey of participants, UNRISD has decided to add a runners-up category. The pieces selected in this category are quality texts with significant potential but which require some revision to achieve the same standard as the outright winners. Four think pieces were chosen for the runners-up category:

• Stephen Yeboah: "‘Crops’ or ‘Carats’? Interaction between gold mining and cocoa production and the livelihood dilemma in Amansie Central District of Ghana."
  (Ghanaian, studying at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva)
  
• Siddarth Sareen: "Programmed to fail? Development as security and Asia’s biggest iron ore deposit."
  (Indian, studying at the Universities of Copenhagen and Padova)
  
• Johanna Sydow: "Corporate Social Responsibility: A globally applicable tool to standardize and manage community-company relations? An analysis of CSR in the extractive sectors of Ghana and Peru."
  (German, studying at the University of Sussex)
  
• Anja Tolonen: "African mining, gender and local employment."
  (Swedish, studying at the University of Gothenburg)

The authors of these pieces have been offered the chance to revise their texts based on detailed feedback from UNRISD experts. They also receive a pdf certificate recognizing the originality and potential of their research.

Photo credit: ram reddy via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0