ASN World Convention Award for DPIR DPhil Student

Congratulations to Susan Divald who has received the Association for the Study of Nationalities award for best doctoral paper on Central Europe.

The prizes were presented at ASN World Convention in New York in May, the largest international and inter-disciplinary gathering of its kind. Ms Divald's award was for her doctoral paper 'The Many Faces of Autonomy: Understanding Variation in the Hungarian Claims to Autonomy in Slovakia'.  The paper looked at the Hungarian elites' claims to autonomy in Slovakia and argued there is a significant mismatch between the way the scholarly literature conceptualises autonomy arrangements and the way the Hungarian elites think of autonomy. It found 'autonomy' as a word is often not used in elite discourse due to the term's negative historical connotation in the Slovak context; instead elites pursue 'autonomy' through a create policy game and by changing the political discourse surrounding the debate.