Jay Ruckelshaus wins top prize for Best Doctoral Dissertation in Philosophy, Law and Politics

DPIR DPhil student Jay Ruckelshaus has been awarded the inaugural Nicolas Berggruen Prize for Best Doctoral Dissertation in Philosophy, Law and Politics.

Jay is a Rhodes Scholar, runs a non-profit organisation that helps people with disabilities gain entry into higher education, and has written for The New York Times and Governing, among other publications.

The Prize committee commented that Jay’s dissertation “offered an innovative account of partisanship,  bringing two disparate bodies of work together –Realist work in politics with empirical work– in an impressive, original way.”

The terms of the Prize are that the dissertation be broad in its interest for the three disciplines, first-rate in its intellectual merit, and transformative in its content.

In five carefully argued and original chapters, Jay’s dissertation offers a novel theory of political partisanship, one that is sensitive to the real-world workings of polarization but does not abandon the hope of a better democratic politics.

The result is a piece of work that is, in the words of the examiners, "provocative, original, and interesting", and has already resulted in a publication in the American Political Science Review –the single most prestigious journal within Political Science.

“I'm very honoured that my dissertation has been awarded the Berggruen prize – what an unexpected surprise!,” said Jay.

“My interest in democratic theory stems from my interest in democratic practice, so it's particularly gratifying for my work to be recognized on both dimensions.

“I'm grateful for the patient, critical support of my DPIR supervisor, Cécile Laborde, for pushing my study of the nature of political community in divided societies to be more rigorous and ambitious.”

Cecile Laborde commented: ‘Jay was a model DPhil student: inquisitive, curious, hard-working, and wonderfully imaginative. I have learned a lot about democratic politics from his work. I am delighted the committee awarded the Berggruen Prize to his ground-breaking dissertation.’