Ross Snyder wins Sara Norton Prize for best essay in the field of political history and institutions of the US
MPhil in Politics: Comparative Government student Ross Snyder has been awarded the Sara Norton Prize 2022 for his thesis ‘The Perpetuation of Privilege: The Preservation of American Inequality in Low-Prejudice Equilibriums.’
The £2,000 prize is awarded annually to the best essay relating to the field of political history and institutions of the US.
Ross is originally from Denver, Colorado and completed his undergraduate degree at Georgetown University before coming to Oxford.
His winning thesis focused on the mechanisms driving economic and racial inequality in the US.
He said: “I am thrilled to have been awarded the Norton Prize. It is an honour to have my work recognised by the DPIR and I hope that it can help increase the profile of Oxford as a centre for research on inequality and the threats/challenges it creates for American institutions.
“I’d like to give special thanks to my supervisor, Desmond King, who was incredibly helpful in putting together my research and first recommended I submit it for the Norton Prize.”
Desmond King, who supervised Ross’s MPhil thesis, said: “Ross researched and wrote an outstanding MPhil thesis about how prejudiced attitudes in the US are reproduced, even when many Americans individually reject such views. I expect him to publish the results of his survey experiment.
“And I am delighted the quality and originality of Ross’s thesis and research has been recognized by the Sara Norton Prize award committee.”
Ross will continue his studies on inequality at Stanford Law School this autumn and gain a greater sense of how inequities in the US are related to the country’s legal institutions–and how the law can be a tool for redressing them.
He then hopes to enter public service work, with an eye towards the intersection between inequality and the sustainability of American Democracy.
