Best Student Papers

During biennial ESEE conferences, 3 prizes for Best Student Papers (BSP) presented at the conference will be awarded. The key objective is to motivate and enhance opportunities for PhD and Graduate students to advertise high-quality student research within ESEE and increase students’ participation and visibility within ESEE.

The application criteria, timeline, and evaluation process for the BSP competition can be found here. If you want to take part in the competition you need to register via this form by April 15 2026 (23:59). No extensions will be given.

Shortlisted (and only those!) student-participants to ESEE2026 will need to send in a full paper to the ESEE Board as a second step in the BSP procedure, and this by May 15th. This full paper is for internal “BSP use” only – papers will not be made available publicly (not via the ESEE2026 programme, nor via the ESEE Board, nor elsewhere).

Winners and finalists

Winners of the Best Student Paper competition (announced at the ESEE2026 Closing Ceremony):

Felix Barbour, Jefim Vogel, Milena Büchs, Jason Hickel, Diana Ivanova
Imperialist constraints on the energy efficiency of human need satisfaction
Henri Chevalier
The Treadmill of Farming: Cost-Price Squeeze, Growth Imperatives and the Political Economy of Canadian Agriculture
Martin Francois, Fanny Dethier, Kevin Maréchal
Designing majority support for maximum income policies: evidence from a vignette survey experiment in Belgium

Non-winning finalists: Jane Torbert, Tobias Riepl and Kilian Rouge. Congratulations to all finalists, and thanks to all 60 applicants!