Routledge Area Studies
Impact & Interdisciplinarity Awards
We are excited to announce the winners of the inaugural Routledge Impact and Interdisciplinarity Awards!
Thank you to all who applied for our first annual Routledge Area Studies Awards in Impact and Interdisciplinarity. The judges praised the high standard and quality of all the Award applications received. Our aim was to highlight original published research which showcases the unique strengths of Area Studies, its special applicability in real-world contexts, and its position at the interface of multiple disciplines. We are pleased to celebrate research that makes a significant contribution to our understanding of ‘areas’ of our world and the lives lived therein.
Awarded to Dr. Bojan Baća, University of Gothenburg, for the projects
Measuring Civic Engagement, Political Participation, and Social Activism in Central and Eastern Europe: Towards a Comprehensive Index
Ordinary Institutions, Extraordinary Actions: Towards a Process-Practice Oriented Approach to Postsocialist Civil Society Building
Dr. Baća’s impressive research project is original and innovative, making a significant contribution to understanding the complexity and diversity of civil society in post-socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The strong regional focus of Dr. Baća’s research project challenges a static view of the region, providing a deeper understanding of political action and democracy in the post-socialist arena. Demonstrating a serious engagement with, and fusion of, Political Science and Social Movement Studies, this interdisciplinary project engages with a broad range of sub-disciplines including political sociology, anthropology, and political geography. The research has the potential to broaden our understanding of what is actually happening in terms of voluntary action in the regions concerned, and may lead to a more analytically nuanced and innovative understanding of public life in post-Communist polities. The conceptual framework and the tools provided to refine current research are both accomplished and insightful, with the findings relevant for a variety of social scientists.
Meet Dr. Bojan Baća
Dr. Bojan Baća is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Montenegro. Dr. Baća’s research focuses on civil society, social movements, and contentious politics, with his current research examining the relationship between grassroots and elite expressions of right-wing populism during turbulent times. An early career researcher, Dr. Baća received his PhD in Sociology from York University in 2018, and his winning project is comprised of two interrelated postdoctoral research projects funded by the Visegrad Fund at Charles University and Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationalisation (OeAD) at the University of Graz, respectively. The winning project also benefited greatly from postdoctoral research stays at the New Europe College and the University of Rijeka.
Dr. Baća has previously published in our journal, Europe-Asia Studies. Read his article, ‘We Are All Beranselo’: Political Subjectivation as an Unintended Consequence of Activist Citizenship”, below.
Are you an early career researcher? At Routledge, we are here to support you through every step of your research publishing journey. Explore our Author Services site for all of your publishing needs, and join our upcoming webinar, “Publishing in Social Science journals” on December 1st.
Interdisciplinarity Award Shortlist
The judges would like to highly commend Dr. Sylvia Frain’s research project ‘Indigenous Resistance to United States Militarization in the Marianas Archipelago in Micronesia, Oceania’. This project was commended for its feminist perspective in exploring the very current impact of postcoloniality on local communities, and for yielding academic and community-centered outputs that are relevant to Area Studies, Anthropology, Environmental Studies, and Indigenous Studies.
Jointly awarded to Dr. Fernando Casal Bértoa, University of Nottingham, and Dr. Ọlásopé Oyèdìjí Oyèláràn, scholar emeritus, for their respective projects
Public funding of political parties: what is it good for?
The Status and Significance of Èṣù in the Pantheon and Tradition of Yorùbá People
Dr. Fernando Casal Bértoa submitted a strong research project which contributes to the understanding of party funding in the post-communist space in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet space. The project has had demonstrable real-world impact at a policy level, with the research findings being of interest to policy makers, national governments, and think-tanks/transnational organisations capable of recommending change. Dr. Bértoa’s submission clearly outlined how his research has led to tangible changes in terms of the development of ODIHR guidelines on political party funding, and national legislation reform in Armenia. Potentially, the impact is also on the users of those guidelines (i.e. OSCE member governments) and political parties in Armenia.
Dr. Oyèláràn’s project is innovative and highly original in providing a new reading of the divinity of Esu, which challenges negative representations of Esu by Abrahamic religions. This project makes an important contribution to our wider understanding of Yorùbá history and philosophy, and places the spotlight firmly on a people and area of the world that western academia tends to overlook. It constitutes a significant piece of indigenous knowledge that contributes a decolonizing perspective on African history and culture, deepening our understanding of the negative impacts of colonialism on this culture. While the main impact has been the sparking of debate within academia, including notably on social media, the project findings also support the work of Yorùbá cultural activists against the denigration of Esu.
Meet Dr. Fernando Casal Bértoa
Dr. Fernando Casal Bértoa is an Associate Professor in Comparative Politics at the University of Nottingham, UK. He obtained his PhD at the European University Institute (Florence) and held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, before moving to the University of Nottingham. Dr. Casal Bértoa is currently co-director of the Research Centre for the Study of Parties and Democracy (REPRESENT), member of the OSCE/ODIHR “Core Group of Political Party Experts”, and expert of the Council of Europe, International IDEA, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the United Nations Development Program. His research focuses on party (system) institutionalization, party (funding) regulation and democracy promotion, and his winning research project received funding from the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and the European Research Council (ERC).
Meet Dr. Ọlásopé Oyèdìjí Oyèláràn
Dr. Ọlásopé Oyèdìjí Oyèláràn is a retired linguist whose research focuses on the phonology and syntax of African languages and French, as well as on the vehicle of indigenous epistemology, particularly of Yorùbá and Yorùbá in the diaspora. His current research projects include ‘Issues in the Syntax of the Yoruba Languages’ and ‘African Cross-currents in Atlantic Cultures’. Dr. Oyèláràn obtained his PhD at Stanford University and has taught and researched at institutions including Harvard University, Stanford University, Winston-Salem University and Western Michigan University in the US, Obafemi Awolowo University (formerly, University of Ife) in Nigeria, and the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, Paris, France.
Dr. Fernando Casal Bértoa has published articles in seven Routledge, Taylor & Francis journals, and has guest edited a special issue of East European Politics. Read his 2020 article, ‘Are Anti-Political-Establishment Parties a Peril for European Democracy? A Longitudinal Study from 1950 till 2017’ for free until the end of November 2023.
Dr. Casal Bértoa’s 2022 article ‘The future is not what it used to be: the failure of bipolarisation’ was published Open Access (OA), meaning it is freely and permanently available online for anyone, anywhere, to read. Explore the wide range of Routledge OA publishing options available to you today.
How can you make sure your research gets the recognition it deserves? At Routledge, we are here to support you through every step of your research publishing journey. Explore our Author Services site for all of your publishing needs, and join our upcoming webinar, “Increasing the impact of your research” on December 15th.
Impact Award Shortlist
Please visit our original submission page for a full breakdown of the submission criteria, the judging panel, and more.
The Routledge Area Studies Awards are conferred by an expert panel of Area Studies scholars, in partnership with Routledge, the world’s leading academic publisher in Area Studies, and the Humanities and Social Sciences broadly. Routledge publishes thousands of books and journals each year, serving scholars, instructors, and professional communities worldwide.
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