The following Standing Groups will be holding their meeting at the General Conference in Bordeaux.

Members of Standing Groups will be informed by the Convenor regarding the time and location of meetings. A full list of ECPR Standing Group meetings will also be available in the conference programme.

Following on from our membership survey, the ECPR is delighted to announce that Mariana Llanos is winner of the Kindle Fire. Thank you to everyone who took part in the first ECPR membership survey. The survey has provided an opportunity to evaluate the benefits and services of ECPR membership and build up a picture of how the ECPR is used and valued within the discipline.

Another thank you goes to the individuals who have attended focus groups at past ECPR events. If you are attending the General Conference in Bordeaux this September, take part in one of the focus groups. Please email membership@ecpr.eu for further details.

The Jury for the 2013 ECPR Lifetime Achievement Award met during the Joint Sessions of Workshops in Mainz, March 2013, and is delighted to announce that it has been awarded awarded to Professor Ian Budge (University of Essex).

The Jury concluded that Professor Budge has made an outstanding contribution to European political science over several decades through his international research projects, his research monographs and scholarly production and his institutional service to the development and growth of European political science.

The biennial award will be made during a special ceremony at the General Conference in Bordeaux, 4-7 September 2013.

Further details will be available in the summer edition of ECPR News.

The 2013 shortlist has been drawn from the twenty-eight valid submissions have been received for the 2013 Jean Blondel Prize.

1. Hanna Schwander, University of Zurich – ‘The Politicisation of the Insider-Outsider Divide in Western Europe: Labour Market Vulnerability and its Political Consequences’.
2. Christian Rauh, Wissenschaftzentrum Für Sozialforschung (WZB) Berlin – ‘Politicisation, issue salience, and consumer policies of the European Commission’.
3. Patrick Bayer - Universität Mannheim – ‘Distributional, Institutional, and Informational Dynamics in International Co-operation on Climate Change’.

The Jean Blondel PhD prize is given for the best thesis in politics (broadly conceived to include International Relations, Political Theory and Public Administration) nominated by a full member institution.

The jury comprise Paolo Bellucci (University of Siena), Paul Heywood (University of Nottingham), and Birgit Sauer (University of Vienna) and is chaired by Peter Kennealy (EUI, Florence) representing the ECPR Press.

The winner will be announced on 30 September 2013.