Lauren Tooker awarded this year's Jean Blondel PhD prize

The 2018 Jean Blondel PhD Prize for the best thesis in politics has been awarded to Lauren Tooker (University of Warwick) for her thesis Ordinary Democracy: Reading Resistances to Debt after the Global Financial Crisis with Stanley Cavell’s Ordinary Language Philosophy

Lauren’s thesis examines resistances to debt in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in the UK the US, developing a novel account of democratic subjectivity in the context of International Political Economy. To do so, Lauren applies Stanley Cavell’s ordinary language philosophy.

With this theoretical approach, the thesis shows how 'ordinary democratic subjects' are opposing debt-based economic citizenship in the UK and the US. The study's central argument is that debt’s 'ordinary democrats' are reconstructing debt relations as a site of democratic selfhood and community in finance, thus representing important practices of civic freedom.

From our prize jury

'Lauren’s thesis is not only innovative and theoretically inspiring – it is a thesis with a heart.'

Jury members

Birgit Sauer Universität Wien (Chair)
Mary Farrell Plymouth University
Petra Meier University of Antwerp
Ferdinand Müller-Rommel Leuphana Universität Lüneburg

The judges were unanimous in their choice of winner

Jean Blondel PhD prize shortlist

Kristina Bakkær Simonsen Aarhus University
Do They Belong? Host National Boundary Drawing and Immigrants’ Identificational Integration

Tim Mickler Universiteit Leiden
Parliamentary Committees in a Party-Centred Context – Structure, Composition, Functioning

Macarena Ares-Abalde European University Institute
A New Working Class? A Cross-National and Longitudinal Approach to Class Voting in Post-Industrial Societies

Trineke Palm Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Normative Power and Military Means: The Evolving Character of the EU’s International Power