Our 2020 Dirk Berg-Schlosser award finds home with Ameni Mehrez and Alberto Stefanelli

It is our pleasure to congratulate Ameni Mehrez of Central European University and Alberto Stefanelli of KU Leuven, on winning the 2020 Dirk Berg-Schlosser Award for their contribution to the Multilevel Modeling course taught by Levente Littvay at our inaugural Virtual Methods School.

This annual award celebrates Teaching Assistants who have demonstrated extraordinary dedication and pedagogical skills in helping students learn the material in their courses, along with a commitment to the ECPR Method School project.

About Ameni

Ameni Mehrez is a third-year PhD student in comparative politics at Central European University. Ameni's PhD project explores the link between moral values and political ideologies with a focus on the Arab world.

Ameni's key areas of research are political behaviour and ideology in the MENA region, the role of religion in politics, and public opinion surveys. She is experienced in teaching quantitative methods, such as inferential statistics, multilevel modelling, R programming, and automated text analysis. She is the founder and chair of the Middle East and North Africa Space (research group based at CEU). More recently, Ameni has been principle investigator of a post-elections survey fielded in Tunisia which will make a contribution to the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES).

 @Ameni_Meh

From our Academic Convenors

‘Ameni was not supposed to be the Teaching Assistant for the Multilevel Modelling course where she jumped in on a moment's notice the morning the course started. It is not an exaggeration to say that in an emergency situation she saved the course. She literally spent every waking hour (with less sleep than one should have) for the week catching up with the material and helping refine it for online delivery.

Her heroic efforts certainly resulted in a better course, helped keep the instructor sane and offered a better experience for every participant'  

In her own words

'I am deeply pleased and honoured to win this award. I have always enjoyed being part of the ECPR Methods School whether as a student or as a Teaching Assistant. It has been one of my most enriching academic experiences.'

About Alberto

Alberto Stefanelli is a quantitative social scientist and methods enthusiast. Currently, he is an FWO PhD Fellow at the Institute for Social and Political Opinion Research (ISPO), KU Leuven, Belgium. His research interests are mostly within the field of public opinion, statistics, voting behaviour, populism, and attitudes towards democracy.

In his PhD, Alberto investigates, conceptually as well as empirically, the nature of radical belief systems; their determinants; their behavioural and social consequences; and how they relate to democratic principles and liberal values.

 @sergsagara

From our Academic Convenors

‘Along with co-awardee Ameni Mehrez, Alberto was TA for Levi Littvay's Multilevel Modelling course at the ECPR 1st Virtual Methods School in the summer of 2020 where he was instrumental to the complete redesign of the course for COVID-19 compliant online delivery. With the 2nd Virtual Methods School starting, Alberto is getting ready to be TA for Bart Meuleman’s Structural Equation Modelling and Bruno Castanho Silva’s Multilevel Structural Equation Modelling courses. Make note, that is 8 courses, 7 different ones with 7 different instructors over 3 short years, a feat we expect will be difficult to beat for decades of ECPR Methods Schools to come.

...Alberto is certainly the most outstanding pedagogue. While this award is for pedagogy, Alberto also became active in ECPR where he volunteers for analytical and administrative tasks.' 

In his own words

'I am delighted and extremely honoured to receive the Dirk Berg-Schlosser Award. I am very grateful for the opportunity of being a Teaching Assistant over the past three years during the ECPR Method Schools. This experience has helped me to refine my understanding of variance-based methods and better understand how to conduct rigorous research. Furthermore, by actively helping a number of excellent ECPR instructors, I had the chance to better understand how to teach basic and advanced methods to my peers.'

The award winners were determined by the outcome of the evaluation surveys carried out after our 2020 Winter School and 2020 Virtual Methods School.