Menu
Menu
Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.
Just tap then “Add to Home Screen”
Laura Nordström, University of Helsinki, has won the 2025 prize, for her outstanding dissertation, Power of Experts in the EU: Birth of the Troika and Resilience of the EMU Paradigm in the European Debt Crisis of 2010.
The winning thesis examines technocracy in crisis decision-making and the stability of a paradigm. The study is guided by research on the power of ideas, especially discursive institutionalism and regime studies. It assumes that experts have potential ideational power in decision-making if they have access to decision-makers, especially in crises during which decision-makers search for (new) solutions for new problems.
The Jury found Laura's thesis offered a deep and nuanced analysis that combines refined theoretical discussions, substantial empirical field observations, and elegant, original findings.
The Jean Blondel PhD Prize is awarded annually for the best thesis in politics (broadly conceived to include International Relations, Political Theory and Public Administration) nominated by a member institution that, with revision, could be published as a monograph.
Laura’s masterful work examines and measures with great subtlety the ideational role and tangible influence of experts in crisis decision-making. A remarkable demonstration of how a fine-grained, empirically grounded qualitative monograph on a significant, well-chosen case can address major research questions.
2025 Jean Blondel Phd Prize Jury
Laura Nordström is a postdoctoral researcher specialising in EU research and global political economy at the University of Helsinki. Her current research projects are on big tech EU lobbying and space politics. Her previous research, on power of expertise in the Eurozone crisis , was based on 133 high-profile interviews with EU officials and decision-makers.
Laura was the editor of Poliittinen talous (Political Economy) journal from 2023–2024. She is a member of the University of Helsinki's Ideas and Institutions Research Group. Before entering academia, she worked for 10 years as a political advisor and expert in the Finnish parliament, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the European Parliament and as the International Officer for the Finnish Greens. She has worked in EU, international, human rights and development politics.
Laura was a member of the first cohort of Europaeum’s Scholars' Programme. She has held various elected positions of trust, including the presidency of the executive board of Helsinki Summer University and the Europaeum Board of Trustees.
I am very honoured to receive this prize, and I am happy to see that a detailed empirical case study and process tracing that demonstrates the power of experts in Eurozone crisis decision making is appreciated. I was humbled to read the kind words of the Prize Jury, who highlighted the credibility of my findings on technocracy and the absence of alternatives explaining the resilience of the EMU paradigm. My biggest thanks go to my 133 interviewees, who opened up the black box of the 2010 crisis negotiations.
The jury is pleased to award an honourable mention to Alberto Stefanelli for his thesis, Why So Radical? The Nature, Causes, and Consequences of Radical Belief Systems.