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Delia Zollinger secures our esteemed 2023 Jean Blondel PhD Prize with her exceptional thesis Structural Change, Identity Formation, and Cleavage Consolidation in 21st Century Politics.
Since 2003, the annual Jean Blondel PhD Prize awards the best thesis in politics, broadly conceived to include international relations, political theory and public administration.
Delia Zollinger's winning thesis, Structural Change, Identity Formation, and Cleavage Consolidation in 21st Century Politics, was nominated by her main supervisor, Silja Häusermann.
Silja serves as the Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich. In her nomination, she remarks:
[Delia's thesis] combines and theoretically develops several strands of social science research that are relevant for our understanding of changing electoral politics in the 21st century. The thesis already resonates exceptionally strongly in the relevant academic communities.
Watch our short video celebrating Delia's achievement and sharing her work below.
Delia Zollinger is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich's Department of Political Science, where she conducted her PhD research with a Doc.CH Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Delia’s research lies at the intersection of comparative politics, political sociology, and political economy. She is particularly interested in how voters perceive their place in a changing economy and society, for instance, through their sense of group belonging, perceptions of life opportunities, or of (changing) social status hierarchies. She studies how structural divides in knowledge-based societies are being mobilized in ways that fundamentally transform the political landscapes of advanced democracies, with important consequences for policy-making and governance.
Delia’s work has appeared in Comparative Political Studies, the American Journal of Political Science, and the British Journal of Political Science.
I am excited and happy to have been awarded this prize! I also feel very privileged, thinking about the fantastic environment in which I was able to write my dissertation. I am incredibly grateful to the many, many people who provided support and inspiration along the way, especially Silja Häusermann, my advisor.
Zollinger’s work not only pushes the boundaries of our current understanding but also introduces fresh perspectives that already resonate strongly in the field.
What sets this dissertation apart is the theoretical nuance it offers combined with innovative and targeted methodology, encompassing a diverse array of observational and experimental survey designs, open survey questions, and text analysis.