Selection Criteria and Eligibility
The ASA Dissertation Award honors the best PhD dissertation from among those submitted by advisers and mentors in the discipline. Dissertations from PhD recipients with degrees awarded in the current year will be eligible for consideration for the following year’s award (e.g. PhD recipients with degrees awarded in the 2024 calendar year will be eligible for consideration for the 2025 ASA Dissertation Award.)
To be eligible for the ASA Dissertation Award, nominees’ dissertations must be completed in satisfaction of the PhD requirements at the institution where the nominee’s doctoral work was completed.
Nomination Procedures
Nominations must be received from the student’s adviser or the scholar most familiar with the student’s research. Nominations should explain the precise nature and merits of the work. Nominations should include a digital copy of the dissertation (acceptable forms of digital copy, DOC, DOCX and PDF) attached in an email.
If a dissertation is selected for the ASA Dissertation Award, the author will have the opportunity to archive the dissertation on the ASA website. This can be done immediately following the receipt of the award or at any point in the future (e.g., following the publication of manuscripts derived from the dissertation).
In addition to the nomination materials described above, complete and submit the required nomination form.
All awardees must be current ASA members at the time of the award ceremony at the Annual Meeting. One need not be a member to be nominated for an award. All nominators must be current members. Please also be aware of ASA’s ethics disclosure and award revocation policies.
Submit nominations for the 2025 award to [email protected] by January 1, 2025.
2025 Selection Committee Members
The selection committee is composed of twelve members, each serving a staggered three-year term. Members are appointed from among the Association membership by the Council based on the recommendation of the Committee on Committees.
Enid Logan, Co-Chair
Marybeth C. Stalp, Co-Chair
Jonathan Coley
Emily Fairchild
Jessica Y. Ho
Anthony Abraham Jack
Minjeong Kim
Joseph T. Lariscy
Ranita Ray
Amy L. Stone
Bryan Sykes
Jody Agius Vallejo
Past Recipients
2024 Luis Flores, Harvard University, for the dissertation titled “The Regulatory Politics of Home-Based Moneymaking After the American Family Wage,” completed at University of Michigan
Honorable Mention: Brandon Alston, The Ohio State University, for the dissertation titled “Policing the Black Metropolis: Race, Surveillance, and Resistance,” completed at Northwestern University
2023 Lara Garbes, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, for the dissertation titled “Racialized Airwaves: Tracing the Sonic Color Line in the American Public Radio Industry,” completed at Brown University
2023 David Showalter, Harvard University, for the dissertation titled “Going Nowhere: The Social Life of Opioids in Backcountry California,” completed at University of California, Berkeley
2022 Ricarda Hammer, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, for “Citizenship and Colonial Difference: The Racial Politics of Rights and Rule Across the Black Atlantic,” completed at Brown University
2022 Lacee A. Satcher, Boston College, for “(Un) Just Deserts: Examining the Consequences of Economic, Social, and Environmental Disinvestment in the Urban South,” completed at Vanderbilt University
2021 Gözde Güran, Harvard University, for “Brokers of Order: How Money Moves in Wartime Syria” completed at Princeton University
2021 Elizabeth McKenna, SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, for “The Revolution Will be Organized: Power and Protest in Brazil’s New Republic (1988-2018)” completed at University of California-Berkeley
2020 Christina Cross, University of Michigan, for “The Color, Class, and Context of Family Structure and Its Association with Children’s Educational Performance”
Honorable Mention: Christof Brandtner, “Cities in Action: City Climate Action, Civil Society, and the Organization of Cities”
2019 Anjuli N. Fahlberg, Tufts University, for “Activism Under Fire: Violence, Poverty, and Collective Action in Rio de Janeiro”
Honorable Mention: Josh Seim, “Working on the Poor: Ambulance Labor in the Polarized City.”
2018 Juliette Galonnier “Choosing Faith and Facing Race: Converting to Islam in France and the United States”
2017 Karida Brown “Before they were Diamonds: The Intergenerational Migration of Kentucky’s Coal Camp Blacks”
Honorable Mention: Maude Pugliese, “Socio-Economic Disparities in Portfolio Composition: Historical Causes and Consequences for Inequality in America”
2016 Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz “Temporal Politics of the Future: National Latino Civil Rights Advocacy, Demographic Statistics, and the ‘Browning’ of America”
2015 Christopher Michael Muller “Historical Origins of Racial Inequality in Incarceration in the United States”
2014 Ya-Wen Lei “Uncovering the Roots of the Nationwide Counter-public Sphere in China”
2014 Yan Long “Constructing Transnational Actorhood: The Emergence and Transformation of the AIDS Movement in China, 1989-2012”
2013 Larissa Buchholz “The Global Rules of Art”
2013 Daniel Menchik “The Practices of Medicine”
2012 Kimberly Kay Hoang “New Economies of Sex and Intimacy in Vietnam”
2011 Alice Goffman, “On the Run”
Honorable Mention: Laura Hamilton, “Strategies for Success: Parental Funding, College Achievement, and the Transition to Adulthood”
Honorable Mention: Joanna Robinson, “Contested Water: Anti-Water Privatization Movements in Canada and the United States”
2010 G. Cristina Mora, “De Muchos, Uno: The Institutionalization of Latino Panethnicity, 1960-1990”
Honorable Mention: Sophia Krzys Acord, “Beyond the Code: Unpacking Tacit Knowledge and Embodied Cognition in the Practical Action of Curating Contemporary Art”
2009 Claire Laurier Decoteau, “The Bio-Politics of HIV/AIDS in Post-Apartheid South Africa.”
2008 Helen Beckler Marrow, “Southern Becoming: Immigrant Incorporation and Race Relations in the Rural U.S. South.”
2007 Wendy Roth, “Caribbean Race and American Dreams: How Migration Shapes Dominicans’ and Puerto Ricans’ Racial Identities and Its Impact on Socioeconomic Mobility”
2006 Jason Beckfield, “The Consequences of regional, Poiltical and Economic Integration for Inequality and the Welfare state in Western Europe,” and Amy Hanser, “Counter Strategies: Service Work and the Production of Distinction in Urban China”
2005 Ann Morning, “The Nature of Race: Teaching and Learning About Human Difference,” and Amélie Quesnell-Vallée, “Pathways from Status Attainment to Adult Health: The Contribution of Health Insurance to Socioeconomic Inequities in Health in the U.S.”
2004 Brian Gifford, “States, Soldiers, and Social Welfare: Military Personnel and the Welfare State in the Advanced Industrial Democracies,” and Greta Krippner, “The Fictitious Economy: Financialization, the State, and Contemporary Capitalism”
2003 Devah Pager, “The Mark of a Criminal Record”
2002 Kieran Healy, “Exchange in Blood and Organs”
2001 Jeremy Freese, “What Should Sociology Do About Darwin?: Evaluating Some Potential Contributions of Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology to Sociology”
2000 Wan He, “Choice and Constraints: Explaining Chinese Americans’ Low Fertility”
1999 Sarah L. Babb, “The Evolution of Economic Expertise in a Developing Country: Mexican Economics, 1929-1998
1998 Douglas Guthrie, “Strategy and Structure in Chinese Firms: Organizational Action and Institutional Change in Industrial Shanghai
1997 Dalton Clark Conley, “Being Black, Living in the Red: Wealth and the Cycle of Racial Inequality”
1996 Jeffrey Lee Manza, “Policy Experts and Political Change during the New Deal”
1995 Wilma Dunaway, “The Incorporation of Southern Appalachia into the Capitalist World Economy, 1700-1860”
1994 Steven Epstein, “Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge”
1993 Ronen Shamir, “Managing Legal Uncertainty: Elite Lawyers in the New Deal”
1992 Elizabeth Mitchell, “The Interpenetration of Class and Ethnicity in the Perpetuation of Conflict in Northern Ireland”
1991 Rogers Brubaker, “Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany”
1990 Vedat Milor, “A Comparative Study of Planning and Economic Development in Turkey and France: Bringing the State Back In”
1989 Richard Biernacki, “The Cultural Construction of Labor: A Comparison of Late Nineteenth Century German and British Textile Mills”
