Vincent Bakker wins Research Master’s Thesis Prize 2017
Vincent Bakker, PhD Candidate at the Department of Economics, was awarded the Research Master’s Thesis Prize 2017 of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Science.
The Faculty Board of Social and Behavioural Sciences has requested the Institutes of Education and Child Studies, Political Science and Psychology to nominate their top-rated research master’s thesis for the 2017 Faculty Research Master’s Thesis Prize.
In order to ensure a thorough and uniform assessment, the Faculty Board had provided the jury with an extensive list of evaluation criteria concerning crucial aspects such as research design, theoretical and methodological strength, relevance and readability. Needless to say, due to the high quality of the three nominations, the jury faced a very difficult task in choosing just one thesis for the prize.
The members of the jury read and evaluated the nominated theses thoroughly. The jury was pleased to note that the three nominations were of high scientific quality and social relevance, while at the same time they set out from a variety of methodological perspectives. After a constructive and animated discussion of the arguments underlying the numerical ratings for the 20 assessment items, the jury unanimously decided to award the Research Master’s Thesis Prize 2017 to the thesis nominated by the Institute of Political Science. The award-winning thesis was supervised by Dr. Olaf van Vliet, and entitled: Social Investment in European Welfare States: Towards More Jobs and Higher Labour Market Participation.