Jan Brouwer Thesis Award for Raffael Hanschmann
The Jan Brouwer thesis award for social sciences 2015 was awarded last April 14th to Master graduate in Public Administration Raffael Hanschmann for his thesis “The impact of the economic crisis on EU environmental policy making. Insights from discourse network analysis”.
Hanschmann studied, under the supervision of Professor Bernard Steunenberg, the impact of the economic crisis on the EU energy policy. For this he looked at the carbon dioxide emission limit regulations for passenger cars and the policy before and after the economic crisis.
As can be read in the jury report the jury unanimously selected Raffael Hanschmann’s thesis as the winner in the category of social sciences. They praised Hanschmann thorough literature review, the quality of his data collection and smart combination of qualitative content analysis and quantitative structural analysis of networks in his methodological approach. Furthermore they were impressed by his critical reflection on theoretical discussions regarding the Advocacy Coalition Framework he used as the basis of his research. All this was written in a convincing writing style and good presentation of the figures and network structures.
2015 is the first year the Jan Brouwer thesis award , funded by Jan Brouwer Fund, is issued by the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen. Annually seven prizes of € 2000 will be awarded in different fields.