Winner of the Europe Hub’s Best Master’s Thesis Prize 2025
Each year, Leiden University’s Europe Hub invites submissions from all faculties for its annual Europe Hub Master's thesis prize. The winning thesis should touch on at least one of the Hub's thematic priorities and offer an interdisciplinary perspective. The winner receives a certificate as well as €250 in prize money.
On 8 December 2025, the award ceremony took place as part of an event jointly organized by the Europe Hub and the Jean Monnet Chair on the European Union’s Role in Security and Global Affairs (EURISGA).Following a lecture and lively Q&A session with Ulf Melgaard (Ambassador of Denmark to the Netherlands) on the outcomes of the Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU, the Europe Hub committee awarded its annual Best Master’s Thesis Prize to Julia Röhrig, graduate of the MSc Political Science programme of the Institute of Political Science. Her thesis “The Politics of Compliance: How Populism Shapes States’ Responses to ECtHR Judgements” offers a systematic assessment of the effect of populism on compliance with rulings by the European Court of Human Rights. Starting from the premise that there is a rise of populist parties and leaders across Europe that increasingly view human rights and European organizations (and supranational courts in particular) with skepticism and outright hostility, Julia examined the extent to which the rise of populism may affect states’ compliance with the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. The thesis reviews an impressive range of cases (more than 4600) and adds a new dataset of more than 600 additional cases, underlining the originality of the thesis as well as its relevance to current challenges in European studies. The jury members congratulate Julia, her supervisor Dr. Gisela Hirschmann and second reader, Professor Daniel Thomas, for an outstanding MA thesis that will certainly form a strong basis for academic publication in internationally peer-reviewed outlets.
Two Runners-Up
The jury would like to offer special mention to two very strong runner-up theses.
Clara Korsås’ thesis on ‘Flexibility, Friendship and Fast Response – Explaining Informality in the Case of the Nordic-Baltic Eight’ is an impressive piece of analysis of a relatively under-researched topic. For her thesis, Clara conducted a wide range of interviews with policymakers (including a former minister) to explore the Nordic-Baltic Eight’s coordination on the Russia-Ukraine war as a case of governance through informal institutions. The thesis is highly original and very relevant for both scholarly and policy-oriented perspectives on new, informal minilateral regional formats in Europe.
Finally, Elena Pisani’s MA thesis “The Hidden Costs of Externalizing Migration Governance: Understanding the Impact of Policy-Induced Rerouting on the EU Asylum System” is a rich and very well-argued study of how externalization policies shape not only the European Union’s relations with third countries (particularly in the context of ‘migration deals’ between the EU, Turkey, Libya and Morocco), but also EU-internal cohesion and solidarity. The thesis demonstrates the negative impact on governance, human rights and economic terms, thereby making use of strong interdisciplinary approaches.
The committee members would once again like to congratulate all three researchers for their outstanding work, underlining already at MA-level the academic rigour, originality and policy-relevance of the new generation of EU scholars.