Dr. Susanne Garritzmann Honored for Excellent Dissertation
Dr. Susanne Garritzmann was honored by the American Political Science Association APSA with the "Best Dissertation Award" in the section "Education Politics and Policy". She received the award for her dissertation "Education Systems and Political Inequality: How Educational Institutions Shape Turnout Gaps," which she submitted in 2021 to the University of Konstanz.
In her work, the author uses a comparative perspective to examine whether and how different educational systems produce education-related differences in turnout. She highlights the most important differences between the education systems of the countries studied: the extent of social stratification they produce and their occupational orientation. On this basis, it explains differences in turnout. The paper's argument combines insights from different fields (e.g., political behavior, education, and socialization) with well-grounded empirical analyses of different countries. It concludes that more stratified educational systems tend to lead to higher voter turnout.
The award committee of APSA's Education Politics and Policy section honored the "impressive, well-written study and its contribution to unpack the connections between educational institutions and political inequality”.
Dr. Susanne Garritzmann is a postdoctoral researcher at the project "Students’ perceptions of inequality and fairness (PerFair)" of the Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality" since 2019. Her research interests lie in the analysis of political inequality, political participation and in the study of education systems and education policy.
APSA's Best Education Politics and Policy Dissertation Award recognizes the best dissertation in the field of education politics and/or education policy from the past two calendar years. The award ceremony will take place during the APSA Annual Convention, which this year will be held online.
The exposé for the dissertation can be viewed (only in German) here.