Perry World House Meet the Winners of the 2023 Perry World House-Foreign Affairs Emerging Scholars Policy Prize

Perry World House (PWH) – the University of Pennsylvania’s hub for global affairs – has announced the winners of its 2023 Emerging Scholars Policy Prize, run in partnership with Foreign Affairs. The authors of this year’s winning essays were Nils Kupzok of Johns Hopkins University and Karen Nershi of Stanford University.

This annual competition provides an opportunity for emerging scholars to share new ideas on urgent global policy challenges, producing outstanding essays that make their original research more accessible to policymakers, practitioners, and the general public.

“The Emerging Scholars Policy Prize enables Perry World House to support scholars whose work has global policy relevance,” said Amy Gadsden, associate vice provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. “This year’s winners confronted urgent issues that are crucial to Perry World House’s work and to the world: how to make climate policy more effective in reducing industry emissions, and how politically motivated cybercrime impacts international security.”

Each winner will receive a prize of $10,000 from PWH, supporting both their research and its further impact on policy development. Foreign Affairs’ editorial team will then work with them to publish their essays over the coming months. This year’s winning essays are:

• “Fiscal Support for Industry Decarbonization: Why Policymakers Must Drive a Hard Bargain” by Nils Kupzok, postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and its Initiative for Sustainable Energy Policy.
• “Assessing the Political Motivations Behind Ransomware Attacks” by Karen Nershi, postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Internet Observatory. Nershi’s essay was based on research conducted in collaboration with Shelby Grossman, a research scholar at the Observatory.

"We look forward to sharing this year's prize winners’ work with the readers of Foreign Affairs and to have had the opportunity to read smart, ambitious writing by the many scholars whose essays shared new ideas on global policy challenges in the world today,” said Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, editor of Foreign Affairs.

PWH and Foreign Affairs have collaborated on the Emerging Scholars Policy for four years. The competition is open to early-career scholars working in any academic field, showcasing their insights into complex global issues.

Our 2022 winners were Sharan Grewal, assistant professor of government at the College of William & Mary, nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, and nonresident senior fellow at the Project on Middle East Democracy; and co-authors Isaac B. Kardon, assistant professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College and Wendy Leutert, assistant professor in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies and GLP-Ming Z. Mei Chair of Chinese Economics and Trade at Indiana University Bloomington. Kardon and Leutert’s piece was published by Foreign Affairs in May 2023 as “China’s Port Power.” Grewal’s essay is forthcoming.