Perry World House and Foreign Affairs Announce Winners of 2021 Emerging Scholars Policy Prize

Perry World House, the University of Pennsylvania’s global affairs hub, and Foreign Affairs, the preeminent outlet for analysis and debate of foreign policy, economics, and global affairs, have awarded the 2021 Emerging Scholars Policy Prize to Rice University’s Kelsey Norman and Stanford University’s Jacquelyn Schneider.

This annual competition encourages early-career scholars to translate their academic research on a major global policy issue into an essay, making their ideas more accessible to policymakers.

“Despite the unique difficulties of the pandemic, we received dozens of excellent submissions for this year’s prize, demonstrating the remarkable scholarship underway in the United States and around the world,” said Michael C. Horowitz, Director and Richard Perry Professor of Political Science at Perry World House. “This year’s winning essays stood out, addressing two thorny global policy issues – making migration regimes both more humane and effective, and safely managing the growing dependency on digital systems – and developing clear, concise policy recommendations for action.”

Each winner will receive an award of $10,000 from Perry World House and Foreign Affairs will publish their essay in the coming months.
The winning essays are:

• Asylum Can’t be Outsourced: The Danger of Politically Convenient Solutions to Migration by Kelsey Norman, Fellow for the Middle East and Director of the Women’s Right’s Program at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University
• Digital Dependencies, Pandemics, and the Capability-Vulnerability Paradox by Jacquelyn Schneider, Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University

"We’re thrilled to publish the work of this year’s winners, and to have had the chance to read smart, engaging writing by the many emerging international affairs scholars who entered this year’s contest," said Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Editor of Foreign Affairs.

This year’s prize is the second in the partnership between Perry World House and Foreign Affairs. By limiting eligibility to junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and advanced graduate students, the prize aims to support scholars who are early in their academic careers.

Last year’s winners were Yeling Tan, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon, and Dan Altman, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University. Tan’s piece was published in Foreign Affairs’ March/April 2021 issue as ‘How the WTO Changed China.’ Altman’s piece is forthcoming.