Three Best Student Paper (BSP) prizes were awarded at the biennial ESEE conference in Ghent. The winning papers were announced at the closing ceremony of ESEE 2026.

Winning papers

Felix Barbour, Jefim Vogel, Milena Büchs, Jason Hickel and Diana Ivanova

Imperialist constraints on the energy efficiency of human need satisfaction

Henri Chevalier

The Treadmill of Farming: Cost-Price Squeeze, Growth Imperatives and the Political Economy of Canadian Agriculture

Martin Francois, Fanny Dethier and Kevin Maréchal

Designing majority support for maximum income policies: evidence from a vignette survey experiment in Belgium

The other three finalists were Jane Torbert, Tobias Riepl and Kilian Rouge. Congratulations to all six finalists and thank you to all 60 applicants!

Selection and assessment

Seventeen contributions were shortlisted based on the scores received during the conference selection process. Shortlisted authors who had registered for the conference were invited to submit an anonymised full paper for double-blind peer review. Following withdrawals and non-submissions, eleven papers proceeded to this stage.

Each paper was assessed by three reviewers. After checking its relevance to ecological economics, reviewers evaluated it against three criteria: (a) academic quality and rigour; (b) clarity and flair of writing; and (c) originality and innovation. Each criterion was scored on a four-point scale: 1 (poor), 2 (adequate), 3 (good) and 4 (very good).

For each paper, the three reviewers’ scores on each criterion were combined using an arithmetic mean, weighted by each reviewer’s self-reported familiarity with the paper’s topic. The resulting criterion scores were then combined using a weighted geometric mean, with weights of 0.33, 0.44 and 0.23, respectively. The jury also conducted robustness checks to assess how alternative weights, including a higher weight for academic quality and rigour, affected the rankings.

Six finalists were selected to present their papers in a dedicated conference session. Eight colleagues attending the session assessed the presentations. For each presentation, the highest and lowest scores were excluded from the calculation of the presentation score. Each finalist’s overall score was then calculated as a weighted average of the paper’s review score (85%) and presentation score (15%).

The final ranking was:

As discussed at the General Assembly, one concerning aspect of the competition was the low proportion of applications from female students, who accounted for less than one-third of all applicants. Furthermore, a few highly rated papers authored by women were shortlisted but subsequently withdrawn from the competition. Together, these factors reduced the scope for women’s representation among the finalists and prize winners. Hopefully, next time we will be able to encourage women to submit their work.

Acknowledgements

Warm thanks go to the conference organisers for making the initial assessment scores available, and to all colleagues who contributed to the paper reviews and presentation assessments.

The full papers were reviewed by:

Adam Green — University of York

Alessandro Caiani — IUSS Pavia

Alexandra Köves — Corvinus University of Budapest

Andrew Fanning — Doughnut Economics Action Lab

Branko Ančić — Institute for Social Research in Zagreb

Elke Pirgmaier — University of Lausanne

Guilherme Morlin — University of Pisa

Halliki Kreinin — Tallinn University

Laura Felício — MARECT, IST, University of Lisbon

Michael Miess — KAUST/Environment Agency Austria

Maria J. Beltran — Pablo de Olavide University

Ourania Papasozomenou — BürgerEnergie Berlin eG

Pancarahadi Mulyo — Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia

Richard Bärnthaler — University of Leeds

Rita Lopes — CENSE – NOVA FCT

Tim Foxon — University of Sussex

Tommaso Luzzati — University of Pisa

Tone Smith — ESEE Board

Ugur Soytas — Technical University of Denmark

Claudio Cattaneo — Masaryk University, Brno

On behalf of the ESEE Board,

Tommaso Luzzati

Chair of the Jury