The award recognizes the best dissertations on European politics and society completed in 2025. The prize will be officially presented at the APSA Annual Meeting in September 2026.

Marlene received the distinction for her dissertation, Branding Europe: Western European Image Politics in the Experimental Phase of European Integration, 1945–1957.

The dissertation offers a compelling deep dive into the cultural and political imagination of "Europe" in the 1950s. It shows how, in the crisis-ridden post-war years, early "Eurocrats" were acutely aware of the challenge of promoting the idea of Europe. Nevertheless, Western European organisations quickly established committees and departments dedicated to culture and information. Their aim was to improve their already tarnished reputation, imagine a European community that did not yet exist, and ultimately stabilize "Europe" as an inherently fragile political and civilisational project.

In doing so, the dissertation demonstrates how difficult it was to develop compelling images, symbols, and narratives for Europe. It also highlights several of the major tensions that complicated political decision-making at the time, including the friction between supranational and national ambitions, a lack of communicative expertise, competition between organisations, and the challenge of communicating effectively while avoiding associations with totalitarian propaganda.

Grounded in extensive archival research and historical analysis, Marlene's work also makes an important contribution to political science debates on legitimacy, governance, and identity formation. Many of its insights are strikingly relevant today, as anti-European parties continue to achieve electoral success and European institutions still struggle to communicate effectively. The dissertation challenges still-common teleological conceptions of European integration by developing a cultural approach to a subject that is often examined through the technical logic and language of the institutions themselves. Not least, it offers timely answers to the question of why liberal political projects so often prove difficult to communicate.

Marlene is currently revising the manuscript for publication. In the meantime, the dissertation is available through the Freie Universität Berlin Library.