The Department of Politics and International Studies is delighted to announce that Antoine Sander is the 2025 winner of the Lisa Smirl PhD Prize for the best PhD thesis completed in the previous academic year.
Antoine's winning thesis is titled "Social Media, Radical Democracy, and the Popular Public Sphere: Digital Politics in Contemporary France." His work was highly praised by the examiners, who described it as:
“…a deeply insightful and methodologically rigorous exploration of the social media public sphere, examined through the frameworks of political and critical theory..”
The examiners were particularly impressed with the thesis's ability to "engage with complex theoretical questions, contribute original elements toward a theory of the popular public sphere, and ground its arguments in rich and compelling empirical evidence." They concluded that it "stands out as an excellent PhD."
In response to receiving the prize, Antoine Sander said:
"I am deeply honoured to be the recipient of the 2025 Lisa Smirl Prize. It is very hard to rate one’s own work, and to know that the distinguished scholars on the selection panel thought my work to be noteworthy is something truly special. And while writing a PhD dissertation can be a solitary endeavour, none of this would have been possible without the unwavering intellectual and moral support of my supervisor, Prof. Sharath Srinivasan, or that of my peers in POLIS. I dedicate this prize to them and to the memory of Dr. Lisa Smirl.”
Congratulations to Antoine on this outstanding achievement.