Morton A. Kaplan PrizeSince 1994, the Committee on International Relations has recognized and awarded the Kaplan Prize to the best master’s thesis written by a recently graduated Honors student from the program. The prize is named in honor of Morton A. Kaplan (1921-2017), former chair of the Committee on International Relations and Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Previous Kaplan prize winners are now researchers at prestigious institutions, journalists, and other thought leaders. |
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Past Winners
| 2021 | Anagha Komaragiri | "Rethinking the Slum-Free City: Slum Redevelopment as PoliticalCapital in Mumbai, India" |
| 2020 | Suji Moon | "Good for Democracy? The Halo Effect of Impeachment" |
| 2019 | Akbota Karibayeva | "Empowered for Good: Explaining Why Women’s Wartime Empowerment Can Become Permanent" |
| 2018 | Patrick Leonard | "Segregation and the Spatial Distribution of Violence in the Northern Ireland Conflict” |
| 2017 | Nasir Almasri |
"Still Dying to Win: The Coercive Logic of Suicide Attacks against Autocracies” |
| 2016 | Nanxi Zeng | "Practicing Nationalism in Historical Writing: Japan’s Changing Image in Official Chinese Historical Narratives, 1950s to 1990s" |
| 2015 | Dayna Dion | "Transnational Human Rights Advocacy: A Force for Change or Exercise in Futility?" |
| 2014 | David Kaner | "Mark the Earth with Ruin: Official Memory and Memorialization in Post-Genocide Cambodia and Rwanda" |
| 2013 | Andrew Rath | "Clientelism and Programmatic Politics: The Political Economy of Export Taxes in Argentina" |
| 2012 | Thomas Heyboer | "The Advantages of Patient Capital in Crisis" |
| 2011 | Jason Grant Stone | "Reconceptualizing Cleavage Structures and Ethnonationalist Part Formation in an Ethnocracy: Ethnic Outbidding, the JHU and Ethnoreligious Nationalism in Sri Lanka" |
| 2010 | Stewart Timothy Knox | "An Open Book?: A Look at How Democratic Security-Seekers Signal their Intentions" |
| 2009 | David Blagden | "Globalization and the Convergence of Power" |
| 2008 | Maggie Morgan | "A Global and Regional Analysis of the Role of Regime Type in Civil War" |
| 2007 | Michael Smith | "Shouting Into the Wind: Examining the Structural Weakness of Developing Countries In the Global Trade Order" |
| 2006 | Alexandra Hope Croswell | "Systemic Change and Terror: Understanding the Causal Mechanisms of 9/11" |
| 2005 | Sebastian Schmidt | "To Order the Minds of Scholars: The Discourse of the Peace of Westphalia in International Relations Literature" |
| 2004 | Arek Kaczmarek-Ison | "Post-Materialism and Value Theory of International Relations" |
| 2003 | Sarah Jane Dinan | "Father Russia or Brother Russia? How Russia Understands its Relationship with the Former Soviet Republics" |
| 2002 | Dominik Meier | "The European Security and Defense Identity and Its future. An Outlook for the 21st Century" |
| 2001 | Takafumi Noguchi | "A Game Theoretical Approach to UN Non-coercive Conflict Management in International Crises, 1945-1994" |
| 2000 | Dong Chun Soh | "Liberal Order Building and Transnational Technocracy: The Case of South Korean Economic Development" |
| 1999 | Alexander Downes | "The Holy Land Divided? Theory and Practice for a Successful Partition in Palestine" |
| 1998 | Jennifer Fitzgerald | "Reframing Nationalism Reframed: Non-Violent Quadratic Relationships in Post-Communist Eastern Europe" |
| 1997 | Colin Woodard | "Balkan Ghosts and their Masters: The Politics of Ethno-Nationalism in Romania" |
| 1996 | Ahmed Hirsch | "UNRWA 1950-1994: A Challenge to Monopoly Sovereignty" |
| 1995 | Stefano Ponte | "Structural Adjustment Programs and Agricultural Performance: Beyond the Policy Factor. Lessons from Kenya and Tanzania" |
| 1994 | Michael Corradino | "The Thrill of Victory and Agony of Defeat for U.S. Exporters in the Uruguay Round" |