Significant Scholarship Award

The RC28 Significant Scholarship Award (established in August 2016)

The RC28 makes one award annually to recognize an article of Significant Scholarship in Social Stratification that has been published in the three years prior to the year when the award is made.  For example, for the 2017 award articles appearing in journal issues from 2014-2016 are eligible. The criterion for the award is the significance, rigor, and novelty of the article’s contribution to scholarship in social stratification. The RC28 Significant Scholarship Award comes with a sum of 1,000 US dollars.  If there are multiple authors, a sum is divided equally among them. 

In order to be eligible, the article must have been presented prior to publication at one of the RC28 meetings or the RC28 sessions of the World Congress, and the fact of its presentation must be acknowledged in the published version of the article or the author should provide other forms of proof (such as a copy of the program).

The award shall be made by the RC28 Board, which will decide upon the recipient at the Spring RC28 meeting.  The recipient of the award will be announced and the award will be delivered at the Summer RC28 meeting.

The Board will solicit nominations for the award and consider all nominations received by February 1 for that year’s award (or another appropriate date depending on the date of the RC28 Spring meeting).  Nominations should include a full citation of the article and a brief statement as to why the nominating individual considers the article to merit the award.  Nominations will be submitted to the RC28 Secretary, who will compile the nominations and deliver them to the subcommittee appointed by the Board for consideration. Nominations are accepted only from RC28 members.  Self-nominations are permitted.  

Award recipients:

2023 Nathan Wilmers & Clem Aeppli for their article “Consolidated advantage: New organizational dynamics of wage inequality”, published in the American Sociological Review in 2021.

2022 Fabian Pfeffer & Nora Waitkus for their article "The wealth inequality of nations", published in the American Sociological Review in 2021.

2021 Xiang Zhou for his article "Equalization of Selection? Reassessing the "Meritocratic Power" of a College Degree in Intergenerational Income Mobility," published in the American Sociological Review in 2019.

2020   Florian Hertel & Olaf Groh-Samberg for their article "The Relation between Inequality and Intergenerational Class Mobility in 39 Countries," published in the American Sociological Review in 2019.

2019    Benjamin Jarvis & Xi Song for their article "Rising Intragenerational Occupational Mobility in the United States 1969-2011," published in the American Sociological Review in 2017.

2018    Ineke Maas & Marco H.D. van Leeuwen for their article "Toward Open Societies? Trends in Male Intergenerational Class Mobility in European Countries during Industrialization," published in the American Journal of Sociology in 2016.

2017    Fabrizio Bernardi for his article “Compensatory Advantage as a Mechanism of Educational Inequality,” published in Sociology of Education in 2014.