2026 Book Award Winner, Isabel M. Perera, The Welfare Workforce, Why Mental Health Care Varies Across Affluent Democracies (Cambridge University Press, 2025).
The Council for European Studies’ (CES) Book Award Committee is pleased to announce the winner of the 2026 European Studies Book Award.
Isabel M. Perera, Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University, has received the 2026 European Studies Book Award for her book, The Welfare Workforce: How Mental Health Care Varies Across Affluent Democracies.
| Per Cambridge University Press: “The Welfare Workforce is a thought-provoking exploration of mental health care in the United States and beyond. Although all the affluent democracies pursued deinstitutionalization, some failed to provide adequate services, while others overcame challenges of stigma and limited resources and successfully expanded care. Isabel M. Perera examines the role of the “welfare workforce” in providing social services to those who cannot demand them. Drawing on extensive research in four countries – the United States, France, Norway, and Sweden – Perera sheds light on post-industrial politics and the critical part played by those who work for the welfare state. A must-read for anyone interested in mental health care, social services, and the politics of welfare, The Welfare Workforce challenges conventional wisdom and offers new insights into the complex factors that contribute to the success or failure of mental health care systems. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.” The committee was especially impressed with the breadth and theoretical rigor of The Welfare Workforce. Using the specific case of mental health care Perera develops a novel theoretical argument about the political dynamics of welfare state reform that is likely to be applicable to other parts of the welfare state. |
2026 Silver Award
The Book Award Committee has award the 2026 Silver Award to Mikkel Dack, Associate Professor of History at Rowan University, for his book, Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany: The Fragebogen and Political Screening during the Allied Occupation (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
2026 Bronze Award
The Book Award committee awarded the bronze award to Anna Schwenck for her book, Flexible Authoritarianism: Cultivating Ambition and Loyalty in Russia (Oxford University Press, 2023).
Book Award Shortlist
We are proud to recognize the outstanding contributions that made our shortlist for the 2026 cycle.
Simeon Koole (University of Bristol), Intimate Subjects: Touch & Tangibility in Britain’s Cerebral Age (the University of Chicago Press, 2024)
Charlotte Cavaille (University of Michigan), Fair Enough: Support for Redistribution in the Age of Inequality, (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Darya Tsymbalyuk (University of Chicago), Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War (Polity Books, 2025).
CES thanks the 2026 Book Award Committee
Veronica Anghel, European University Institute
Marius Busemeyer, University of Konstanz
Scott Lavery, University of Glasgow
James Ellison, Queen Mary University of London
Klaus Petersen, University of Southern Denmark
Marta Ribeiro Figueiredo, Temple University