CES is delighted to announce the 2025 winners of the Carolina de Miguel Moyer Young Scholar Award: Elana Resnick (UC-Santa Barbara) and Vicente Valentim (EUI).
A former recipient of the Andrew Mellon/Council of European Studies Dissertation Completion Fellowship, along with several other prestigious pre-doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships, Elana Resnick holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2016). She is currently Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Elana Resnick has published in some of the most prominent journals in the field, including American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, and Cultural Anthropology. Some of these contributions are the foundation for her forthcoming and exciting book Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe (Stanford University Press, forthcoming, 2025). The book weaves together two of the most urgent and politically fraught social problems of our time–sustainability and racism—within a single, compelling ethnographic narrative. Although opposition to sustainability efforts often correlates with ethnic prejudice, Refusing Sustainability, like much of Resnick’s previous book, highlights a disturbing paradox: those benefiting from environmental cleanliness frequently stigmatize and reject the very migrants and ethnic minorities who are responsible for maintaining clean environments. Based on extended ethnographic research in Bulgaria, the book shows how Roma–frequently treated as disposable by broader society–play a vital role in waste management and thereby contribute substantially to sustainable development. What Elana Resnick describes in this scholarly tour-de-force echoes similar dynamics elsewhere in the world, where other marginalized groups—such as the “carreros” or “cartoneros” in Argentina—perform comparable labor under parallel conditions of exclusion and invisibility.
Elana Resnick’s findings resonate with broader global contradictions: societies that oppose immigration often simultaneously export their waste to the very regions from which migrants originate, or hire migrant women—frequently off the books—to clean their homes, all the while treating them as ‘trash’. Refusing Sustainability also offers a rare window into post-socialist Bulgaria and a richly textured, empathetic account of Romani life in Eastern Europe, where they are largely concentrated, with particular attention to the vital role women’s networks play in the resilience of the Romani community.
In addition to her scholarly work, Elana Resnick serves as Director of the Infrastructure Inequalities Research Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which investigates the intersection between social inequality and the built environment in urban settings around the world. She is also active in the public sphere, frequently contributing as an expert in Bulgarian society and politics, and as a vocal advocate for Romani rights.
Vicente Valentim stands out as an original and highly influential scholar, whose research has reshaped ongoing debates about the roots and dynamics of illiberalism in Europe and beyond. Earning his PhD from the European University Institute in 2021, Valentim is currently an Assistant Professor of Political Science at IE University (Madrid), after a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Despite being less than four years post-PhD, Valentim has quickly become a prominent voice in the field. His research has resulted in fifteen published or accepted articles—including five solo-authored pieces—in leading journals such as the Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, and Comparative Political Studies. Valentim is also the author of a solo-authored book with Oxford University Press, named a book of the year by the Financial Times, and a bestseller in its Portuguese translation, with a forthcoming German edition.
A recipient of numerous awards—the ECPR Blondel Prize for best thesis, the GESIS Klingemann Prize for best CSES scholarship, and the Joseph L. Bernd Prize for best article in the Journal of Politics, among others—Valentim has developed a compelling alternative to the conventional explanation for surges in illiberal behavior. Rather than attributing rapid changes to shifting citizen attitudes, Valentim’s work spotlights the pivotal role of shifting social norms—showing how the public expression of long-held but previously hidden views can escalate dramatically when individuals perceive declining social sanctions. This insight is backed by innovative measurement strategies and advanced causal inference techniques. In addition to their scholarly contributions, Valentim is deeply engaged with public and policy discourse, providing expert commentary for outlets such as POLITICO, The Guardian, CNN, and Der Spiegel, and contributing to podcasts and leading academic blogs.
We look forward to what these two young scholars’ curious and creative minds will produce in coming years.
CES thanks the members of this year’s award committee:
Yasemin Soysal, Berlin Social Science Center
Anna Gryzmala-Busse, Stanford University
Francesc Amat, University of Barcelona
Laia Balcells, Georgetown University
Juan Diez Medrano, Carlos III de Madrid