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International awards: the University of Helsinki's "RENEW Early Career Paper Prize" to Davide Orsitto, PhD Student in Human Rights and Global Politics of Sant'Anna School, for his analysis on the approaches by Italy and Sweden tackling the Covid-19

The prize was awarded at the University of Södertörn, Sweden, in conclusion of the 5th Nordic Challenges Conference "Nordic Neighbourhoods: Affinity and Distinction in the Baltic Sea Region and Beyond" on June 2nd 2022 

Publication date: 21.06.2022
Davide Orsitto
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New international recognition for a student of Sant'Anna School: Davide Orsitto, a PhD student in Human Rights and Global Politics, has been awarded the RENEW Early Career Paper Prize by the University of Helsinki for his paper "'Varieties of Post-Pandemic Capitalism: A Quantitative Comparison between Sweden and Italy's Economic Policy and Political Ideology". This is an achievement for the contribution of young researchers in the discussion of critical social challenges and issues in Scandinavian countries. 

Eligible candidates for the award are PhD or doctoral students who have been in PhD Programmes for less than three years, included - in this case - in the designation of "young researchers". The evaluation committee that assigned the award to Davide Orsitto was composed of Caroline de la Porte, full professor at Copenhagen Business School, and Henrik Stenius, director emeritus of the University of Helsinki. The paper, selected to receive the award, was presented at the RENEW-ESPAnet workshop on "Social Citizenship, Democracy and Sustainability in the Nordic Countries," hosted at the University of Iceland in May 2022. 

In Davide Orsitto's contribution, he hypothesizes that, the different trade-off between freedom and security at the basis of Sweden's liberty-oriented response, characterized by a low strincency index (an index that measures the severity of pandemic containment regulations), and Italy's security-oriented approach, characterized by a high stringency index, in tackling the Covid-19 Pandemics, is determined by the different hierarchy of values that characterizes these two societies. 

"I am honored to receive the prize. The recognition of the work done by young researchers is a key component of both personal gratification and constitutes and marks an essential step to forge an early academic career in a competitive world where fitting in is not always easy", Davide Orsitto stressed in his comment on this success.