Communist and Post-Communist Studies Announces 2026 Global Collaborative Research Award
Communist and Post-Communist Studies—a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by UC Press and led by J. Paul Goode (Carleton University)—congratulates Dorota Pietrzyk-Reeves (Jagiellonian University, Poland) and Paula Pickering (William and Mary, USA), winners of its 2026 Global Collaborative Research Award for their article “Perceptions and Drivers of Civic Activism: The Cases of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Poland.”
Communist and Post-Communist Studies’ Global Collaborative Research Award annually awards research that best exemplifies the value of diversification and platforming voices and perspectives of scholars from all regions who contribute to, and engage with, international research on the communist and post-communist world. This award, announced for the first time in 2026, is unique in promoting and recognizing cross-regional collaboration in published research on the communist or post-communist world.
CPCS Editor-in-Chief J. Paul Goode, in passing along the award committee’s evaluation, noted that “There were a number of strong candidates for this year’s award, but the editorial team was especially impressed” with their work, finding it "a fantastic research design that can be used in teaching but also as a reference for further scholarship… ,“ one that “offers conceptual and empirical insights that will be useful for researchers working on civil society, civic participation, and democracy promotion.”
In accepting the award, Professor Pickering remarked that “Dorota and I partnered at every stage of the research process—co-developing the research question, protocol for collecting data, the analysis approach to interpreting the data, and the write-up of the article. Cross-regional collaboration is a valuable research approach that often generates new insights and interrogates boundaries. It does so by bringing together partners with different backgrounds who often bring different interpretations of the evidence gathered even when using the same rigorous analytical approach. By talking through these different interpretations and listening to the basis for them, collaborating scholars can craft together a more holistic interpretation and innovative insights that no individual on their own can produce.”
In addition to a small cash award, winning research articles (and runners up, where applicable) are announced at the annual meeting of the CPCS editorial board, and recognized via UC Press’s and CPCS’s Websites and social media, and are made free to read.
The CPCS Global Collaborative Research Award is open to research teams involving at least two authors based in different countries, with at least one author based in a communist or post-communist country, who has published a research article in CPCS in the preceding calendar year.
Communist and Post-Communist Studies is an international, peer-reviewed scholarly journal featuring comparative research on current and historical developments in the communist and post-communist world. Post-communist states and societies encompass Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, for which the term "post-communist" remains analytically useful as a temporal or geographical frame. The journal broadly covers domestic politics and societies, foreign policy and international relations, ideology and identities, political economy, political and human geography, and law.
