Iepke M. Rijcken, doctoral researcher at Department of Sociology and Human Geography | Division of Sociology has been awarded the prestigious 2025 ÖAW Dissertation Award for Research on Migration for her ongoing dissertation, “Conviviality and Infrastructures of Mobility: Cross-Border Commuting in the Polish-German Border Region.”

As part of the  VISION project funded by the  Volkswagen Foundation, her research examines the everyday realities of cross-border commuters, focusing on the gendered, affective, and infrastructural dimensions of mobile work from a (trans)local perspective. The project is supervised by Univ.-Prof. Kyoko Shinozaki and  Assistant Prof. Bianca Szytniewski  (University of Utrecht, Geography). We very much look forward to the award ceremony on March 24, 2026.

We are honored that our early-career researcher  Iepke M. Rijcken has become a laureate of the award for the second time, following  Dr. Victoria Reitter ( 2019).

The Austrian Academy of Sciences Dissertation Award for Migration Research is given to an exceptional ongoing dissertation in the social sciences, humanities, or law in the field of flight and migration, integration, or social transformations as a result of migration and mobility.