Coser Diss. Proposal Award

The 2020 recipient of the Rose Laub Coser Award is

Laura Adler, Harvard University, for What’s a Job Candidate Worth?  Pay-Setting and Gender Inequality after the “Salary History Ban”  

The Rose Laub Coser Award Committee invites submissions for the 2021 award. The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2020. The Coser award is given annually to a graduate student for an outstanding doctoral dissertation proposal in the area of the family or gender and society. It includes $500 for the award recipient. The award was established by the family, friends, and former students of the late Rose Coser, a former president of ESS and recipient of its Merit Award. 

To be eligible for consideration, the proposal must have been approved by the student’s department within two years prior to submission, and the dissertation cannot have been completed or published when the proposal is considered. Proposals should include:

  1. a cover sheet indicating the title of the dissertation, the student’s name, email address, the university with which the student is affiliated, and the names of the doctoral committee members;
  2. a two-page summary or abstract of the proposal;
  3. a narrative, which must not exceed 15 double-spaced pages (excluding references) and should include:
    • a statement of the problem to be addressed in the dissertation
    • a justification of the importance of the research problem for the field
    • a description of the methods to be employed in the study
    • a statement of the anticipated outcomes and their significance
  4. Ancillary material such as budgets, work schedules, and human subjects review documentation should not be included.

The award will be announced and presented at a special session at the Annual Meeting. The winner must attend the annual meeting to receive the award in person or otherwise will forfeit the award. Eligible students must also fulfill an ESS membership requirement in one of three possible ways: hold a current ESS student membership, or have a current ESS membership held by one of the dissertation committee members, or be enrolled in a department with a current ESS departmental membership. Eligible students should submit an electronic copy of their proposal by the deadline of October 15, 2020 to the Committee Chair:

Smitha Radhakrishnan

[email protected]

Members of the Coser Award Committee:

Smitha Radhakrishnan, Chair, Wellesley College

Amanda Cox, Bryn Mawr College

Ginny Natale, Stony Brook Medicine