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Yssen received the award from Professor Håvard Haarstad of the University of Bergen, who, along with five other jury members from five Nordic universities, had concluded that the master's thesis "Autocratization and Civil Society Response in Tunisia: A Qualitative Case Study" best met the criteria for theoretical, methodological, and thematic originality and courage.
Original project
Yssen's study explores the negative development of Tunisian democracy following the Arab Spring and contributes to social geographic research on autocratization. The thesis was supervised by Kristian Stokke, who nominated the contribution for the award. The jury's reasoning agreed with the nomination text that Yssen's thesis represents something new in the subject.
“We agree with Stokke’s in that the thesis also makes an original contribution to autocratization studies through its analytical focus on how and to what extent gradual autocratization is resisted by civil society actors. The committee is convinced that the thesis demonstrates that Forfod Yssen has dared to stake out a new path. Forfod Yssen’s thesis is daring in terms of fieldwork and producing new, rich knowledge, and with that a contribution to and from geography as a discipline. While the field is dominated by quantitative and formalistic theory, the thesis interdisciplinary thoroughness and methodological bravery demonstrates how qualitative methods and interdisciplinarity on civil society and social movement is key, and also demonstrates how it extends it into the emerging field of autocratization studies.”
Research career
Yssen completed her master's degree in social geography in the fall of 2022 and is now working as a research assistant at the Welfare and living conditions research group at the Fafo Institute for Labour and Welfare Research.
Last year's award was canceled due to a small number of submissions, and Yssen's thesis was therefore put on hold for a year before the jury picked up on the nomination.
Seven other contributions from three institutions of higher education competed with Yssen for the award, and the jury emphasized that the level of all the nominated contributions was very solid.
