ECPA Awards

The European Community Psychology Association (ECPA) confers annual awards in four different categories:

  1. The ECPA Lifetime Career Award: The Award is to honour individuals with outstanding, long-term scientific contribution to Community Psychology theory, research, and practice.
  2. The ECPA Young Career Award: This award will recognize individuals for their notable contributions to the field of community psychology and who are within eight years of the award of their Ph.D.
  3. The ECPA Best Doctoral Thesis Award: This Award is to identify the best doctoral thesis on a topic relevant to the field of community psychology completed in the last two years (e.g., for 2023 between January 2020 to December 2022).
  4. The ECPA Contribution to Practice Award: The Award is presented to honour individuals who are making a significant contribution to the field of Community Psychology (e. g., have developed intervention projects in local or virtual communities, which produced a significant impact in the communities).

ECPA Awards procedure

Nominations and self-nominations are both accepted. ECPA invites its member to nominate candidates.

ECPA Board members cannot be nominated.

Past presidents cannot send self-nominations. 

Each application should include a 1-2 page letter describing the nominee’s work and the reasons for nomination in the specific category, as well as the nominee’s and nominator’s (when applicable) personal data (names, address, and e-mails).

Nominations should be sent as e-mail attachments to the ECPA BOARD at ecpa.psychassociation@gmail.com by July 31 2024.

We strongly recommend submitting supporting documents, including published papers, books chapters and/or other relevant outputs.

For the ECPA Doctoral Thesis Award, please submit a document (max. 5,000 words) summarising the main sections (i.e., state of the art, methodology, results and conclusions), including a summary of the thesis (~300 words) and a brief presentation of the doctoral student (~200 words).

Each award is accompanied by the Award Certificate and announcement of the award on the ECPA website.  More benefits for the winners include free membership for 1 year and free registration for the ECPA conference.

The prizes will be awarded by a Committee, which will include one person from the ECPA Board and at least two invited external experts.

The awarding committee for the past ECPA Doctoral Thesis Award, the ECPA Young Career Award, and the ECPA Contribution to Practice Award was formed by Cinzia Albanesi, former ECPA President and President of the Committee who was appointed by the ECPA Board, after having identified potential conflict of interest of applicants with ECPA board member. The other members of the awarding committee were Isabel Menezes, University of Porto (PT) and Josè Ornelas, ISPA (PT).

The ECPA thanks Isabel and Josè for their support and engagement with ECPA.

ECPA Awards 2023

The ECPA Lifetime Career Award 2023 was awarded to David Fryer.

Read more about his work and contributions to Community Psychology here.

The ECPA Young Career Award 2023 was not awarded.

The Young Career Award 2023 was not assigned. The CV  of the candidate who applied was brilliant but not really with a focus in Community Psychology.  Jasper Van Assche indeed has a brilliant and strong curriculum deeply rooted and Political Psychology, with Community Psychology taking a secondary focus. For this reason, even if the Committee recognised the scientific value of his work they decided not to award the prize.

The ECPA Best Doctoral Thesis Award 2023 was awarded to Flora Gatti.

Flora Gatti has been awarded the best doctoral thesis award for 2022 for her dissertation “Citizens’ Self-in-Community and Ubiquitous Social Media Use: Disentangling Modern Local Community Experience”. Flora Gatti, defended her dissertation on June 2021 obtaining her Ph.D. in Mind, Gender and Languages at the Department of Humanities, University of Naples Federico II under the supervision of prof. Fortuna Procentese. Her thesis explores how ubiquitous social media play a role in local social capital, sense of place and sense of community going beyond simplified and dichotomous analysis and understanding. The thesis provides empirical suggestions for designing new technologies aimed at social and urban reconnection.

The ECPA Contribution to Practice Award 2023 was awarded to Patrizia Meringolo.

Patrizia Meringolo has been awarded the Contribution to Practice Award for her contribution to LabCom for its development of Community Psychology practice and its capacity to involve local actors and stakeholders. LabCom as a Spin-off of the University of Florence represents a concrete application of how research can be translated into practice, maintaining the connection between research and intervention.

ECPA  decided to assign the Contribution to Practice Award  ex aequo also to Radosveta Dimitrova for her work on Roma adolescents: even if her work is strongly rooted in developmental psychology and builds on PYD, it has strong connections with Community Psychology, a relevant emphasis on issues of social justice and significant implications for practice.

ECPA Awards 2022

The ECPA Lifetime Career Award 2022 was assigned to Caterina Arcidiacono.

Read more about her work and contributions to Community Psychology here.

The ECPA Best Doctoral Thesis Award 2022 was assigned to Marta Gaboardi.

Marta Gaboardi has been awarded the best doctoral thesis award for 2022 for her dissertation “Working with people experiencing homelessness, completed under the supervision of Professor Santinello. Marta Gaboardi has done outstanding work, as her thesis develops the issue of homelessness in an original way with reference to (a) theoretical perspective – ecological approach (b) intervention programme – HousingFirst (HF) (c) point of view – service providers and not only homeless people. The candidate shows mastery in the use of different tools used to collect data, with an innovative approach using photovoice in cross-cultural research, and offers robust and mature insights on the practical implications of the research and its future directions.

Visit her profile here.

ECPA Awards 2021

The ECPA Lifetime Career Award 2021 was assigned to Josè Ornelas.

Read more about his work and contributions to Community Psychology here.

The ECPA Best Doctoral Thesis Award 2021 was assigned to Francesca Esposito

Francesca Esposito | Oxford Law Faculty

She discussed a dissertation entitled Life and Lived Experiences of People inside Migration-related Detention: An Ecological Exploration into Rome’s Detention Center. The dissertation addresses a critical and contemporary issue in Europe and beyond and offers important contributions to Community Psychology. It was also particularly valued the courage to research this topic in such a challenging setting, following community psychology approaches and methods. The dissertation is an example of outstanding community psychology work and as such, it deserves the award.

Visit her profile here.