Dr Judith Sijstermans (University of Aberdeen) and co-author Dr Coree Brown Swan (University of Stirling) won the 2023 Best Article Prize from Regional and Federal Studies, alongside co-winners Christoph Trinn and Felix Schulte.
Every year since 2017, Regional & Federal Studies has awarded the "Best Article Prize" for an article published the preceding year. Four to five articles are nominated by the Editorial Board. The journal's Advisory Board then votes to decide on the best article of the year.
Sijstermans and Brown Swan’s article, “Shades of Solidarity: Comparing Scottish and Flemish responses to Catalonia”, considers why Scottish and Flemish nationalist parties expressed (reluctantly or enthusiastically) solidarity with the Catalan nationalist cause during the October 2017 Catalan independence referendum. They find that solidarity between independence-seeking parties is based on a history of their relationships, but ultimately contingent on intra-party dynamics and history and domestic context. Solidarity thus, is not fundamental but rather contingent.
The article is available in open accesss here.