Diletta Lauro has won this year's Best Thesis Prize for the MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies.

Each year, the Examiners for the MSc have the discretion to award a prize for the best thesis submitted by one of the students on the course. Dilatta Lauro won the award for her thesis on ‘The underlying conceptions of membership of anti-deportation campaigns in the United Kingdom’, which was written under the supervision of  Dr Matthew Gibney. 

Diletta uses a study of the Roseline Akhalu case to explore the underlying conceptions of political membership within UK anti-deportation campaigns. The Examiners felt it was an ambitious and original piece of work which uses the novel angle of community-based articulation to investigate concepts and practices of citizenship in the context of deportation. In addition to setting out a clear research question, Diletta showed a sound understanding of a very thorough range of political theory literature and used appropriate methodology to derive original conclusions. The work is analytically sophisticated and empirically compelling throughout, and the Examiners felt it makes a strong contribution to forced migration studies and recommended it for publication as a journal article.