Former MSc in Migration Studies Student Sebastien Rojon has won the Dr Nicola Knight Prize in Quantitative Methods for best MSc dissertation in 2013 awarded by the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnograpy (SAME).

SAME awards the prize for the best use of quantitative methods in an anthropological dissertation.

Sebastien’s dissertation, ‘Immigration and extreme-right voting in France: a contextual analysis of the 2012 presidential elections’ addresses the rise of extreme-right voting in contemporary France.

The dissertation has a rich theoretical framework based on realistic conflict theory and contact theory, which is enhanced by a wide range of contextual information to illustrate the theoretical points made. Sebastien suggests that these two major theories might not be as mutually exclusive as they seem, because they operate at different geographical levels; he develops eight hypotheses on factors related to far right electoral support in France and tests these at different geographical scales using a multilevel regression model.

The dissertation was also awarded a distinction and will be published as a joint IMI-COMPAS working paper next month.

Sebastien completed the MSc in Migration Studies, which is run jointly by ODID and SAME, in 2013.

• Find out more about the course.