Award Winners 2022

Professor Irene Rizzini

Prof. Irene Rizzini is a sociologist, Ph.D. from the Instituto Universitário de Pesquisa do Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ), with a degree in Psychology from the University of Santa Úrsula, a master’s degree in Social Service from the University of Chicago (School of Social Service Administration). She is a professor in the Department of Social Service at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (Undergraduate and Graduate Studies) and director of the International Centre for Childhood Studies and Research (CIESPI) (external link)  in partnership with PUC-Rio. At the international level, she was President of the Childwatch International Research Network, 2002-2009, and was a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame, at the Institute for International Studies, with a focus on Latin American Studies in 2006. Irene Rizzini received the Guggenheim award for 2008- 2009 and The Global Citizens Award (2016). She was a visiting professor (Leverhulme professorship grant) at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, from August to November 2017, associated with the Center for Research on Families and Relationships (2017).

She actively participates in several editorial boards of scientific journals and coordinates several scientific cooperation research projects with universities on all continents, with publications at national and international levels.

The McCreary Centre Society

The McCreary Center Society (external link)  based in British Columbia, Canada. The charity  conducts community-based research, evaluation, and youth engagement initiatives to improve youth health and well-being. The charity is probably best known for the BC Adolescent Health Survey (BC AHS), a population-level provincial survey administered to youth aged 12-19 every five years since 1992. Adapted versions of the survey are administered to youth whose experience may not be captured in the BC AHS including youth in custody, and homeless and street-involved youth.

McCreary is seen as a leader in meaningful youth engagement. The organization includes youth in all its work, including a thriving Youth Action and Advisory Council which use the results of the BC AHS and other research to develop projects to improve youth health including organizing ‘by youth for youth’ workshops and events. The Council also facilitates a granting program that supports youth in communities across the province to develop and deliver projects that address findings from the BC AHS. For example, in early 2022 the Council supported youth across the province to address BC AHS research findings relating to school connectedness, mental health, and physical activity.

Stella Marz

Is a Phd candidate researching the topyc of “The good life in the normative space of possibilities- Wellbeing of children in an international perspective”.

She qualitatively examines the well-being of children from an intersectional and subjectivation-theoretical perspective and reconstructs how dimensions of inequality such as classism, heteronormatism, racism, ableism and adultism have an influence on subjective well-being. In doing so, she develops an understanding of subjective well-being that essentially unfolds through processes of subjectivation and thus within the framework of powerful practices that are culturally and socially determined. 

As a young researcher, Stella März has not only made important contributions to qualitative research on child well-being with her own numerous empirical research projects and publications, but she also systematically encourages and promotes other emerging scholars internationally who work on theoretical, methodological and especially ethical questions concerning qualitative child well-being research. International orientation, scientific curiosity and the question of power and social inequality characterise her approach and continue important impulses from Christine Hunner-Kreisel´s work and life.