EUPRERA is pleased to announce the finalists of the 2025 Master Thesis Award for Excellence. The winners, 1 per category, will be announced during the EUPRERA congress in Lund on Sept. 26, 2025.

This award recognises outstanding master’s theses that contribute to the advancement of public relations, strategic communication, and related fields. All submissions are evaluated for originality, relevance, theoretical and methodological quality, and practical implications. Following a rigorous selection process, the jury has shortlisted the following finalists (listed alphabetically by surname within each category):

2025 EUPRERA Master Award Finalists

Practical Impact category

• Sophie Cameron
  University of Stirling, UK
  Thesis: Driving Change: Increasing female visibility within motorsport through communication and public relations strategy to encourage female participation
  Supervisor: Richard Haynes

• Fatih Şahin
  Hanze University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands
  Thesis: The Missing C: An International Storytelling Strategy for the Open Government Partnership
  Supervisors: Astrid Berg, Wim Elving

• Arsalan Satti
  University of Stirling, UK and Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
  Thesis: The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War: a multi-modal critical discourse analysis of social media posts of President Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan
  Supervisor: David Rolinson

• Temitope Shittu
  University of Stirling, UK
  Thesis: Strategies for Communicating Immigration Policies: A Critical Discourse Analysis of UK Government Communications on Immigration
  Supervisor: Stefanie Hills

Theoretical Impact category

• Otega Akpokiniovo
  University of Stirling, UK
  Thesis: Unveiling Gender Perspectives: The Lived Experiences of Women Public Relations Practitioners in Nigeria
  Supervisor: Jacqueline Collins

• Jamile Calil Racanicci
  Lund University, Sweden
  Thesis: Confusing lobbying with corruption? Discursive tensions relating transparency and lobbying in the EU after Qatargate
  Supervisor: Camilla Nothhaft

• Jakob Johannsen
  University of Vienna, Austria
  Thesis: Communication of foreign companies operating in Russia during the war in Ukraine
  Supervisor: Sabine Einwiller

• Valeska Jung
  Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany
  Thesis: Crisis Communication in Universities Put to the Test: A Scoping Review of the Academic Study of Crisis Communication in Higher Education
  Supervisor: Nora Denner

• Laura Siewert
  Lund University, Sweden
  Thesis: From Public Diplomacy to Diplomacy Which Becomes Public: Investigating Intelligence Disclosure as an Information Warfare Tactic
  Supervisor: Leysan Storie

We extend our congratulations to all finalists and express our gratitude to the reviewers and institutions who supported this year’s award process.

Congratulations!