Björn Bremer Wins Carolina de Miguel Moyer Young Scholar Award

The Council for European Studies has honored MPIfG alum Björn Bremer with its Carolina de Miguel Moyer Young Scholar Award 2026. Established in 2021 in memory of the political scientist Carolina de Miguel Moyer, the annual award recognizes researchers under the age of 40 or within ten years of earning their PhD who have contributed significantly to interdisciplinary research on Europe. Bremer is an assistant professor for political science at Central European University. Since completing his doctorate at the European University Institute in 2019, he has established himself as a specialist in welfare and fiscal politics in the European Union. He was a senior researcher at the MPIfG between 2019 and 2023 and a 2024/25 John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard. His research focuses on two closely related issues. First, he is interested in attitudes among citizens in Europe to the welfare state and fiscal policy. Survey experiments show that the public have clear preferences for certain policies but often reject trade-offs and have different priorities depending on social position. Second, Bremer analyzes why social democratic parties adopted austerity policies in the 2010s, despite apparent conflicts with their traditional agendas, and the political price they paid at the ballot box for doing so. Björn Bremer’s connection with the MPIfG remains: He is currently working with Institute director Lucio Baccaro on a book under contract with Princeton University Press on the politics of stagnation and reform in the Eurozone.