Karen Nershi of the Stanford Internet Observatory has won the 2023 Emerging Scholars Policy Prize, run in partnership with Foreign Affairs. The annual competition provides an opportunity for emerging scholars to share new ideas on urgent global policy challenges, producing outstanding essays that make their original research more accessible to policymakers, practitioners, and the general public. Karen Nershi won for her essay Assessing the Political Motivations Behind Ransomware Attacks; the work was based on research conducted in collaboration with research scholar Shelby Grossman. Winners receive $10,000 to support their research. 

“The Emerging Scholars Policy Prize enables Perry World House to support scholars whose work has global policy relevance,” said Amy Gadsden, associate vice provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. “This year’s winners confronted urgent issues that are crucial to Perry World House’s work and to the world: how to make climate policy more effective in reducing industry emissions, and how politically motivated cybercrime impacts international security.”