Honoring the 2026 GESS Award Recipients

Collage titled “GESS Awards 2026” showing four award recipients with Dean of Graduate Studies Prof. Stefan Ruenzi at the University of Mannheim. Max Otto, Felix Jungman, David Avagian and Vera Okisheva, and Sabrina Yufang Sun are pictured holding award certificates during the awards ceremony.

We are proud to celebrate our outstanding doctoral candidates whose achievements in teaching, research, and academic service have earned them the 2026 GESS Awards.

Behind every successful classroom experience is a dedicated instructor. The graduate school's Teaching Awards celebrate excellence in teaching and student learning.

This year’s awardees, honored for their teaching contributions during the 2025/26 academic year, are:

Felix Jungmann, Taxation doctoral candidate, for 'TAX 520 Besteuerung der Unternehmen'.
Emre Oral, Economics doctoral candidate, for 'BE 510 Business Economics I'.
Steffen Zetzmann, Economics doctoral candidate, for 'Macroeconomics B'.
Johannes Lattmann, Political Sciences doctoral candidate, for 'Introduction to Computational Text Analysis and NLP in R'.
Irem Karacay, Sociology doctoral candidate, for 'Language in Migration Research'.

In addition to outstanding teaching, the GESS community recognizes doctoral researchers whose scholarly work has made a significant contribution to their fields.

We are pleased to recognize the following recipients:

Sabrina Yufang Sun received the CDSB Best Paper Award for her paper ‘Echo Chambers at Work: The Impact of Political Ideology Alignment on Analyst Forecasts’.
Gerrit von Zedlitz-Neukirch earned the CDSB Interdisciplinary Award for his paper ‘Words on Drugs’.
David Avagian and Vera Okisheva, both doctoral candidates in political science, were awarded the CDSS Young Scholar Grant for their project ‘Mannheim Transatlantic Authoritarianism Research Group’. The grant supports innovative initiatives that strengthen scholarly networks and enhance the international visibility of social science research in Mannheim.
Max Otto, doctoral student in Sociology, received the CDSS Publication of the Year Award for his article ‘The Cultural Foundations of Cooperation Enforcement’, published in the ‘Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization’.

Congratulations to all award recipients! Your dedication to excellence in research, teaching, and academic collaboration continues to enrich Mannheim’s research community and inspire future generations of scholars.

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