Anna Stansbury Wins 2021 Dissertation Award from Upjohn Institute

MIT Sloan Assistant Professor Anna Stansbury is the first-prize winner of the Upjohn Institute’s 2021 Dissertation Awards. For more than 25 years, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a private, not-for-profit, nonpartisan research organization that studies policy-related issues of employment and unemployment, has sponsored annual awards for the best PhD dissertations on employment policies and issues.

Stansbury, who won the 2021 first-prize award for her dissertation “Essays on Power in Labor Markets” for Harvard University, is now an Assistant Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and is in the core faculty of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER). She is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Stansbury holds a BA in economics from Cambridge University, a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, and an MA and PhD in economics from Harvard University.

“This year’s Upjohn Institute Dissertation Award winners have made path-breaking contributions to our understanding of some of the most salient employment issues of our time, including the bargaining power of workers, the gender pay gap, remote work, and the implications of affirmative action for future earnings,” said Susan N. Houseman, Vice President and Director of Research at the Upjohn Institute, in a statement on the organization’s website. “These dissertations undoubtedly will influence not only future academic research but also our thinking about a range of state and federal social policies.”

Stansbury noted via Twitter that she is “incredibly honoured” to receive the Upjohn Institute Dissertation Award. “For many years now I’ve looked to the Upjohn Dissertation Award lists as representing exactly the kind of researcher I aspired to be,” Stansbury (@annastansbury) posted.

You can read more about this year’s award winners here.