The section honoured her for an outstanding qualification thesis: “Reification in Circulation Labor: Markets, Capitalist Reproduction and the Neutralization of Critique”. The prize is awarded every two years and comes with €1,000.

In her dissertation, Mirela Ivanova brings György Lukács’ theory of reification into conversation with today’s world of work. She asks how markets and capitalist reproduction shape labor in the sphere of circulation, and how critique gets neutralized along the way. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Oliver Nachtwey and Sarah Nies and completed at the University of Basel.

The dissertation is part of the research project “Digital Alienation and Appropriation of Work”. The project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and led by Prof. Dr. Friedericke Hardering and Prof. Dr. Oliver Nachtwey.

Congratulations on this well-deserved recognition, Mirela!