The Sage/CQ Press Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor both research-based projects and those that may involve activism that has focused on advancing social justice and addressing inequality and inequity in society.
Citation from the Award Committee:
This is a scholarly intervention in the literature on LGBTQI rights that is on the level of the contributions of scholars such as Barrington Moore and Theda Skocpol. The scale of the work and its implications for international human rights law are remarkable, and we see this work as both an effort to contribute to the movement as well as to scholarship on the movement. Importantly, this work makes gender a throughline in the analysis of international politics and is a very timely book for the current political moment. The co-authors bring a great depth of analysis to both the pro and anti LGBTI rights movements. We note that a further contribution to the social movement literature is the double helix metaphor, which is a really interesting way of characterizing the tension in the movements, and could be useful for analyzing other movements.
Phillip M. Ayoub is Professor in the Department of Political Science and the School of Public Policy at University College London, where he also serves as Editor of the European Journal of Politics & Gender. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2013, following M.A. degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Cornell, and a B.A. from the University of Washington. Prior to joining UCL, he held academic posts at Occidental College, Drexel University, and was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute.
Ayoub’s research bridges international relations and comparative politics, with a focus on transnational politics, LGBTQ+ rights, norm diffusion, and social movements. His work examines how marginalized groups mobilize across borders and how international visibility shapes domestic change. His first book, When States Come Out (Cambridge University Press, 2016), analyzes the diffusion of LGBT rights across Europe using a mixed-methods approach. His second book, The Global Fight Against LGBTI Rights (NYU Press, 2024, co-authored with Kristina Stoeckl), explores transnational anti-LGBTI movements.
His articles have appeared in leading journals such as the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Social Forces, and European Journal of International Relations. His work has been supported by numerous fellowships and awards, including from the Fulbright Program, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the European Research Council. Ayoub has also received several prizes for his scholarship, including best dissertation, best article, and/or best book awards from APSA, ISA, EUSA, and CES.
Kristina Stoeckl is a professor of sociology at Luiss University Rome. A renowned scholar of Russian Orthodoxy and religion-state relations in Russia, she has worked on the role of transnational moral conservative networks in global politics and the role of Russia in the global culture wars. Among her recent publications are The Moralist International (2022, with Dmitry Uzlaner) and The Global Fight against LGBTI-Rights (2024, with Phillip Ayoub). She is currently working on the topic of European Christian Democracy and the rise of the Christian Right.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Jyl Josephson (Chair) of Rutgers University – Newark, Dr. Nancy Love of Appalachian State University, and Dr. Dara Strolovitch of Yale University