The paper "Empirical problems for explanationism" by Rune Nyrup has been awarded the first Graduate Student Essay Prize of the European Philosophy of Science Association (EPSA). This prize is aimed at graduate students who had their papers accepted for presentation at the EPSA 2015 conference in Düsseldorf. It is expected to encourage early career scholars to pursue their research, and to highlight the quality and variety of philosophical work on science carried out within European academia. The submissions were blindly examined by the Graduate Student Essay Prize Committee appointed by the EPSA Steering Committee, which included Lilia Gurova, Sabina Leonelli, Bert Leuridan [chair] and David Teira. All the submissions were of high quality and represented different strands of philosophy of science. The decision was therefore difficult to reach, however the paper "Empirical problems for explanationism" was agreed by all committee members to deserve the award given the importance of its subject for philosophy of science, the originality of its claims, its clearly presented argument and its thorough grasp of the relevant literature. Rune Nyrups's paper challenges the existing empirical arguments for the view that good explanations of phenomena provide epistemic support for the underlying hypotheses. The winner will receive 500 EUR and the paper will be taken into consideration for publication in the EJPS.

Congratulations Rune!