During the Austrian Academy of Sciences' scholarship award ceremony, Laura Porak and Theresa Hager (JKU, Institute for the Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy, ICAE) received a prestigious grant by the Austrian Academic of Sciences. The Austrian Academy of Sciences presented grants to a total of 83 scholars. The projects selected as part of international peer review procedures focus on innovative questions ranging from subject areas in natural sciences, life sciences, and medicine, to the humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies. The Austrian Academy of Sciences has made a total of € 9.9 million available to fund these projects, partly with funds provided by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science & Research (BMBWF).

Together with Susanna Azevedo from the University of Vienna, Laura Porak and Theresa Hager received a DOC team grant to support their interdisciplinary research project titled "Explicit and Implicit Rules of Competition - Interdisciplinary Research Project on a Polarizing Principle of Social Order".

Following opening remarks by Heinz Faßmann and Martin Polaschek, Porak and Hager had an opportunity to introduce their project on behalf of all DOC team grant recipients. Their study focuses on understanding the ever-present phenomenon of competition as an institution with explicit (i.e. tangible, legitimized) and implicit (not tangible, hidden) rules. Triangulating socioeconomics, political science, and sociology allows the authors to be able to critically analyze competition as a sociologically ordering principle and understand it as being constituted by social power structures. In the process, they are addressing three key challenges we face today: Global inequality, the EU’s path to sustainability, and the lack of affordable housing.