A young scholar from the University of Pisa was awarded the prize for the best essay of 2010 conferred by the 'Associazione italiana di valutazione' (Italian Association of Evaluation). On the occasion of the 16th national congress which took place in Trento in the month of April, Gabriele Tomei, a post graduate research student in Sociology at the Department of Science and Social Politics, was judged as being prestigiously recognised for two monographed pamphlets of the tri-monthly Science of Administration magazine appeared under his editorial care. They were no. 1 and no. 4 of the year 2010 with the title 'Valutazione, cittidinanza, participazione' (Evaluation, citizenship, participation).

In the commission's report one reads that Tomei's essay is "a collection of texts, all of which at a high level, under well edited and organic curatorship which manages, for the first time in Italy, to overcome the rhetoric of evaluative 'participationism' through the rigorous posing of epistemological and methodological problems which represent a true (and positive) discontinuity of the previous literature and a tangible advancement upon the subject."

The prize recognises and values the research activity on theoretical and methodological implications of the so called "participated evaluation" of public policies that Tomei had begun in 2004. From last year such research activity constituted the backbone of a new line of high level training projects at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Pisa which, in 2010, set up a Master course (level 2). In this academic year it has set up a high level training course on the evaluation of social policy intervention and territorial development for which Tomei covers the role of director.