EWI presents Eglė Vaizgėlaitė with Lewis Master Thesis Award
The European Whistleblowing Institute (EWI) presented the inaugural award of the Lewis Master Thesis Award to Eglė Vaizgėlaitė from Lithuania’s Vytautas Magnus University. Vaizgėlaitė received the award from Professor David Lewis in a ceremony that marked the closure of the European Whistleblowing Conference – Collaborative Pathways to Integrity, which took place on 4 April in Brussels.
Presenting the award, Dimitrios Kafteranis, EWI’s Co-Founder and Director of Research, explained how the accolade came to exist: “This award was something we were thinking to do for a long time since we created the institute because, as we go from generation to generation, more and more students are doing research on whistleblowing.”
Reflecting on how far the field of whistleblowing has come, David Lewis said: “When I started to examine the employment protection available in the UK for whistleblowers in the 1990s, I never contemplated a day like this or that one day undergraduate and post-graduate students would be taking courses on the law and practice of whistleblowing.”
“I hope this award will encourage more people to come forward. This research will be very helpful and contribute to improvements for whistleblowers. Because that is what this is about: improvement for whistleblowers.”
Receiving the award, Eglė Vaizgėlaitė said: “It is a real honor to receive the Lewis Master Thesis Award, named after a scholar who has shaped the understanding of whistleblowing both as a legal and moral act of courage. I want to thank the European Whistleblowing Institute for this recognition and for creating the space where research like mine can matter.”
“In my research, I analyzed Article 39.2 of Lithuania’s criminal code and the EU Whistleblower Directive. What I found is that whistleblowers are not protected and some countries don’t even clarify what kind of liability whistleblowers can be exempt from.”
The Evaluation Committee of the Lewis Master Thesis Award decided to present this award to Eglė Vaizgėlaitė’s thesis titled “Issues of Whistleblower Exemption from Criminal Liability in Lithuanian Criminal Law” for the originality, critical approach, and novelty of her research.
“The Committee was impressed by the authenticity of her research on Lithuanian criminal law and whistleblowing. The novelty of her research lies in the interactions of criminal and whistleblowing laws”, explained the Committee.
The Evaluation Committee also decided to present honorable mentions to Rea Drikou, from Greece’s Panteion University, for her thesis “The Whistleblowers’ Protection in the Light of EU and National Jurisdiction”, and Snezana Kovacevic, from Serbia’s University of Belgrade, for her thesis “Publicity as a Mechanism for Whistleblower Protection”.
Awarded annually, this prestigious honor is designed to encourage and recognize students’ research in the development of whistleblowing law and policy. This award highlights the recipient’s exceptional academic achievement and pays tribute to the groundbreaking contributions of Professor David Lewis, a distinguished scholar whose work has shaped the landscape of whistleblowing research.
