Hristina Nikolova has been named the recipient of the American Marketing Association Foundation’s 2014 John A. Howard AMA Doctoral Dissertation Award, which has recognized noteworthy marketing dissertations for more than 50 years.

Nikolova (formerly Dzhogleva) is an assistant professor in the marketing department at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. She received her Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on dyadic decision making, interpersonal relationships, consumers’ self-control, and interventions to promote healthy eating. Her dissertation, “Individual and Social Dynamics of Self Control,” was recognized as the 2014 winning paper based on its unique contribution to theory and practice, its originality, and the appropriateness of the research method, the technical competence in the execution of the research, and the value of the findings in contributing to knowledge in the field.

Doctoral students around the world are eligible for the John A. Howard AMA Doctoral Dissertation Award. The winning dissertation is selected from a double-blind review process that starts with reviews from experts in the industry and concludes with a finalist review from a panel of academic experts. Co-chairs Susan Fournier of Boston University and Klaus Wertenbroch of INSEAD led this year’s nomination and selection process.

“Theoretically, the paper extends the literature on self-control by introducing a set of factors that are more social in nature than the factors that are conventionally considered in self-control research,” the award panel said. “Conceptually and methodologically, the paper does an excellent job identifying the constructs of interest, operationalizing these concepts, and testing them using clean and illustrative studies.”

Nikolova also has won awards including the AMA’s 2014 CBSIG Rising Star Award, the University of Pittsburgh’s 2014 Inman Family Fund Award, and the 2012 ACR/Sheth Foundation Dissertation Award.