Humboldt Foundation Presents Anneliese Maier Research Award in Heidelberg
Photo: Humboldt Foundation/S. Lencinas
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH) presented its Anneliese Maier Research Award for the first time at Heidelberg University in September of 2012. Endowed with 250,000 EUR, the new cooperation award is given to non-German scientists in order to support the internationalisation of the humanities and social sciences in Germany. In future, the award will be presented annually to researchers whose scientific merits are highly recognised on an international level and whose cooperation with their colleagues in Germany is expected to contribute greatly to the continuing internationalisation of the respective disciplines.
The award ceremony on 13 September opened with addresses by AvH President Prof. Dr. Helmut Schwarz and Prof. Dr. Thomas Rausch, Vice Rector of Heidelberg University. They were followed by Prof. Dr. Annette Schavan, German Minister of Education and Research, who also presented the award to the seven recipients. These include Prof. Dr. Katharina Boele-Woelki, who specialises in family law, and Prof. Dr. Birgit Meyer, an expert in the anthropology of religion, both of them from the Netherlands. They are joined by four award winners from the United States: historian Prof. Dr. Patrick Geary, philosophers Prof. Dr. James Conant and Prof. Dr. Shaun Gallagher, and social psychologist Prof. Dr. Michele Gelfand. The final awardee was Australian linguist Prof. Dr. Nicholas Evans. The keynote address on “Medieval Scholarship in the Twenty-First Century: New Problems and New Methods” was given by award winner Prof. Geary.
The prize money enables international scientists to finance cooperative research projects with German colleagues for a period of five years. The scientists are nominated by their cooperation partners at German universities and research institutions. The award is funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research and named after German philosopher and science historian Anneliese Maier (1905-1971).
The award ceremony was part of an international colloquium of approximately 100 liberal arts scholars and social scientists from Germany and abroad that took place from 12-15 September. The two central topics of the event were the “Internationalisation and Europeanisation of Family Law” and questions of medieval scholarship. The topic of medieval studies was chosen to honour the collaboration between Heidelberg scientists and Prof. Geary. Patrick Geary of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (USA) is one of the leading medievalists in the United States. As an award winner, he works in collaboration with Heidelberg historians Prof. Dr. Bernd Schneidmüller and Prof. Dr. Stefan Weinfurter. He also maintains close ties with Transcultural Studies and with the “Asia and Europe” cluster of excellence, on whose Academic Advisory Council he serves.
