12 February 2009, No. 04/2009

Joint press release by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Max Planck Society

2009 Max Planck Research Award goes to two History and Memory scholars

Aleida Assmann and Karl Galinsky will receive prize money totalling 1.5 million EUR

The two 2009 Max Planck Research Awards, valued at 750,000 EUR each, go to the German scholar of English, Aleida Assmann, and the American philologist and Humboldt Research Award winner, Karl Galinsky. They are being granted the award for their research in the field of History and Memory.

Aleida Assmann is a Professor of English Literature at Konstanz University. She is recognised as a pioneer in History and Memory and champions the interdisciplinary linkage of history, psychology, neurobiology and literary studies in her research. She is one of the most eminent scholars of literature worldwide. Through her widely acclaimed works she lends impetus to the debates on remembering the Holocaust or the creation of a European cultural memory. She will use the prize money to further her research into European memory studies and extend Konstanz University’s international network in cultural memory research.

Karl Galinsky is a Professor of Classics at The University of Texas at Austin, USA, and one of the most versatile and innovative minds in the field of cultural research. Here he combines Latin studies or art and social history with religious studies and archaeology. He has, for instance, drawn highly regarded connections between antiquity and its perception in modern culture and built bridges to current themes such as disenchantment with politics and multiculturalism. Galinsky intends to use the prize money to work in the fields of interdisciplinary cultural memory research and the history of religion at Bochum University’s Department of Classical Philology and establish a junior research group. Back in 1993, Galinsky was granted the Humboldt Research Award and worked together as an award winner with specialist colleagues in Berlin and Mainz.

Federal Minister of Research, Annette Schavan, will confer the award at a ceremony at Bonn University on 20.10.2009.

The Max Planck Research Award, the international research prize granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Max Planck Society, sponsors researchers from Germany and abroad who are working in areas with particular scope for future development. The funding for this programme is provided by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. It is awarded to one researcher working in Germany and one researcher working abroad, who have both already gained an international reputation and who are expected to continue achieving outstanding academic results and providing impetus for their specialist field in the context of international collaborations. The award is announced annually on an alternating basis for research work in a specific area of natural science, engineering science, life science or the humanities.

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation annually enables more than 1800 researchers from all over the world to spend time researching in Germany. The Foundation maintains a network of some 23,000 Humboldtians from all disciplines in 130 countries worldwide - including 41 Nobel Prize winners.

The Max Planck Society

promotes basic research at top international level in the life sciences, natural sciences and humanities. More than 13,000 staff and a further 9,000 visiting scientists, PhD students as well as undergraduate assistants work in the various research fields and provide the essential groundwork for scientific and social innovations.