Awards for researchers from developing and transition countries

Six researchers – two women and four men – have been chosen to receive this year’s Georg Forster Research Awards, which are granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Every year, the award honours researchers from developing and transition countries who have earned international recognition for their research work and seek to solve development-related issues. The award winners are nominated by specialist colleagues from Germany and are invited to establish or expand collaborative projects with them.
Valued at €60,000 each, the Georg Forster Research Awards are financed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The recipients of the 2023 Georg Forster Research Awards:

• the agronomist Achille Ephrem Assogbadjo, professor at the University of Abomey-Calavi in Benin. He will be using his Georg Forster Research Award to work with colleagues in the Soil Science and Plant Nutrition department at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, Kleve campus.
• Andrea Verónica Bragas, professor of physics at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. As a Georg Forster Research Award winner, she will work together with specialist colleagues from the Nano-Institute Munich at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
• Igor Olegovich Fritsky, professor at the Department of Physical Chemistry at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. As a Georg Forster Research Award winner, he will work together with specialist colleagues from the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Göttingen.
• Louis Cloete Jonker, professor of Old Testament studies at the Stellenbosch University in South Africa. As a Georg Forster Research Award winner, he will collaborate with specialist colleagues from the Chair of Old Testament Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
• the Moroccan linguist Abdelhadi Soudi, professor at Centre de Langues et Communication of Ecole Nationale de l’Industrie Minérale in Rabat. As a Georg Forster Research Award winner, he will work together with colleagues from the Ubiquitous Computing research group at the University of Siegen.
• the Argentinian sociologist Maristella Svampa, professor at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín in Buenos Aires. As a Georg Forster Research Award winner, she will work together with specialist colleagues from the field of international and intersocietal relations with a focus on Latin America at the University of Kassel.

The Humboldt Foundation is currently accepting nominations for the next round of the Georg Forster Research Award. The closing date for nominations is 31 October 2023. Special emphasis is placed on nominations of qualified female researchers.

This research award is named after the naturalist, travel writer and journalist Georg Forster (1754–1794), a friend of Alexander von Humboldt.

(Press release: 23/2023)

Every year, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables more than 2,000 researchers from all over the world to spend time conducting research in Germany. The Foundation maintains an interdisciplinary network of well over 30,000 Humboldtians in more than 140 countries around the world – including 61 Nobel Prize winners.