2023 Reimar Lüst Awards: Outstanding research in ethnology and economics singled out for distinction

Sophia Labadi, a cultural heritage expert, and the economist Christian Dustmann have been chosen to receive this year’s Reimar Lüst Awards. This award is granted to humanities scholars and social scientists from abroad who have shaped academic and cultural relations between Germany and their own countries. The award comes with €60,000. Every year, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, in collaboration with the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, grants up to two Reimar Lüst Awards.

Sophia Labadi is a distinguished interdisciplinary researcher in the field of cultural heritage and human rights. She has been a professor at the University of Kent, United Kingdom, since 2019. With her work, she aims to analyse, deconstruct and re-imagine key concepts such as ‘world heritage’ and ‘intangible cultural heritage’, as well as the links between cultural heritage and sustainable development. In the process, she delves into how the cultural heritage concept and museums can be used to address pressing global challenges such as social justice, gender equality and sustainable development. Through her work in various international organisations and for governments, Sophia Labadi sets new political accents. She is also one of the few cultural heritage scholars whose theories, insights and discoveries shape not only academic discourse but also cultural heritage administrative practice worldwide. In her capacity as a Reimar Lüst Award winner, Sophia Labadi plans to undertake a research stay at the University of Bonn.

Christian Dustmann is one of the world’s leading economists in the field of labour market research. His work focuses on migration research and labour market economics. He has been a professor of economics at University College London since 2004 and is founding director of the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration. Dustmann regularly advises government agencies, international organisations and the media on current political issues. Through his numerous publications and his active role in the academic community, Christian Dustmann makes crucial contributions to our understanding of the interplay between migration and economics. Christian Dustmann will spend the research stay enabled by the award at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg. 

The astrophysicist Reimar Lüst was a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for many years and served as President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation from 1989 to 1999. In appreciation of his life-long work to promote international exchange between scientists and scholars, the Humboldt Foundation established the Reimar Lüst Award for International Scholarly and Cultural Exchange in collaboration with the Fritz Thyssen Foundation in 2006.

(Press release 35/2023)

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.