The Board of the Ludvig Holberg Memorial Fund has decided to award the Holberg International Memorial Prize for 2006 for outstanding scholarly work in the arts and humanities, social science, law and theology to Professor Shmuel N. Eisenstadt. The prize is worth NOK 4.5 million.
01/12/2006 :: The Board of the Memorial Fund makes the award on the basis of the recommendation of an academic committee consisting of internationally recognised researchers in the academic fields covered by the prize. Excerpt from the recommendation of the Holberg Prize Academic Committee:
“Shmuel N. Eisenstadt has developed comparative knowledge of exceptional quality and originality concerning social change and modernization, and concerning relations between culture, belief systems and political institutions. His work combines sociological theory with historical and empirical research in the study of modernities and civilizations … An extraordinarily productive scholar Eisenstadt has had great influence in many disciplines, including sociology, political science, history, religious studies and anthropology.”
“Shmuel N. Eisenstadt has been an important contributor to sociological theory for more than fifty years. His research spans a wide thematic area. It is unusual in the interdisciplinary weight it carries and it covers central and highly topical issues. Professor Eisenstadt has also been an active and influential participant in general public debate,” says Professor Jan Fridthjof Bernt, Chair of the Board of the Ludvig Holberg Memorial Fund.
Born in 1923, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt is Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
The official award ceremony for the Holberg International Memorial Prize will take place on 29 November 2006 at a formal ceremony in the Håkon’s Hall in Bergen.
Nils Klim Prize
The Board of the Ludvig Holberg Memorial Fund also awards the Nils Klim Prize for younger Nordic researchers in the same fields as covered by the Holberg prize. The prize is worth NOK 250,000. The Board has decided to award the Nils Klim Prize for 2006 to Dr. art. Linda Wedlin.
The Board of the Memorial fund makes the award on the basis of the recommendation of an academic committee consisting of internationally recognised researchers in the academic fields covered by the prize. Excerpt from the recommendation of the academic committee for the Nils Klim prize:
“The Nils Klim Annual Prize for 2006 is awarded to Ms Linda Wedlin, Uppsala University, Sweden. Ms Wedlin took her Ph.D. in business studies in 2004 at Uppsala University. In her research, she has addressed the significance of institutional ranking and peer reviewing within the area of higher research and education. Her approach is inventive and basically unprecedented. Combining cross-disciplinary research methods from the areas of communication science, educational research and organization theory she has explored the impact of media ranking and institutional evaluation on the organization of tuition and research programs in institutions of higher education. In doing so, she has put on the agenda the social setting for the modern discussion of academic freedom and institutional autonomy. Her research has already won approval and generated interest internationally.”
Linda Wedlin is 31 years old and works as Associate Professor and lecturer in business studies at the Department of Business Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden.
The official award ceremony for the Nils Klim Prize will take place in Bergen on 27 November 2006.
Holberg Prize