Holberg International Memorial Prize

The Holberg International Memorial Award
Awarded for	outstanding scholarly work in the fields of the arts and humanities, social sciences, law and theology.
Presented by	University of Bergen
Country	Norway
First awarded	2004
Official website	holbergprisen.no

The Holberg International Memorial Prize was established in 2003 by the government of Norway with the objective of increasing awareness of the value of academic scholarship within the arts, humanities, social sciences, law and theology, either within one of these fields or through interdisciplinary work. The prize was established in honour of Ludvig Holberg and complements the Abel Prize in mathematics established in 2002.

The Holberg prize draws on the 200 million Norwegian kroner Ludvig Holberg Memorial Fund, established on 1 July 2003 by the Norwegian Government. Responsibility for administering the Holberg Prize was given by the Government of Norway to the University of Bergen. In turn the University of Bergen has established a Board of the Ludvig Holberg Memorial Fund and appointed an academic committee composed of prominent researchers from relevant academic fields and different universities. The Board of the Ludvig Holberg Memorial Fund awards the annual prize on the basis of the recommendation of the academic committee's evaluation of nominations submitted by scholars holding a senior position at universities and other research institutions within the academic fields covered by the prize.

The prize includes a cash award of 4.5 million Norwegian kroner (EUR 570,000 or USD 800,000).

The prize is named after the Dano-Norwegian writer Ludvig Holberg who excelled in all of the sciences covered by the award.

Laureates

Year	Laureate(s)	Institution	Nationality	Citation
2004	Julia Kristeva	University of Paris		“for innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture and literature which inspired research across the humanities and the social sciences throughout the world and have also had a significant impact on feminist theory”
2005	Jürgen Habermas	University of Frankfurt		“for developing path-breaking theories of discourse and communicative action and thereby providing new perspectives on law and democracy”
2006	Shmuel Eisenstadt	Hebrew University in Jerusalem		“for developing comparative knowledge of exceptional quality and originality concerning social change and modernization, and concerning relations between culture, belief systems and political institutions.”
2007	Ronald Dworkin	New York University University College London		“for developing an original and highly influential legal theory grounding law in morality, characterized by a unique ability to tie together abstract philosophical ideas and arguments with concrete everyday concerns in law, morals, and politics.”
2008	Fredric Jameson	Duke University		“for outstanding contributions to the understanding of the relation between social formations and cultural forms in a project he himself describes as the "poetics of social forms".”
2009	Ian Hacking	University of Toronto		“for his combination of rigorous philosophical and historical analysis which has profoundly altered our understanding of the ways in which key concepts emerge through scientific practices and in specific social and institutional contexts.”
2010	Natalie Zemon Davis	University of Toronto Princeton University		“for being one of the most creative historians writing today, an intellectual who is not hostage to any particular school of thought or politics.”
2011	Jürgen Kocka	Free University of Berlin		“for effecting a paradigm shift in German historiography by opening it up to related social sciences and establishing the importance of cross-national comparative approaches.”

Holberg Prize Schools Project

Also awarded by the foundation is the Holberg Prize Schools Project. Students in upper secondary schools conduct their own research projects. Three finalists are selected from the entrants to receive the prize.

2006 Recipients

• Bergen Handelsgymnasium: "Youth and school lunch. What do the students eat at school?"
• Glemmen videregående skole: "Youth and Henrik Ibsen. What do today's young think of Ibsen?"
• Levanger videregående skole: "Youth and exchange programs: What effects do a stay abroad have on a student's attitudes, behaviour and career choices."

Committee

The Holberg Prize Academic Committee is composed of four members:

• Henning Koch, Professor of Law, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Stein Kuhnle, Professor of Comparative Social Policy, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany
• Toril Moi, Professor of Literature and Romance Studies, Duke University, Durham NC, USA
• Turid Karlsen Seim, Professor of Theology, University of Oslo, Norway

Criticism

The prize has attracted some controversy. The award committee, which counts three Norwegians and one Dane, has been criticised for lacking full academic credibility internationally, notably by Jon Elster.

External links

• The Holberg Prize website
• Reactions, from the Norwegian researchers' association
• Debate, from forskning.no
• Jon Elster: Too much politeness, too little quality, about Norwegian academic life in general and the Holberg Prize in particular