Balzan Prize 2017 awarded to Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann
12. September 2017
The International Balzan Prize Foundation honored the outstanding researchers “for their shared, inter- and transdisciplinary elaboration of the concept of ‘cultural memory’ and its defining clarifications as a paradigm in the field of cultural studies, as well as in public debates” as well as “for a decades-long exchange about very different historical realities and models, which in a truly extraordinary way proved to be complementary.”
Aleida Assmann was professor of English and Literary Studies at the University of Konstanz from 1993 to 2014. In the Center of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Social Integration,” she has acted as a principal investigator and member of the executive board. As of 2016, she has been a permanent fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study Konstanz.
Jan Assmann was professor of Egyptology in Heidelberg between 1976 and 2003. Since 2005, he has been Honorary Professor of Religious Theory and Cultural Sciences at the University of Konstanz. Like his wife, he has acted as a principal investigator in the Center of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Social Integration.”
The International Balzan Prize Foundation, based in Milano and Zurich, awards four annual prizes to people or organizations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities and the natural sciences. The Balzan Prize is one of the world’s most renowned scientific awards. The amount of each prize is 750,000 Swiss Francs. The Prize will be presented at the award ceremony in Berne on 17 November 2017.