Freie Universitaet Berlin Announces Accepting Of Nominations for the 2023 Margherita von Brentano Prize

This year, Freie Universität Berlin will be once again presenting the Margherita von Brentano Prize to outstanding individuals and innovative projects whose work has contributed to the advancement of women and/or gender studies. The prize, which is awarded every two years by the university’s Executive Board and endowed with 15,000 euros, has been presented since 1995. Candidates should be connected with Freie Universität Berlin and can be nominated or put themselves forward for the award. Nominations can be sent via email to the Margherita von Brentano Center. The deadline is March 31, 2023, with the prize set to be awarded in July 2023.

The “Feminizidmap” database project, which has been documenting gender-based murders of women and girls since 2019, won the previous award in 2021. Other prizewinners have included the “Medical Students for Choice” initiative in 2019, which campaigns for the right to sexual self-determination and a holistic approach to abortion in medical training, the “Frauen und Flucht” research group on refugee women, which is based at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, in 2017, the working group on Historical Women’s Studies and Gender Studies (Arbeitskreis Historische Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung e.V.) in 2015, and Berlin lawyer and activist Seyran Ateş in 2006.

The Margherita von Brentano Prize has been awarded at Freie Universität Berlin since 1995. The Margherita von Brentano Center has organized the nomination process since 2017.

The prize’s eponym, Margherita von Brentano, received her doctorate under Martin Heidegger in 1948 and became a professor at the Institute of Philosophy at Freie Universität in 1971. In 1970 she became the first woman to be elected vice president of the university. Margherita von Brentano made it her concern to dismantle professional discrimination against women at universities and research institutions as early as the beginning of the 1960s. She was also active in other areas of society as well; until her death in 1995, she campaigned for the erection of a Berlin memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.