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Two FRIAS researchers received award for outstanding achievements

Two researchers with close ties to FRIAS recently received awards for their outstanding scientific achievements. Dr. Dorothee Birke, FRIAS Junior Fellow from 2008-2014, was awarded with the Helene-Richter Award of the German Anglistic Association. Dr. des. Simone Müller, who is currently working at FRIAS as a member of the project group “A Green City Mandate”, received the Maria Gräfin von Linden Award of the Association of Female Scientists in Baden-Württemberg.

The support for young female researchers is of particular importance for FRIAS. Currently, approx. 40% of the FRIAS budget is spent on the promotion of junior researchers and the proportion of female fellows across all disciplines stands at 36% in the Academic Year 2015/16. To raise the proportion of female researchers in its fellowship programmes is an important goal for FRIAS.

 

Writing the reader: former FRIAS Fellow Dorothee Birke receives Helene-Richter-Award for her habilitation treatise

Dorothee Birke, Anglistics professor in Freiburg and former fellow at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS), received Helene-Richter-Award from the German Anglistic Association (Deutscher Anglistenverband) for her habilitation treatise: „Writing the Reader: Quixotic Novels in England, 1752-2007“. Using the example of English novels, her work describes how the image of reading novels was referred to in the literary works of the 18th until the 21st century. Birke analyses the complexity with which authors describe and evaluate the act of reading itself in their novels. Since the novel has established itself as a popular genre in the 18th century, the image of reading has drastically changed. Tracing this development, Birke studied English literary novels of key-literary-periods of the early and current novel-history. ,,Writing the Reader” was one of Birkes main projects as a Junior Fellow at FRIAS (2008-2014).

Each year, the Helene Richter foundation awards 1500 Euros to excellent works in literary studies, which stand out for their intensity of performed research, articulateness in structure and argumentation, the relevance of their findings and skillful verbal display. With the Foundation, the founder and narratologist Franz K. Stanzel wants to keep alive the memory of the anglicist and private scholar Helene Richter, who died in the concentration camp Theresienstadt in 1942.

Dorothee Birke teaches at the English Seminar at the Universität Freiburg and is Junior Fellow at the Aarhus Institute for Advanced Studies in Denmark during the Academic Year 2015/16.

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Science and didactics: Simone Müller receives the Maria Gräfin von Linden Award for the best scientific lectures

Simone MuellerDr. des. Simone Müller has received the Maria Gräfin von Linden Award of the Association of Female Scientists in Baden Württemberg. The association awards researchers, who gave the best presentation with regards to dictactics and content. After a preselection of the best applicants on paper, the four best finalists are selected and invited to the biannual symposium “What women research – a scientific kaleidoscope”. The audience of the symposium serves as the jury. Simone Müller won the award with her lecture on the topic of “Poisonous waste: a global big seller?”

With this award, the Association of Female Scientists in Baden-Württemberg honours Maria Gräfin von Linden, who studied in Tübingen and received her PhD there in 1895 as the first woman in the natural sciences. In 1910 she was the first woman to receive the titular professorship as ‘principal’ of the parasitology laboratory.
Since 2001, the association grants the Marie Gräfin von Linden Award every second year to outstanding female scientists at the start of their academic careers.

Dr. des. Simone Müller is Academic Counsellor for North American History at the Universität Freiburg and is currently working at FRIAS with the project group “A Green City Mandate” on environmental challenges in urban planning.

 

Picture: Franz K. Stanzel

11/2015