Doctorate Prize 2025 for Sarah-Maria Thumbeck and Laima Eicke

Every two years, the prize honours the excellent dissertation of a young researcher submitted to the University of Erfurt. One thesis from each faculty and from the Max-Weber-Kolleg is nominated for the award, which has previously been awarded top marks.

The jury particularly praised the innovative approaches and interdisciplinary nature of the two winning theses. In both cases, it is a cumulative dissertation, i.e. a collective dissertation consisting of several specialist articles, the scientific findings of which are summarised and discussed in an overall document at the end. Both Sarah-Maria Thumbeck as well as Laima Eicke have, in the opinion of the jury, produced brilliant work and thus made an important contribution to research in their respective fields.

Also nominated this year were:

• Sophie Annerose Moderegger from the Faculty of Education for her dissertation on "The text-free picture book as an object of literary-aesthetic learning processes. Narrative structures – reception processes – constructions of meaning."
• Paulina Hauser from the Faculty of Catholic Theology for her dissertation on "All people are born free and equal in dignity and rights. A social-ethical analysis of human rights violations against women from a global perspective."
• Sarah Al-Taher from the Max-Weber-Kolleg for her dissertation entitled "What is love? A philosophical analysis of Plato's Symposium and Meister Eckhart's treatise Vom edlen Menschen: Love as Ascent and Way of Becoming Human.".

The prize, which was once again sponsored by the “Universitätsgesellschaft” in cooperation with the “Volksbank Thüringen Mitte”, is endowed with a total of 5,000 euros – this year, 1750 euros will go to the two winners and 500 euros each to the nominees. We congratulate the winners and all the nominees!