| Max-Weber-Kolleg

Christopher Degelmann was honoured with the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Award 2024

Dr. Christopher Degelmann has received the prestigious Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Award 2024 from the German Research Foundation (DFG), one of the most important awards for researchers in the early stages of their careers. The prize, which was awarded to a total of ten researchers, is endowed with 200,000 euros and is intended to support the recipients in pursuing their scientific careers.

With the award, the DFG is honouring Degelmann's academic commitment to combining historical and contemporary issues and thus making the significance of our ancient heritage accessible to our modern self-image. Conversely, according to the jury, he understands how to change perspectives in an innovative way by using contemporary issues as a key to the ancient heritage.

Christopher Degelmann completed his dissertation at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt on the topic of “Squalor. Symbolic Mourning in the Political Communication of the Roman Republic and Early Imperial Period”. The supervisor of his successfully completed dissertation project and deputy director of the Kolleg, Prof Dr. Jörg Rüpke, congratulated him on the award: “I congratulate warmly and am delighted about this career boost for a young scientist whose career I am following with great pleasure.”

In 2023, Degelmann returned to the Max-Weber-Kolleg as a Fellow of the research group "Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations" (FOR 2779) and conducted research on "Urban Voice(s) of the Deity: Rumour, Religion, and Urban Space in Classical Athens".