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Awards for Felix Schürmann and Martin Mulsow

Twice a year, the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers and Booksellers Association), the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the VG WORT Science Fund and the Federal Foreign Office award prizes to outstanding monographs in the humanities and social sciences and finance their translation into English. The aim is to increase the dissemination of outstanding research results abroad and to promote the international networking of German science. This year, the monographs of two researchers from the University of Erfurt were also selected as part of the Humanities International programme.

Dr. Felix Schürmanns Dissertation "Der graue Unterstrom. Walfänger und Küstengesellschaften an den tiefen Stränden Afrikas (1770-1920)" from Campus Verlag examines the paths of whalers from North America and Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries in eight local-history case studies. It traces their exchange and communication relations with African coastal societies and thus creates a picture of global interconnections.

In his book "Prekäres Wissen. Eine andere Ideengeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit", Martin Mulsow explores the traces of forgotten and half-forgotten scholars from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and shows their significance for the process of European knowledge history. Instead of theories, he gathers stories from sideshows and thus develops a different history of ideas of the early modern period. The book is published by Suhrkamp Verlag.