Walter Benjamin Kolleg

Young Scholars

Since 2020, the WBKolleg has awarded the annual "Young Scholars" prize to excellent young researchers from Switzerland and abroad who successfully work across disciplines and communicate their research to a broad public in a vivid manner. Worth 1,500 SFr, the award aims to identify and promote young talents by increasing their visibility, opening up networking opportunities and providing impetus for scientific and intellectual development. At the same time, young researchers of the Kolleg benefit from the exchange with the scholars. 

The prize is awarded on the occasion of a public event in a Bernese cultural institution. The presentation is flexible in terms of topic, format and location, so that new opportunities for cooperation arise time and again. In addition, visitors to municipal cultural institutions gain insights into current research in the humanities, cultural studies, and social sciences. 

In case of any questions please contact the office manager Dr. Ariane Lorke.

News:

The call for applications for 2025 is open until Februar 1, 2025.

Recent laureates

2024

Dr. Catherine Gibson

Catherine Gibson is a lecturer in East European and Eurasian Studies at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu. She is author of Geographies of Nationhood: Cartography, Science, and Society in the Russian Imperial Baltic (OUP, 2022) and from 2025 she will embark on a new ERC-funded project on the history of intra-imperial charitable solidarities in the Romanov Empire. She is also one of the co-editors of the public history blog www.peripheralhistories.co.uk.

2023

Dr. Philipp Krauer

Philipp Krauer received his doctorate from ETH Zurich in 2021 with a thesis on Swiss mercenaries in the Dutch colonial army (1848-1914). His research interests include global, colonial and knowledge history. He holds a Master's degree in History and Philosophy of Knowledge from ETH Zurich and a Bachelor's degree in History and German Language and Literature from the University of Zurich. Since 2021 he has been working as an archivist at the Staatsarchiv of the Canton of Schwyz. He is also co-founder of the public history project «zh-kolonial.ch».

Congratulations to our award winner for the publication of his dissertation "Swiss Mercenaries in the Dutch East Indies: A Transimperial History of Military Labour, 1848-1914".

Leiden University Press

Open Access

2022

Dr. Leandra Bias

Leandra Bias researches at the intersection of Political Science and Gender Studies with a focus on Russia. She did her DPhil in Politics at Oxford and recently joined the Institute for Political Science as postdoc and Co-PI of the Horizon Europe project UNTWIST. The prize ceremony took place in February 2023 at the Reitschule in Bern.

More about Leandra Bias