Hans Kilian Award of Merit

The announcement and awarding of the Hans Kilian Award of Merit was coordinated by the Hans-Kilian-and-Lotte-Köhler-Center (KKC). It was established in August 2014 at the Chair of Social Theory and Social Psychology at the Ruhr University Bochum and is the result of an institutional development that began with the establishment of the Kilian-Archive in 2010 and the Hans Kilian Award of Merit for outstanding researchers, which was awarded for the first time in 2011. The center's other scientific activities include the publication of the Hans-Kilian-series of publications, the implementation of a Hans-Kilian-lecture series, the organization of symposia, the supervision of a student college and the awarding of short-term fellowships. (As of: October 2023)

In January 2020, the board of the Köhler Foundation announced that the awarding of the Hans Kilian Award of Merit would be discontinued. The Kilian Köhler Center (KKC) regretted the decision which had become necessary for economic reasons, and thanked the Köhler Foundation for the extraordinarily productive cooperation and trust in this matter.

With prize money of 80,000 euros, the Hans Kilian Prize was one of the most valuable social science awards in Germany. The five award winners were Hartmut Böhme (2011), Hans Joas (2013), Jessica Benjamin (2015), Jaan Valsiner (2017) and Ashis Nandy (2019).

The work of the prize committee and the jury, the ceremonial awarding of the prize and the associated scientific “Prize Winners Colloquium” were coordinated by the KKC. The KKC will continue to support excellent social and cultural scientists in the future and will endeavor to develop new relevant initiatives.