Hans Kilian Award 2013
The Hans Kilian Award 2013 went to the german sociologist and social philosopher Hans Joas.
Hans Joas (born in 1948 in Munich) studied sociology, history, philosophy and German philology at the University of Munich and the Free University of Berlin. There he obtained his PhD in 1979, subsequently completing his postdoctoral qualification in 1981. Between 1979 and 1987, he was first research assistant (until 1983) and then Heisenberg fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Educational Research in Berlin. From 1987 to 1990, Hans Joas held the chair in sociology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. From 1990 to 2002, he was professor at the John F. Kennedy Graduate School of North American Studies and at the department of sociology of the Free University of Berlin.
Between 2002 and 2011, he was Max Weber Professor at the University of Erfurt and served as the director of the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies. Since 2000, Hans Joas has been professor of sociology and social thought at the University of Chicago. In 2011, he also became permanent fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Freiburg, where he is currently working at the project "Sacralisation and Secularisation. Studies in historical-comparative sociology of religion".
Visiting professorships and fellowships
1985 visiting professor of sociology at the University of Chicago
1986 Visiting professor at the University of Toronto
1992, 1999/2000 Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden
1994 Fellow at the Indiana Institute for Advanced Study in Bloomington, Indiana
1997 Theodor Heuss Professor at the New School for Social Research in New York
1996, 1998 Visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison
1998 Visiting professor at the Duke University in Durham, North Carolina
2002 Visiting professor at the University of Vienna
2004-2005 Ernst Cassirer Professor at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, Sweden
2005-2006 Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study Berlin
2007 Visiting professor at the University of Vienna
2010 Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, Sweden
2011 Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in Stellenbosch, South Africa
Since 2011 Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Freiburg
Membership in academic organisations
Since 1998, Hans Joas has been regular member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, since 2000 he has been member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, since 2011 he has also been corresponding member of Austrian Academy of Sciences and member of Academia europaea.
Awards and distinctions
2010 Bielefeld Science Award (Niklas Luhmann Award)
2012 Honorary Doctor of the Catholic Theology Faculty of the University of Tubingen
2013 Honorary Doctor of the Sociology Faculty of the University of Uppsala
Selected publications (in English)
George Herbert Mead. A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought (MIT Press 1985)
Social Action and Human Nature (with Axel Honneth) (Cambridge University Press 1988)
Pragmatism and Social Theory (University of Chicago Press 1993)
The Creativity of Action (University of Chicago Press 1996)
The Genesis of Values (University of Chicago Press 2000)
War and Modernity (Blackwell 2003)
Social Theory (with Wolfgang Knoebl) (Cambridge University Press 2009)
Do We Need Religion? On the Experience of Self-Transcendence (Paradigm 2009)
War in Social Thought: A History (with Wolfgang Knoebl) (Princeton University Press 2012)
The Sacredness of the Person: A New Genealogy of Human Rights (Georgetown University Press 2012)
Award Ceremony
The second festive conferment of the Hans Kilian Award of Merit took place on June 20, 2013 in the Event Centre of the Ruhr University of Bochum. Beside the Foundress, the Awardee, the the Award Council and the Foundation's Executive Committee members, numerous further guests took part in the ceremony.
To mention are the Vice Chancellor of the Ruhr University of Bochum Professor Elmar Weiler, who opened the event with an address to the public, a mayor of the city of Bochum Ms Gabriela Schäfer (Social Democratic Party), representatives of the Workers' Welfare Association, to which the foundress Dr Köhler made a generous donation, as well as some prominent persons from the spheres of politics and industry. As expected, the Award ceremony also found broad interest among researchers and students, many of whom are concerned with the subject themes from the field of an interdisciplinary, historically founded and topically oriented social and cultural psychology as championed by Hans Kilian. Some of the students and teachers who were present at the Award ceremony had also participated in many of the events connected with the general academic activities affiliated with the Hans Kilian Award.
After the address by the Vice Chancellor Professor Dr. Weiler, the Head of the Executive Committee of the Köhler Foundation Dr. Ambros Schindler held a presentation on the 25 year-long history of the Foundation and the aims and objectives of the Hans Kilian Award. After a musical interlude performed by the Trio folklorico (Folkwang University of Arts in Essen) and a short introductory speech by Dr Spiegel (Award Council), Dr Lotte Köhler and Dr Spiegel presented the donation to the Workers' Welfare Association that was thankfully received by the mayor Ms Gabriela Schäfer and the Association's representatives. The second musical intermezzo was followed by the laudatory speech by Professor Jürgen Straub (dean of the Faculty of Social Science and member of the Award Council). This part of the program culminated in the official conferment of the Award on Professor Hans Joas who received the certificate from the foundress Dr Köhler and Dr Schindler. After a short address, the awardee held his presentation entitled "Sorrow and retribution. Experience of violence and its transformations in Alfred Döblin's Hamlet novel".
The event was closed with a festive reception, during which the guests also had a possibility to view the latest publications in the "Hans Kilian Works" and "Hans Kilian Festschrift" series edited in cooperation with the Köhler Foundation and the Hans Kilian Award Co-ordination bureau as well as numerous other scientific books sponsored by the Köhler Fondation.
Diese Website ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar.
Preisverleihung 2013