Nordic honorary award to Kirsten Hastrup
Kirsten Hastrup, Professor of Anthropology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, experiences a true awards shower. She will be honoured by the Swedish King Carl Gustav, when he presents her with the distinguished Gad Rausing Award on behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The ceremony will take place in Stockholm on Tuesday 20 March; barely five months after Kirsten Hastrup was honoured by our own Queen Margrethe when awarded the Ebbe Munck Award in November 2011.
The Nobel Prize of the Humanities
Kirsten Hastrup is awarded the Gad Rausing Award, which from time to time is referred to as the Nobel Prize of the Humanities, for her outstanding humanistic research work. The award is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Kungl. Vitterhetsakademien, and the award amount is SEK 1,000,000.00
Kirsten Hastrup is honoured for her breakthrough research effort; the focus of which is the relationship between man, society and environment. The point of departure of her anthropological research is mainly the Nordic and the Arctic areas focussing particularly on the history and culture of Iceland and Greenland.
Prestigious award in the Nordic countries
The Gad Rausing Award is one of the major honorary awards of the Nordic countries, and one of the few that is awarded to research within the fields of the Humanities – in my case to anthropological research with a pronounced historic angle, says Kirsten Hastrup.
Kirsten Hastrup’s research career is impressive, but she had not expected to be awarded the Gad Rausing Award:
- It was a huge surprise. You simply do not expect to be awarded such notable honours. I have yet to decide how to spend the award amount; however, it does, after all, present me with some new opportunities.
About Kirsten Hastrup
Kirsten Hastrup, born 1948, is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen, where she heads the research centre 'Waterworlds'. Kirsten Hastrup is the president of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters of which she has been a member since 1999.
Additional information
The award ceremony and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences:
Mona Holmfors, Head of Press Relations, phone: +46 (070) 583 38 11.
Erik Norberg, the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, phone: +46 (08) 440 42 81 www.vitterhetsakad.se
Kirsten Hastrup and any interview appointments:
Signe Lindskov Hansen, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, phone. +45 2480 0011 http://www.royalacademy.dk/da.