Benjamin Kohlmann

2018 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize winner

Private lecturer Dr. Benjamin Kohlmann from the English Department at the University of Freiburg has received the Heinz Maier Leibnitz Prize 2018, which the selection committee from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research recently decided. Considered the most important award for junior scientists in Germany, the prize is endowed with 20,000 euros each and will be awarded ten times this year. 140 researchers from all disciplines were nominated.

Benjamin Kohlmann has been a lecturer at the English Department of the University of Freiburg since 2011, where he completed his habilitation last year. He conducts literary science in cultural studies by incorporating historical contexts and making connections with his second discipline, philosophy. Relying on this approach, he examined the political situation of British literature of the 1930s in his dissertation and, in his habilitation, which he completed in 2017, explored the discourse about the welfare state from the late 19th century to the present day. His work seeks to address social issues and, at the moment, deals with the negotiation of precariousness in contemporary novels and films.