Press release: Laureate of Anneliese Maier Award comes to Göttingen

Nr. 25/2018 - 29.01.2018

Professor Wang Hui awarded for long-standing cooperation with East Asian Studies

(pug) The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has bestowed the Anneliese Maier Research Award 2018 upon Chinese historian and literary scholar Professor Wang Hui. The prize, endowed with € 250,000, is awarded to internationally outstanding scholars in the humanities and social sciences. Over the next five years, Wang will regularly be working at Göttingen University’s Department of East Asian Studies and Global and Transregional Studies Platform. There, he will be collaborating with Professor Dominic Sachsenmaier to research the global historical interwovenness of modern Chinese history. The award ceremony will take place on 12 September 2018 in Berlin.

"Wang Hui is one of China's most influential intellectuals," states Sachsenmaier. "He does not view China insularly, but rather in larger global contexts." Building on his historical studies, Wang often critiques various aspects of globalisation and modern-day China. His works have also attracted a lot of attention overseas: In 2008, the magazine Foreign Policy ranked him among the 100 most influential public intellectuals worldwide.

“By working with Wang Hui, we also set hope in broader impulses for global history and sinology in Germany," says Sachsenmaier. The Department of East Asian Studies and Göttingen University’s Centre for Modern East Asian Studies (CeMEAS) form one of the largest centres for research on modern China. In particular, the researchers have been studying China's historical, religious, social, economic, legal and political developments since the 18th Century.

With participation of the East Asian Studies, the Göttingen Platform for Global and Transregional Studies was opened at the end of 2016, which in a multidisciplinary interplay deals with cross-border research approaches. “The platform will once again be strengthened by the success of acquiring the prestigious Anneliese Maier Research Award," says Professor Hiltraud Casper-Hehne, Vice President for International Affairs at Göttingen University. “This will help Göttingen University’s new area of research focus develop significantly and will benefit all participating subjects in the humanities and social sciences.”

Wang Hui, born in 1959, is a professor at Tsinghua University and director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. He received his doctorate at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing in 1988. This was followed by visiting professorships in the United States, including Stanford and Harvard, among others, as well as in Germany, Japan and Taiwan. Wang has received numerous international awards. In 2001, he was a Senior Fellow at the “Wissenschaftskolleg” Institute for Advanced Study Berlin, and, in 2013, he was awarded the Luca Pacioli Award together with Jürgen Habermas. He is known in many countries for his presence in the wider public – for example, longer dialogues with politicians such as Helmut Schmidt and Sigmar Gabriel have been published in German.

Contact:
Professor Dominic Sachsenmaier
University of Göttingen
Faculty of Humanities – Department of East Asian Studies
Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Phone +49 551 39-21255
Email: dsachse@gwdg.de
Web: www.sinologie-goettingen.de/seminar/person/prof-dr-dominic-sachsenmaier