Hartmut Rosa receives Leibniz Prize 2023

As one of ten scientists, Hartmut Rosa is awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize 2023. In its press release, the German Research Foundation (DFG), which endows the prize, stated the following:

This Leibniz Prize honours Hartmut Rosa’s groundbreaking work in the field of the critical, norm-based analysis of modern societies. His contributions to the question of which social dynamics promote or prevent possibilities for a good life enjoy international scientific and social reception and discussion. In his 2005 study Beschleunigung. Die Veränderung der Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne, which has been translated into various languages, Rosa provided a comprehensive, philosophically grounded sociological analysis of the dynamics of temporal acceleration that shape modern societies and at the same time pose enormous challenges to the individuals that live in them. Rosa also developed a theory of »world relations«, which, not least as a critique of capitalist structures and their implication for psychology and the lived-in world, led to another comprehensive theoretical definition of place in dialogue with other critical theories in the book Resonanz. Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung (2016). Rosa is internationally regarded as one of the most important social thinkers of our time.

Hartmut Rosa has been professor of General and Theoretical Sociology at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena since 2005 and director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Studies in Erfurt since 2013. He is the spokesperson for the Collaborative Research Centre »Structural Change of Property«. After studying political science, philosophy and German philology in Freiburg and at the London School of Economics, Rosa received his doctorate from the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1997. After working in Mannheim, Jena and at the New School for Social Research in New York, Rosa qualified as a professor in sociology and political science in Jena. Rosa has held visiting professorships in Paris and New York.

The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize has been awarded annually by the German Research Foundation since 1986. Up to ten prizes can be awarded per year, each with a prize sum of 2.5 million euros. Including the ten prizes in 2023, a total of 408 Leibniz Prizes have been awarded to date. Of these, 129 went to the natural sciences, 119 to the life sciences, 97 to the humanities and social sciences and 63 to engineering. Since the prize and prize money can be shared in exceptional cases, a total of 435 nominees have received the prize so far, including 364 male and 71 female scientists. In 2023, ten professors receive a Leibniz Prize. The prize ceremony will be held on March 15 in Berlin.