President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso awards first All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values to Italian Professor of Cultural History Luisa Passerini

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Luisa Passerini

In honour of her exceptional scholarly work on European cultural values and European identity, Luisa Passerini will be the first scholar to be awarded the All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values by the President of the European Commission; a prize initiated by ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities.

Upon invitation of ALLEA, José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, will award the prize at an award ceremony on the premises of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts in Brussels on the afternoon of 9 April 2014.

Luisa Passerini´s research not only provides a multifaceted depiction of the ways in which identities in Europe are built and evolve. “It also comprises and elaborates on the values that Europe is in need of today”, says Professor Günter Stock, ALLEA President and chairman of the prize jury. “Her comprehensive work on a great variety of topics related to the European identity and values significantly contributes to explaining cultural diversity in Europe and its eventful history of cultural encounters.”

The laureate is Professor Emeritus of Cultural History at the University of Turin and currently heads the research project Bodies Across Borders: Oral and Visual Memory in Europe and Beyond, funded by the European Research Council, which aims to understand new forms of European identity. Luisa Passerini´s further research fields include the history of subjectivity, including forms of European identity, gender and generations or diasporic subjectivities.

The All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values, awarded for the first time in 2014  is co-sponsored by Stiftung Mercator and endowed with 25,000 EUR. ALLEA has established the prize to pay tribute to the boundless intellectual and cultural diversity and richness of Europe, and to highlight how outstanding scholarly work, particularly in the fields of the humanities and social sciences, contributes to the understanding of Europe as a cultural and intellectual entity.

The event is open to the public and press. Please click here to download the press invitation. Prior registration is required. For interviews with the laureate or with the ALLEA President, please contact the ALLEA secretariat in advance. Photos will be made available upon request shortly after the event. Click here to learn more about ALLEA, the prize, the laureate and for further information.

ALLEA Presidency endorses appeal of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

news bannerThe ALLEA member from Ukraine, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU), on 4 March 2014 issued an “Appeal of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine to Scientists, All Citizens of Ukraine and the Russian Federation”.

The Presidency of ALLEA today has distributed the appeal to all member academies stating full endorsement of the document and encouraging the sister academies in other European countries to “undertake whatever seems feasible in support of academic freedom and autonomy in Ukraine”.

The document reflects the Academy´s position regarding the current situation and developments in Ukraine and carries signatures of the NASU Presidency, comprising a number of members who are both fellows of NASU and of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).

The appeal can be accessed here.

Click here for further information on the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

„Music and European Integration” – ALLEA co-hosts international workshop in Berlin

2014_01_23_RiethmuellerOn 11 and 12 March 2014 a group of international musicologists will address the topic “Music and European Integration” in a two-day workshop in the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Initiated and organized by the collaborative research center on Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits at the Free University of Berlin, the workshop is co-hosted by the Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities and ALLEA.

Professor Albrecht Riethmüller, Professor of musicology at the Free University of Berlin, convened the meeting in order to prepare shaping a publication that examines the relation of music to the process of European integration since the Second World War. The volume will form part of a book series on pan-European topics published by ALLEA.

“In the twentieth century, shifting political borders critically influenced the definition of European music: during the decades of the Iron Curtain, Berlin formed its easternmost outpost; after the wall‘s fall, leverage shifted to Istanbul, the door to the orient”, says professor Riethmüller.

The programme comprises presentations and discussions on a variety of musico-political questions and how they relate to European identity and the process of European integration. Eminent experts from Universities in different European countries will deliberate on issues such as “The Construction of a European Tradition in Music and Cultural History” and ask if we are heading “Towards a European Identity in Music”? Professor Günter Stock, President of ALLEA, will welcome the participants and open the workshop. The full programme can be found here.

The workshop also partly relates to an ALLEA contribution in the context of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy´s “Salon Sophie Charlotte” which took place on 18 January 2014 under the general heading “Europa – ein Zukunftsort”.  The ALLEA programme comprised two presentations discussing the contributions of music in the process of European integration and its role for the European identity: “The Anthem of Europe” by Albrecht Riethmüller and “Beethoven 2020 in Europe” by the Director of the Beethoven House in Bonn, Malte Boecker. Read more.

Albrecht Riethmüller is professor of musicology at the Free University of Berlin and member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature of Mainz. Since 2004 he is the ALLEA delegate of the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities.

Read more about the collaborative research centre 626 on Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits.