The WZB Berlin Social Science Center investigates fundamental societal issues. Our focus is on education and work, markets and choice, migration, democracy and autocracy, international politics and law. At the WZB researchers from various disciplines work together – mainly from sociology, political science, economics, law and psychology.
A.SK Fellowships:
In addition to the main award, fellowships for postdocs were funded from the proceeds of the A.SK foundation's endowment. The fellowships gave younger social scientists the opportunity to work for a year on a project that contributes to the development of social and political reforms. The fellowship program was discontinued in 2022. Instead, there will be prizes for postdocs. You willbe able to find more information here at the end of 2022.
A.SK Social Science Award:
The A.SK Social Sciences Award has been awarded every two years since 2007. Endowed with 200,000 USD, itis one of the world’s largest in the social sciences.
Former recipients are the economist Sir Anthony Atkinson (2007/University of Oxford), the legal scholar and philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum (2009/University of Chicago), Transparency International (2011/Berlin), the economist Paul Collier (2013/University of Oxford), the developmental economist Esther Duflo (2015/MIT), who received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019, the political scientist John Ruggie (2017/Harvard) and Harvard economist Raj Chetty (2019). In 2021, the A.SK Social Science Award will go to James C. Scott(Yale). He receives the award for his life-long research on agrarian societies and the importance of place and environment in relation to politics and social organization. His analysis of the limits of state planning led him to be an advocate of the possibilities of “not being governed”, of the capacity of people to govern themselves in local communities. Through his work, James Scott has become one of the most influential social scientists of the last 50 years.
The prize recipient is selected by an international commission chaired by Dorothea Kübler, director of the WZB's department Market Behavior. The A.SK Social Science Award 2021 was presented to the winner on November 2nd, 2021, at the WZB.
