Best research environment 2024
The team from the “Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict” network at the ABI has received the “Best Research Environment 2024” award from the Junge Akademie and the VolkswagenStiftung.
On June 7, 2025, Miriam Bartelmann and Fabricio Rodríguez accepted the certificate at a ceremony in Berlin. 24 teams out of over 200 applications received the award.
Together with the VolkswagenStiftung, the Junge Akademie awarded a prize for the best research environment for the first time. The Junge Akademie writes: "A good research environment promotes good science and research by cultivating individual strengths which combine to form a greater whole that benefits everyone. For scientists and researchers it is important to be part of a research environment that provides room for creativity, fosters successful work, and aims to create a positive working atmosphere."
The research environments selected for the award are characterized by openness, creativity, appreciation as well as clear structures, innovative impulses and cooperation that promotes personal growth and scientific excellence.
The "Postcolonial Hierarchies" team at the ABI, from the left: Fabricio Rodríguez, Alke Jenss, Miriam Bartelmann and Viviana García Pinzón
Miriam Bartelmann and Fabricio Rodríguez from the Hierarchies Project at the ABI see their work environment as a "protective space to address doubts, challenges, and mistakes, which we regard as inherent aspects of academic life" and a "thriving intellectual environment where personal growth, critical thinking, and innovative research converge to address key questions in the field of peace and conflict":
"We put our individual findings and experiences into a critical dialogue that fosters an encouraging space for continuous feedback in the context of think labs, colloquia, and international conferences. The variety of our work helps us to develop our personal projects while connecting our ideas and those of our Latin American counterparts into a broader cartography of knowledge".
In particular, the international environment in the project leads to original approaches in science due to the diversity of cultural, intellectual and disciplinary backgrounds.