• Prof. Dr. Anita Traninger, Brain City Berlin

    © DFG/David Ausserhofer

    20.03.2023

    Leibniz Award for FU Professor Anita Traninger

The humanities scholar Prof. Dr. Anita Traninger received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Award 2023 from the German Research Foundation (DFG) last Wednesday. The award, which is endowed with 2.5 million euros, was presented to her at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. The professor of Romance philology/literary studies at the Freie Universität Berlin (FU Berlin) was being honoured for her research in early Romance studies and her “pioneering understanding of rhetoric”.

A total of 131 scientists were nominated for Germany's most important scientific award last year. Prof. Dr. Anita Traninger is one of the ten scientists who were awarded the renowned Leibniz Award 2023 last Wednesday. There were a total of 131 proposals this year. The award, which is endowed with 2.5 million euros, was presented to her at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in Brain City Berlin. The professor of Romance philology/literary studies at the Freie Universität Berlin (FU Berlin) was being honoured for her research in early Romance studies and her “pioneering understanding of rhetoric”.

In its justification, the DFG highlighted Anita Traninger’s innovative approaches that combine philology, rhetoric, the history of science and media history in order to open up the dynamics of culture and knowledge transfer from a new perspective. “In particular, her understanding of rhetoric as a historically variable ensemble of media-related practices is ground-breaking in view of the traditional but still widespread idea of rhetoric as a rigid set of rules.” Anita Traninger is one of the international key figures in Romance studies. She has succeeded in reorganising the subject in an interdisciplinary manner.

The achievement of the historical humanities is that we keep the past alive. By looking at it through new lenses, recalling texts, reinterpreting objects, establishing relationships. That we reach generations of multipliers who carry this knowledge into schools and other professional contexts.
(Prof. Dr. Anita Traninger in the DFG video portrait)

DFG portrait of Prof Dr. Anita Traninger (German only)

Prof. Dr. Anita Traninger studied and did her doctorate in Vienna. She moved to Berlin in 2004. At the FU Berlin, she initially worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Romance Philology. In 2010, she habilitated there and obtained a teaching licence (Venia Legendi) for General and Comparative Literature and Romance Philology. Since 2015 she has been a professor of Romance Philology at the FU Berlin. Anita Traninger is also spokeswoman for the Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities. Doing Literature in a Global Perspective” and a member of numerous scientific specialist societies, networks and research associations.

The funding award in the DFG’s Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Program is granted annually to excellent researchers working in Germany. The award winners can use the funds for their research work for up to seven years. Since 1986, the award has gone to a total of 364 men and 71 women. (vdo)

Award Ceremony 2023 (German only)

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