The 2021 Berliner Wissenschaftspreis for Young Researchers goes to the theologian Prof. Dr. Mira Sievers from the Berlin Institute of Islamic Theology (BIT) at Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin. With this award, the Governing Mayor of Berlin honours particularly innovative research approaches in a future-oriented field in Berlin. The award ceremony for the 10,000 euro prize for young researchers took place on 5 November 2021 as part of Berlin Science Week at Berlin's Urania.
Berlin's urban society benefits from impulses
As a Muslim theologian, Prof. Dr. Mira Sievers focuses on questions of the foundations of faith and Islamic ethics. Her research topics often break new academic ground. According to the selection committee, she had already made an important contribution to the development of a contemporary systematic theology of Islam in her doctoral thesis. Her excellent achievements, her early academic independence and the integrative conception of her fields of research were outstanding.
"Mira Sievers is an outstanding scholar whose research is recognised far beyond the borders of our city," says Professor Sabine Kunst, President of Humboldt-Universit?t. "I am delighted that she is being honoured for this today. Her scientific impulses are not only reflected in excellent research and teaching. Berlin's entire diverse urban society, which includes around 300,000 Muslim citizens, benefits from this."
Mira Sievers has held the junior professorship for Islamic Foundations of Faith, Philosophy and Ethics at BIT since January 2020. Sievers' research focus is on ethical thinking in the Islamic tradition, systematic theology, Islamic theology and gender as well as historical-critical Quran research. She studied Islamic Theological Studies, Islamic Studies and Linguistics at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. In 2018, she received her doctorate as part of the DFG Research Training Group "Theology as Science". She was then a postdoc at the Institute for Studies in the Culture and Religion of Islam at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and was appointed Assistant Professor of Islamic Theology at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Lucerne in 2019. Since mid-November, Mira Sievers has been spokeswoman of the board of the German Society for Islamic Theological Studies (DEGITS), the specialist society for Islamic theology in Germany.
Further information
Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology
Berlin Science Prize of the Governing Mayor
Press material for download
Portrait of Prof Dr Mira Sievers
Portrait/landscapeformat
(Photo credit: Philipp Plum/ HU Berlin)
Contact
Hans-Christoph Keller
Press Spokesperson of Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin
Tel.: 030 2093-12710
E-mail: hans-christoph.keller@hu-berlin.de