Press Room

RECENT PRESS RELEASES

• 06.06.2024 (ENGLISH) The Holberg Prize and the Nils Klim Prize Conferred 
• 14.03.2024 (NORWEGIAN) Holbergprisen til en av Afrikas fremste intellektuelle
• 14.03.2024 (ENGLISH) Political Theorist Achille Mbembe Named 2024 Holberg Prize Laureate
• 14.03.2024 (ENGLISH for Finland, Iceland) Political Theorist Achille Mbembe Named 2024 Holberg Prize Laureate
• 14.03.2024 (GERMAN) Holberg-Preis 2024 geht an Achille Mbembe, „Afrikas wichtigsten Intellektuellen“ 
• 14.03.2024 (FRENCH) Le prix Holberg décerné à un des intellectuels les plus éminents de l’Afrique 
• 14.03.2024 (SPANISH) El Premio Holberg a uno de los intelectuales más destacados de África.
• 14.03.2024 (ITALIAN) Nomina del Premio Holberg Laureate 2024 allo studioso del postcolonialismo, Achille Mbembe
• 14.03.2024 (PORTUGUESE)  O Prêmio Holberg para "o principal intelectual da África".
• 14.03.2024 (CHINESE)  霍尔堡奖提名后殖民学者阿基勒·姆贝姆贝为 
• 14.03.2024 (JAPANESE) ホルベア賞はアフリカ出身の一流の知識人の一人に

PRESS CONTACT

Ole Sandmo
Communications adviser for the Holberg Prize.
E-post: ole.sandmo@uib.no
Tel: +47 980 01 878

THE 2024 HOLBERG PRIZE / ACHILLE MBEMBE

BIOGRAPHY

Achille Mbembe (b. 1957) is research professor of history and politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.  He is also the Director of the Innovation Foundation for Democracy. He was educated in Cameroon and in France where he obtained his PhD in History at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a Diplome d'etudes approfondies at the Institut d'etudes politiques de Paris.

Mbembe has taught at various universities in the United States, including Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California at Berkeley and at Irvine, Yale University, Duke University and Harvard University.  A winner of the Ernst Bloch Award, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Mbembe holds Honorary Doctorates from the Paris 8 University (France), the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) and the University of Bergen (Norway). His work has been translated in 17 languages (English, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Arabic, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Turkish, Romanian, Polish, Slovenian, Catalan, Finnish, and Mandarin). His latest book is La communaute terrestre (Editions La Decouverte, Paris, 2023). 

LINKS

Profile at the University of the Witwatersrand website
Citation from the Holberg Committee

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EXPERT CONTACT FOR ACHILLE MBEMBE

Førsteamanuensis Kari Jegerstedt
University of Bergen
E-mail: kari.jegerstedt@uib.no

THE 2024 NILS KLIM PRIZE / SIDDHARTH SAREEN

BIOGRAPHY

Siddharth Sareen (b. 1988) is an environmental social scientist with a background in development studies, political ecology, and human geography. He works on the governance of energy transitions at multiple scales in diverse contexts. His research spans the energy supply chain from extractive zones and energy generation to electricity distribution and energy end-use. He works in and across sectors such as solar energy, electricity grids, urban transport, and forestry, focusing on issues of political economy, digitalisation, institutional change, and accountability. His work is motivated by a keen desire to advance social and environmental equity and justice, with empirical engagement in India, Europe (especially Portugal and Norway), and more recently Uganda.
 
Educated at Krishnamurti Foundation schools, Sareen holds an integrated Master in Development Studies from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (2011), and a Double PhD from the University of Copenhagen and University of Padua (2016). He has held research positions at institutions in seven countries and supervised over four dozen postgraduates. During 2020-2024, he has founded and directed the Sustainability Transformation programme area with a large portfolio of thematic research projects at the University of Stavanger, where he holds a professorship in energy and environment and teaches on a Master programme in Energy, Environment and Society. He is Professor II at the Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation at the University of Bergen.
 
As a board member of the Young Academy of Norway and the Empowered Futures Research School, he engages actively in research policy and developing the next generation of social scientists to inform, engage with, and enact more inclusive and just energy futures. He has published in dozens of leading journals and edited several collections. His monograph The Sun also Rises in Portugal: Ambitions of just solar energy transitions will be published in 2024. 
 

LINKS

Personal page at University of Stavanger
Nils Klim Committee Citation

PRESS PHOTOS 

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EXPERT CONTACT FOR SIDDHARTH SAREEN

Contact the Holberg Prize Secretariat

​​​​​LOGO FILES AND GRAPHICS

Logo files and other graphics for the Holberg Prize, Nils Klim Prize and Holberg Prize School Project can be downloaded from the online brand guide.

• THE HOLBERG PRIZE

  The Holberg Prize is an international research prize, awarded annually to a scholar who has made outstanding research contributions to the arts and humanities, social sciences, law or theology. The Holberg Board awards the prize at the recommendation of the Holberg Committee. The Prize was established by the Norwegian Parliament in 2003 and is administered by the University of Bergen on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Research. It has a money value of NOK 6,000,000. The Holberg Prize is named after the scholar and author Ludvig Holberg, who played an important role in bringing the Age of Enlightenment to the Nordic countries.

• NILS KLIM PRIZE

  The Nils Klim Prize is awarded annually to a scholar from a Nordic country under the age of 35 for outstanding scholarly work in the arts and humanities, social sciences, law or theology. The Nils Klim Prize is awarded to a young Nordic scholar who has made an outstanding research contribution within one of these academic fields or through interdisciplinary work. The scholar’s ability to be original and innovative is highly emphasised. The Prize has a value of NOK 500,000. It is awarded by the Holberg Board at the recommendation of the Nils Klim Committee. The Prize is named after the hero in Ludvig Holberg’s novel Nils Klim’s journey to the underworld from 1741.