Press Room

RECENT PRESS RELEASES

• 08.06.2023 (ENGLISH) The Holberg Prize conferred upon Professor Joan Martinez-Alier (Award Ceremony for the Holberg Prize and the Nils Klim Prize.)
• 08.06.2023 (NORWEGIAN) Holbergprisen overrakt til professor Joan Martinez-Alier. (Prisutdeling for Holbergprisen og Nils Klim-prisen.) 
• 10.03.2023 (NORWEGIAN) Får Holbergprisen for forskning på miljøkonflikter.
• 10.03.2023 (ENGLISH) Environmental Justice Scholar Joan Martinez-Alier Named 2023 Holberg Prize Laureate.
• 10.03.2023 (ENGLISH for Finland, Iceland)  Environmental Justice Scholar Joan Martinez-Alier Named 2023 Holberg Prize Laureate.
• 10.03.2023 (DANISH) Miljøretsforsker Joan Martinez-Alier er valgt som modtager af Holbergprisen i 2023.
• 10.03.2023 (GERMAN) Holberg-Preis 2023 geht an Umweltgerechtigkeitsforscher Joan Martinez-Alier.
• 10.03.2023 (FRENCH) Le Prix Holberg décerné à Joan Martinez-Alier, spécialiste de justice  environnementale.
• 10.03.2023 (SPANISH) Investigador en justicia ambiental Joan Martinez-Alier laureado con el Premio Holberg de 2023.
• 10.03.2023 (ITALIAN) Premio Holberg assegnato a Joan Martinez-Alier, esperto di giustizia ambientale. 
• 10.03.2023 (PORTUGUESE) Acadêmico de Justiça Ambiental Joan Martinez-Alier nomeado Laureado do Prêmio Holberg de 2023.
• 10.03.2023 (CHINESE)  霍尔堡奖提名环境正义运动学者霍安·马丁内斯-阿列尔为 2023年度获奖者.

PRESS CONTACT

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

THE 2023 HOLBERG PRIZE / JOAN MARTINEZ-ALIER

BIOGRAPHY

Joan Martinez-Alier is a professor emeritus at the Environmental Science and Technology Institute of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). He is also professor emeritus at Latin American Social Sciences Institute (FLACSO), Quito. 

His numerous publications include Labourers and Landowners in Southern Spain (1971), Haciendas, Plantations and Collective Farms (Cuba and Peru) (1977), Ecological economics: energy, environment and society (1987, with Klaus Schlüpmann); Varieties of environmentalism: Essays North and South (1997, with Ramachandra Guha); and The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation (2003). In addition, with Roldan Muradian he co-edited Handbook of Ecological Economics (2015). He contributed to the book Degrowth: a vocabulary for a new era (2014) and co-edited the textbook Ecological Economics from the Ground Up (2013). The latter book emerged from a collaborative research project, Civil Society Engagement with Ecological Economics (CEECEC), 2008-2010, which was followed by the Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT) project (2011-15).

Martinez-Alier has served as president of the International Society for Ecological Economics in 2006 and 2007, and as a member of the scientific committee of the European Environment Agency between 2000 and 2008. Since 1990, Martinez-Alier has edited the journal Ecología Política. 

His research focuses on ecological economics, political ecology, agrarian studies, environmental justice, and the environmentalism of the poor and the indigenous. In 2016 he was awarded a European Research Council Advanced Grant for the project EnvJustice (A global environmental justice movement), 2016-21. He is a co-founder of the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas). In 2020 he was awarded the Balzan prize, and in 2023 the Holberg prize. 

Based on the EJAtlas, in 2023 he will publish the volume Land, Water, Air and Freedom: The Making of World Movements for Environmental Justice analysing hundreds of “ecological distribution conflicts” and the “valuation languages” displayed by poor and indigenous activists. Revealing the enormous circularity gap at the centre of the industrial economy, the book maps diverse geographies of resistance at the frontiers of commodity extraction and waste disposal, and the protagonists of a world counter-movement for environmental justice. Martinez-Alier also has a significant contribution in the 2023 volume The Barcelona School of Ecological Economics and Political Ecology (co-edited Sergio Villamayor and Roldan Muradian). 

LINKS

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Website
Global Atlas of Environmental Justice 
Environmental Justice Project 
Citation from the Holberg Committee

PRESS PHOTOS

EXPERT CONTACT FOR JOAN MARTINEZ-ALIER

Professor Håvard Haarstad
University of Bergen
E-mail: havard.haarstad@uib.no

THE 2023 NILS KLIM PRIZE / SIMONA ZETTERBERG-NIELSEN

BIOGRAPHY

Simona Zetterberg-Nielsen is a researcher of Nordic language and literature at Aarhus University. She has received numerous grants and awards; among them the Elite Research travel grant, Aarhus University’s Research Fund’s PhD award for the top humanistic PhD dissertation in 2017, a grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark’s Inge Lehmann programme in 2021, and Velux’s core group grant in 2022. She leads a research group on fiction and science in the 18th century, which is based at Aarhus University. 

Zetterberg-Nielsen is an editor of the journals 1700-tal and Passage, where she has contributed to publishing a large number of issues. She has published articles about the 18th century novel and fictionality in a historical perspective in journals such as Narrative, Style, Poetics Today, The Living Handbook of Narratology, and The Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory. She has also written or edited books such as Fiktion, Fiktionalitet – i sprog, litteratur og kultur, Fictionality and Literature: Core Concepts Revisited, Middelalderisme i dansk romantisk litteratur, and Litteratur og idéhistorie.

LINKS

Personal page at Aarhus University
Nils Klim Committee Citation

PRESS PHOTOS 

EXPERT CONTACT FOR SIMONA ZETTERBERG-NIELSEN

Professor Jørgen Magnus Sejersted
University of Bergen
E-mail: jorgen.sejersted@uib.no

​​​​​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.