Sigurd Hornnes and Filip Torsvik came in third place in 2026 with their research project “Existential Philosophy and Cognitive Psychology – An Integrated Understanding.”
The project seeks to understand young people’s anxiety about the future from both a philosophical and a psychological perspective.
The foundation of the students’ research is a set of questions submitted by young people to the website ung.no. In their work, the students bring together Søren Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy and Aaron Beck’s cognitive model—two theories that offer different explanations of the concept of anxiety—in order to better understand the expressions of future-related anxiety found in these submitted questions.
The Research Project
Title:
Written by:
Sigurd Hornnes Odden and Filip Torsvik
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About the School Programme
The Holberg School Programme is an annual research competition for students in Norwegian upper secondary schools i the humanities, social sciences law and theology. Each year, around 1,000 students from 20 selected schools participate in the competition.
The Holberg School Programme Jury selects three research projects that are awarded prizes of NOK 30,000, NOK 20,000 and NOK 10,000 respectively.
The finalists are announced in mid May, and the award ceremony is held during the Holberg Week in early June each year.