The Holberg Prize is offering scholarships for five PhD candidates in the Nordic countries to participate in a Masterclass with Professor Lyndal Roper on “Bodies, Gender, Psyche, Movement” on 3 June, 2026.
PhD candidates in the Nordic countries can now apply to participate in a Masterclass with Professor Lyndal Roper, the 2026 Holberg Laureate. The event takes place during the Holberg Week in Bergen, on Wednesday, 3 June, 2026, 10:00–12:00.
The deadline for applications is 17 April, 2026.
Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered, and the participants are also invited to other events during the Holberg Week (1–4 June).
Participation in the Masterclass will earn you five ECTS credits. We invite applicants form all disciplines relevant to the fields covered by the Holberg Prize: humanities, social sciences, law and theology.
“Bodies, Gender, Psyche, Movement”
How do we include physical experience, real bodies, in our understanding of human life? Where do phenomena like dreams fit in? What does gender mean today?
How do we get beyond discourse about ‘the body’ – after all, there is no such thing as THE body – and what opens up if we no longer assume gender is binary? AI of course doesn’t have a body. How can we enrich our account of human agency by thinking about emotions, including religious ones, and the unconscious? And how does our thinking change when we move?
Format and preparation
Drawing also on their own work, participants are asked to prepare a five-minute presentation related to the main topic of the Masterclass. In addition to knowledge of the texts in a curriculum chosen by the Laureate, participants are also asked to prepare questions for Professor Lyndal Roper in advance.
The discussion will be held in English. Please note that PhD Masterclass is open to the public and will be livestreamed. Video will remain online after the event.
Curriculum (to be confirmed)
- Lyndal Roper, Emotions in the German Peasants’ War
- Lyndal Roper, Turbulence and the German Peasants’ War
- Lyndal Roper, ‘The Stout Doctor’/Der feiste Doktor
- Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil, Introduction
- Lyndal Roper, Living I was your plague, ch. Luther the Antisemite or Luther and Dreams
How to apply
Apply for the Masterclass by completing the application form below. We ask that you submit a letter of motivation (no more than 3,500 characters), your CV and contact information. The deadline for applications is 17 April, 2026.
Decisions to all applicants about course admittance will be given by 2 May 2026.
Participants will be selected by the pool of applicants by Academic Director of the Holberg Prize, prof. Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, in collaboration with the Secretariat.
If you have any questions about the event, application requirements or practicalities, please contact the Holberg Prize Secretariat at info@holbergprisen.no.
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About Lyndal Roper
2026 Holberg Laureate Lyndal Roper is the Regius Chair of History at the University of Oxford emeritus. She is internationally recognized as one of the leading scholars of early modern European history. Ropers pioneering studies have reshaped understandings of witch persecutions, the German Peasants’ War (1524–1525), and the life and thought of Martin Luther, illuminating how gender, the body, psyche and power operated in social and religious conflicts of the sixteenth century. Roper’s work is widely renowned for its methodological innovativeness and capacity to cut across disciplinary boundaries.