20.05.2025

Malin Wilckens received the Johannes Zilkens Doctoral Prize from the Studienstiftung 2025 - Congratulations!

Malin Wilckens was awarded the Johannes Zilkens Doctorate Prize 2025 of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes at a public award ceremony yesterday at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. We congratulate her warmly!

She was honoured for her dissertation ‘Schädelvergleiche und die Ordnung der Welt – Rassifizierungsprozesse in der Wissenschaft (1780–1880).’ In it, Malin Wilckens researched practices of 'collecting' and comparing human skulls in the 18th and 19th centuries. Her dissertation will be published in the renowned series ‘Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft’ by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.


Malin Wilckens has been a research associate at the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) since 2023. In addition to historical 'race" studies, in particular comparative anatomy/anthropology in Europe/North America in the 18th and 19th centuries, her research focuses on global and global microhistory, European entanglement history, history of science and knowledge, and environmental history.

Her dissertation was written in the CRC 1288 ‘Practices of Comparing. Ordering and Changing of the World’, based at Bielefeld University. The CRC 1288 focusses on comparative practices in different cultures and epochs, from antiquity to the present day. You can find out more about Wilckens' dissertation topic in the SFB 1288 blog, see link below.

In August 2024, Malin Wilckens also spoke about her research on comparative practices and the topic ‘Skull comparisons and the order of the world’ in the radio format ‘SFB 1288 on Hertz 87.9’. Listen to the interview on Hertz 87.9 at the link below.

She also spoke about her dissertation project in the Leibniz format ‘Book a Scientist’ and was accompanied by SWR. You can listen to the recording at the link below.

Image rights: private | Photographer: Philipp Ottendörfer