Torgny Segerstedt Medal and Geijer Prize winners announced

5 september 2022

The Torgny Segerstedt Medal was instituted in honour of Segerstedt’s 23 years as Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University. The medal is awarded every other year.

This year’s Torgny Segerstedt Medal has been awarded to Mikael Stenmark, professor in philosophy of religion at the Department of Theology. The Geijer Prize goes to Viktor Persarvet and Astrid Wendel-Hansen.

The Torgny Segerstedt Medal was instituted in honour of Segerstedt’s contribution as Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University over the course of 23 years. It has been awarded every other year since 1988 to “Swedish scholars for especially meritorious work in the arts and social sciences”.

Farsighted leadership

This years recipient is theologian Professor Mikael Stenmark. The jury justified the award as follows:

“Professor Mikael Stenmark is a world-class researcher in the field of religious studies. He has succeeded in an extraordinary manner in uniting the role of internationally established researcher and teacher with collegial responsibility as head of department, deputy dean and dean. In his farsighted leadership, Stenmark has broadened the Faculty of Theology’s self-understanding by initiating the profile subject Islamic Theology and Philosophy, while at the same time safeguarding the tradition of classical theology and religious studies research. Stenmark is the author of over 20 books and hundreds of articles. His work has been published in several languages, including Persian, Portuguese and Finnish. He is an admired doctoral supervisor who has guided 10 doctoral students through the defence of their dissertations and an attentive teacher and leader of first- and second-cycle courses and programmes. His work is characterised by a combination of bold and original thinking and concern for the historically given.”

“I was pleasantly surprised to be informed that I had been awarded the Torgny Segerstedt Medal. It is a great honour to receive this award,” says Stenmark.

In addition to the medal, the winner also receives a prize of SEK 240,000.

The Torgny Segerstedt Medal will be presented during the University’s anniversary celebration on 7 October.

The Geijer Prize

The Geijer Prize will be presented at the same ceremony. It is awarded every three years to researchers at Uppsala University who, during the preceding three years, have successfully defended a doctoral thesis in the field of Swedish history deemed to be particularly distinguished.

This year’s Geijer Prize is awarded to Viktor Persarvet, for his doctoral thesis Tariff, Trade, and Economic Growth in Sweden 1858–1913, and Astrid Wendel-Hansen, for her doctoral thesis Dress Matters: Clothes and Social Order in Tallin 1600–1700.

The prize money for 2022 is SEK 80,000, which will be shared by the winners.

Åsa Malmberg