Anne-Marie Mai and Jens-Christian Svenning receive the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prizes 2023

Professor Jens-Christian Svenning from Aarhus University has been awarded the prize for his internationally acclaimed basic research spanning from macroecological processes to the development of methods and ideas for rewilding to benefit both the planet’s climate and its ecosystems. He is also a tireless pioneer in his field when it comes to developing solutions to major global social challenges resulting from climate change.

Of the total prize money of DKK 1 million for each winner, DKK 750,000 is earmarked for research activities and DKK 250,000 is a personal gift.

“On behalf of the Board of Directors, I take great pleasure in congratulating Anne-Marie Mai and Jens-Christian Svenning on winning the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prizes 2023,” says Professor Majken Schultz, Chair of the Carlsberg Foundation. 

“Both have made an exceptional contribution to Danish research over many years. Anne-Marie Mai has made key advances in literary scholarship, including innovative analytical approaches that make it possible to link together leading bodies of work in new ways. Jens-Christian Svenning has made impressive contributions to emerging scientific disciplines such as macroecology, rewilding and global change ecology, for which he has won considerable international recognition. Both deserve not only recognition, but also praise and applause for their immense commitment and dedication in the service of research.”

Anne-Marie Mai and Jens-Christian Svenning were awarded the prizes on the recommendation of a Prize Committee of Danish and international researchers appointed jointly by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and the Carlsberg Foundation. Marie Louise Nosch, President of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, chaired the Prize Committee.

The Prize Committee’s reasons for recommending the award to Anne-Marie Mai:

Professor Anne-Marie Mai has altered our perception of how literary history can be studied and analysed, and she has communicated this in the clearest possible way both in her teaching and to the wider population through the media.

Throughout her career, Mai has created new approaches and understandings of literature, not only in Denmark and the Nordic region but also in an international context. She has changed our understanding of recent periods of Danish literature, identifying a break in the mid-1960s and the emergence of a new period. In doing so, she has linked together leading bodies of work in a new way and established the concept of the “formal breakthrough”, an insight that has woven together a variety of contributions to Danish literary history.

This discovery has been pivotal for Danish and Nordic literary research, and the “formal breakthrough” is now a recognised period of recent Danish literature.

The Prize Committee’s reasons for recommending the award to Jens-Christian Svenning:

Professor Jens-Christian Svenning’s specialist fields are biology and ecology, and his impressive scientific contributions to the emerging disciplines of macroecology and global change ecology in particular have won international recognition.

Svenning’s scholarship has broken new ground in our understanding of vegetation dynamics in terms of the diversity of trees in Europe, especially when it comes to the long-term effects of climate change.

He has greatly advanced our understanding of humankind’s impact on nature, including both the acute challenges we face from climate change and its lasting consequences. He has also helped develop evolutionary models to estimate the millions of years it will take to reverse the loss of mammalian diversity caused by climate change.

About the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prizes

The objective of the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prizes is to acknowledge two active researchers in Denmark or abroad who have made crucial contributions to basic research at a high international level. The prizes are intended to encourage further research and may be used for stays abroad, fieldwork, purchases of equipment or wages for scientific work.

The Carlsberg Foundation Research Prizes were instituted in 2011 to mark the bicentenary of the birth of the Foundation’s founder, J.C. Jacobsen. Each prize of DKK 1 million comprises a personal gift of DKK 250,000 and DKK 750,000 for research activities.

The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters invites nominations and assists the Prize Committee in its work on assessing the nominees and recommending the two winners to the Board of Directors of the Carlsberg Foundation.

The Prize Committee

Chair:

• Marie Louise Nosch, President of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Professor at the SAXO Institute at the University of Copenhagen

International members in the humanities and social sciences:

• Joanna Story, Professor of Early Mediaeval History at the University of Leicester
• Karin Lisbeth Sanders, Professor of Scandinavian Literature at the University of California, Berkeley

International members in the natural sciences:

• Janne Blichert-Toft, Research Director at CNRS at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon
• Susanne Renner, Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis

Members who have previously won the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prizes:

• Andreas Roepstorff (2015), Professor, Director of the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University
• Mette Birkedal Bruun (2017), Professor of Church History at the University of Copenhagen
• Karl Anker Jørgensen (2017), Professor of Chemistry at Aarhus University
• Poul Nissen (2018), Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Aarhus University

Further information on this year’s prize ceremony and winners is available on request from Editor af Press Adviser Jane Benarroch: tel. +45 3164 0010, jb@carlsbergfoundation.dk.