ECPR Honors Beate Kohler for Lifetime Achievement

The European academic association ECPR acknowledges the political scientist from Mannheim as a pioneer with strong influence on the field.

Press Release of 14 November 2022
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Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Beate Kohler has been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the European Consortium for Political Research (EPCR). Kohler shares the prize with French political scientist Jean Blondel. The professor emerita, still known in academic circles by her former name Beate Kohler-Koch, researched and taught at the School of Social Sciences of the University of Mannheim for many years. As a longstanding member of the board, she helped shape the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), which today is the largest university-based institute for social sciences in Germany. At the MZES, Kohler managed around 30 research projects with countless partners around the world.

Leading role as an international networker

According to the ECPR’s laudation, Beate Kohler has taken an international leading role, particularly in heading and coordinating academic networks. The EU network of excellence “Efficient and democratic governance in a multi-level Europe” (CONNEX), which was coordinated by her, brought together more than 170 scientists from 42 partner institutions in 23 countries alone.

Countless publications, quoted thousands of times

As a pioneer, Kohler also made a significant contribution to establishing the study of the EU as a field on its own, according to the ECPR laudation. Her countless publications, for example on European integration and the non-governmental organizations' role in the EU system, have been quoted thousands of times.  The ECPR also states that Kohler's achievements in in promoting early-stage researchers were exceptional during her 50-year career. From 1988 to 1991, Beate Kohler was the first woman to head the German Political Science Association (GPSA) on a national level.

Beate Kohler is the second woman to be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award, which has been awarded every two years since 2005. The ECPR Lifetime Achievement Award is not the first high academic honor the scientist, who was born in Wuppertal in 1941, received. In 2008, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Oslo, and in 2009, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award of the University Association of Contemporary European Studies (UACES). In 2011, the University of Maastricht awarded her an honorary doctorate. The doctotal degree honoris causa (h. c.) is the highest academic honor that a university can award.

ECPR laudation and podcast (in English)