Research Award for Professor André Laliberté

Our Senior Fellow André Laliberté (University of Ottawa) has been awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's Konrad Adenauer Research Award for his scientific oeuvre, in particular for his research on East Asian democracies, which in many respects transcends borders. The award is endowed with 60,000 € and is to be used, among other things, to realise a long-term research project at a German research institution.

Professor Laliberté's research crosses borders of several kinds: between disciplines (political sciences, study of religion, Chinese studies), languages (English, French, and Chinese), and regions (China, Taiwan, North America, and Europe). Professor Laliberté developed impressive expertise in the areas of religious diversity in East Asian democracies, religious philanthropy and social welfare, filial piety and the work of care, as well as of religion and national identity. In the research group "Multiple Secularities - Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities" André Laliberté works on "Multiple secularities in Chinese societies: religions in the shaping of welfare regimes".

Every year, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation honours one internationally renowned scholar from Canada with a Konrad Adenauer Research Award, thus honouring the entire oeuvre of this leading research personality to date. The award serves to strengthen scientific and cultural relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Canada.

The prize was donated by the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1989 on the occasion of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's visit to Canada. It is named after the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, who shaped the young Federal Republic's relations with its transatlantic partners during his term of office from 1949 to 1963. In 1953, Konrad Adenauer signed the document establishing the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in his capacity as Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, which he held in personal union from 1951 to 1955.

We warmly congratulate André Laliberté on this award and look forward to further expanding our cooperation with him.