03.07.2026 Ernst-Otto Czempiel Award for "Politics of Memory and Peace"
The Peace Research Institute Frankfurt has awarded this year’s Ernst-Otto Czempiel Award to the monograph "Peace and the Politics of Memory", published in 2024. The 2026 Ernst-Otto Czempiel Award will be awarded on March 3, 2027, in Frankfurt am Main.
This year's Ernst-Otto Czempiel Award goes to Peace and the Politics of Memory. Drawing on five case studies, the monograph examines how the politics of memory affects societies shaped by a violent past.
The award honours a team of five international scholars for the best monograph in the field of peace research from 2023 to 2025:
Johanna Mannergren | Södertörn University
Annika Björkdahl | Lund University
Susanne Buckley-Zistel | Center for Conflict Studies, Marburg University
Stefanie Kappler | Durham University
Timothy Williams | Universität der Bundeswehr München
The monograph, published in 2024, examines how memory politics contributes to the quality of peace in so-called post-conflict societies. To this end, the authors combine insights from peace and memory studies within a theoretical framework that focuses on the interplay of places, narratives, agency and events in the social construction of memory. Using this framework, they examine and compare so-called 'mnemonic formations' in Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, South Africa and Cambodia through five comprehensive empirical case studies. They argue that the quality of peace depends on the extent to which memories of war, in all their diversity, are publicly visible and intertwined with one another.
The Ernst-Otto-Czempiel Award recognises the best monograph in the field of peace research from the preceding two to three years. The prize has been awarded since 2008 and is endowed with €5,000. It is named after Ernst-Otto Czempiel (1927–2017), who was the co-founder and long-time director of PRIF, as well as being one of the leading figures in international peace research. Past recipients include Roger Mac Ginty, Kerstin von Lingen and Simon Koschut, among others. The 2026 Ernst-Otto-Czempiel Award will be presented on 3 March 2027 in Frankfurt am Main.
About the book: Mannergren, J., Björkdahl, A., Buckley-Zistel, S., Kappler, S., & Williams, T. (2024). Peace and the Politics of Memory. Manchester University Press. ISBN: 9781526178312
Open Access Link to the Monograph
Press Release by the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF)