The Gesellschaft zur Förderung des ZMO e.V. invites every second year competition for the Fritz Steppat Prize for an outstanding scientific text by a young researcher. Considered for the prize will be final theses and other scientific texts by students, graduates and doctoral candidates in the fields represented at the ZMO. The prize carries a purse of 500 Euros. Fritz Steppat (1923-2006) was the first provisional director of the Forschungsschwerpunkt Modern Orient, the precursor institution to today’s ZMO. He was one of the trailblazers of present-oriented, interdisciplinary and practice-oriented research on the Orient in the Federal Republic of Germany. From 1992 to 1993, he was the first Provisional Director of the Forschungsschwerpunkt Moderner Orient. In 1998, in the framework of the Fritz and Gertraud Steppat Gift, the ZMO received Fritz Steppat’s private research library.
Laureates have so far been Nushin Atmaca (2014) for her master thesis „Saudische Lebensgeschichten. Die ‚Generation des Aufbaus‘ im Spiegel zeitgenössischer Autobiographien“, and Feras Krimsti (2016) for his book “Die Unruhen von 1850 in Aleppo. Gewalt im urbanen Raum”, published 2014 within the publication series ZMO-Studien.
In 2018 the prize was awarded to Rhea Regina Schmitt for her master thesis Motivations and Aspirations of Filmmakers and their Impact on Film Projects in Sudan and to Claudia Ghrawi for her doctoral thesis Saudi Arabia’s Urban Revolution. Oil Urbanization and Popular Politics in al-Ahsāˀ (the Eastern Province), 1938-1970.
In 2020, the prize was awarded to Rahina Muazu for her outstanding dissertation "Qurʾan Recitation and the Nudity of the Female Voice in Nigeria"and Shaul Marmari for his excellent MA thesis "Red Sea Horizons. Palestine and the Jewish-Yemeni Diaspora, 1881–1948".
The Fritz-Steppat Prize 2022 was awarded to Leigh-Ann McSweeney for her master thesis "Youth Participation in Political and Social Movements in Post-lndependence Senegal. An Analysis of the lnfluence of Hip-Hop Culture in the Context of the Presidential Elections in 2012" and Hanna Nieber for her PhD dissertation "Drinking the written Koran: healing with kombe in Zanzibar Town". Congratulations!
The Fritz-Steppat Prize 2024 was awarded to Thiago Pinto Barbosa for his dissertation "Science and Human Difference in Germany and India: The Production and Circulation of Anthropological Knowledge in Irawati Karve's Work Legacy". Congratulations!
