Rafal Matuszewski receives Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award
Award
Assistant professor Ancient History Rafal Matuszewski has been honored with the prestigious 2026 Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This distinguished award, accompanied by 60,000 € in funding, recognizes Matuszewski’s outstanding contributions to research and teaching in the field of Greek history and historical anthropology of the ancient world.
The Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award is conferred to internationally leading researchers in recognition of their boundary-transcending research and high-impact academic achievements to date. In addition to a monetary award, award winners are invited to carry out research projects of their own choice in cooperation with specialist colleagues in Germany.
Matuszewski will use the award to deepen international collaborations with colleagues at the University of Potsdam and pursue new research on ancient Greek environmental history, religion, and the history of sexuality and the body. While it is quite unusual for a scholar in the Humanities to be awarded this prize, Matuszewski’s cross-disciplinary work redefines the boundaries of historical inquiry and, through its remarkable thematic breadth and originality, exemplifies the very best of contemporary Humanities research, according to the award letter.
About the prize
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation supports distinguished international scientists and scholars irrespective of their academic discipline or nationality. The award is named after Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1784–1846), German astronomer and mathematician, and it is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. Numerous prize winners were later awarded a Nobel Prize.