Walter Benjamin Prize for Early Career Researchers awarded to Daniel Gönitzer und Melanie Konrad

Out of a total of seventeen submissions for the Walter Benjamin Prize for Early Career Researchers, the selection committee has chosen the project “Benjamins Tiere. Figurationen des Animalischen” (Benjamin’s Animals. Figurations of Animality) by Daniel Gönitzer and Melanie Konrad (Vienna).

The 4,500 Euro award, jointly funded by the International Walter Benjamin Society, the Walter Benjamin Archive and the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, is designed to enable Early Career Researchers to organize a two-day workshop.

In the planned workshop, the award winners would like to discuss the role of animals and animality as epistemological and poetological figures of thought in Benjamin’s work. In Benjamin’s texts, animals appear as projections of the uncanny, the comical, and the fragile. As figures of mystery and oblivion, they refer to Benjamin’s examination of questions of historicity. The workshop aims to bring Benjamins research into dialogue with animal studies, ecocriticism, media anthropology, and posthumanism.

The workshop is expected to take place in winter 2026 in Berlin.