For the Association of Female Scientists in Baden-Württemberg (VBWW), which was formed in 1988 from various working groups and committees, supporting female scientists in the early stages of their careers is a particular priority. Every two years, the VBWW awards the Maria Gräfin von Linden Prize, which is presented during the symposium “What Women Research – A Scientific Kaleidoscope” in the categories of life sciences and humanities/social sciences.
According to the VBWW, the symposium offers female scientists a platform to showcase their research results and provide entertaining and intellectually challenging insights into their scientific disciplines. At the symposium, the female scientists present their research and its latest findings. The award goes to those who have impressed the audience with a particularly compelling scientific contribution and its well-founded presentation. The selection is based on an evaluation by the participants of the scientific symposium.
Dr. Juliana Gras received the 2025 Maria Gräfin von Linden Prize in the Humanities/Social Sciences category for her lecture “Democracy (Education) for All.” “I am very pleased about the recognition of my work and the visibility it brings,” she says. Juliana Gras teaches in the Department of Educational Science at the University of Education Weingarten and works at the Research Center for Educational Innovation and Professionalization. Building on her dissertation on “Democracy Education in the Context of Integration,” she researches and teaches on central issues of democracy education, participation, and inclusion in pluralistic societies. Against the backdrop of a democratic society characterized by diversity, which is increasingly confronted with processes of social polarization and challenges to democracy, the need for democracy education is coming more and more into focus, as the award winner emphasizes.
In addition to her academic work, Juliana Gras has several years of experience in the school setting and in providing guidance on instructional development. She notes that school is the institution that reaches (almost) all children and young people. This makes the school’s mission to foster democratic knowledge and create spaces for democratic experience all the more urgent. “The goal of approaches to democracy education is to systematically involve all students in democratic learning and experiential processes.” Democracy education formats are indispensable for this, yet at the same time they represent ‘only’ one part of a democratic school and classroom culture.
About the Maria Gräfin von Linden Prize
The award is named in honor of Maria Gräfin von Linden. In 1891, she became the first woman in Württemberg to pass the high school graduation exam in Stuttgart, and in 1895, she became the first German woman to earn a doctorate in natural sciences from the University of Tübingen. In 1910, she became the first woman in Germany to be appointed an Adjunct Professorship as “director” of the Parasitological Laboratory at the University of Bonn.
------------------------
Text: Barbara Müller