Since 2006, the JFK Insitute has awarded the annual Willi Paul Adams Prize to the best Master's Theses submitted during the prior academic year. Supported with a 100-Euro stipend by the Alumni Association, the prize is awarded during the official graduation ceremony. 

Past Awardees

2020/2021

Kristina Brüning (Kultur)
"From Mean Girls and Bad Boys to Fierce Feminists and Monstrous Misogynists: Sexual Violence in Teen Television Drama,
2008-2020"

Honorable Mention: Katarina Dacic (Soziologie)
"Behavioral Patterns of Looting in the U.S."

2019/2020

Thomas Castañeda (Literature)
"The Sense of Selena: A Thesis on Brownness"

Honorable Mention: Gregor Herz (History)
"From Curative to Preventative Sterilization: Therapeutic and Eugenic Sterilization Under the California State Commission in Lunacy"

2018/2019

Charlie Zaharoff (History)

„The Squeamish Coroner: War Crimes Trials of Early Reconstruction.“

Honorable Mention: Anthony Obst (Culture)
„Drums of Haiti: Black Radical Literary Representations of the Haitian Revolution in the 1930s“

2017/2018

Cameron Seglias (Culture)

„Hints Left Writing – Print History, Hermeneutics, and the Creation of a Readerly Ethics in John Woolman’s Journal“.

Honorable Mention: Hannah Nelson-Teutsch (History)
„Send a Ranger – The National Park Service and the Performance of American National Identity in Yosemite National Park“

2016/2017

Sarah Wolff (Literature)

"Strange Brothers, Queer Fellows & the Love of Comrades: A Comparative Study of Queer Desires in the 1930s Harlem Novels Strange Brother and Infants of the Spring"

2015/2016

Patrick DeDauw (Politics)

"Logistics of Settlement: Uneven Markets in Land, Labour, and Infrastructure in Canadian Colonial Expansion"

2014/2015
Lasse Thiele (Politics)

"The Critique of Growth as a Postmodern Critique of Capitalism" 

Honorable Mention: Katherine Szadziewicz (Literature)
"Constructing Poetry: Architecture, Verse, and Public Work in Harriet Monroe’s Chicago Magazine" 

2013/2014
Juliane Czolkoß (Sociology)

"Homeschooling in the United States of America: Driving Forces and Implications of African American Home Education"

2012/2013
Sebastian Hoffmann (Culture)

"Geniale Dilettanten und grandioses Scheitern: Die New Yorker Antifolk-Szene, 1984-2012" 

2011/2012
Julian Henneberg (Culture)

"Mind over Matter? Forms of Embodiment in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest" 

2010/2011
Stefanie Land-Hilbert (History)

2009/2010
Hanno Scherrer (History)

„They are Step-fathers and Strangers in the Government:“ Eigentümerherrschaft, koloniale Governance und die Revolution von 1719 in South Carolina 

2008/2009
Felix Mihram (Economics)

"Tariffs and Growths in the late 19th Century – How Robust is the Empirical Relationship Really? " 

2007/2008
Jessica Terruhn (Sociology)

"Unusual Suspects and Worthy Victims. How Whiteness Is Reproduced in the Crime Coverage of the U.S. Press" 

2006/2007
Jenny Joergensen (Sociology)

"Amerikas gespaltene Ökonomie. Ökumenische Kommunitäten im Spiegel der Brüderlichkeitsethik Max Webers."  

2005/2006
Susan Park (Culture)

"MADE IN AMERIKA. Das amerikanische Modesystem zwischen Uniformierung und Individualisierung"