Wendy Brown Honored at Sakıp Sabancı International Research Awards
At a ceremony held in Istanbul on April 10, 2025, Wendy Brown, UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science, was presented with a Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award for her contributions to scholarship on the theme of “Realigning Values in a Transforming World Order: What needs preserving, reevaluating, and redefining?”
Sakıp Sabancı awards are presented on an annual basis to a scholar in the field of social sciences who has made distinguished lifetime contributions to the theme of the year. The selection process involves an independent, international jury, which considers diverse disciplines and theoretical, empirical, and comparative perspectives.
During the ceremony, Güler Sabancı, Founding Chair of Sabancı University's Board of Trustees, highlighted the significance of the 2025 theme: “In the era we live in, we observe that change is happening faster than ever and values are being reshaped. As science, politics, economy, culture, and social structures are undergoing transformation, the question of which values we should protect and which ones we should reevaluate is important.”
Brown, a pioneering political theorist, has made numerous critical contributions to the theme by illuminating powers unique to our era and the predicaments they generate for democratic thought and practice. She is the author or co-author of over a dozen books, including, most recently, Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber.
In a speech given at the award ceremony, Brown reflected on the fundamental issues raised by the theme: “We have to begin by confronting the fact that values are human-made. We are the meaning makers. We do not discover values, but decide and affirm them. But their human-madeness in no way diminishes the importance of values. They are at the heart of human freedom.”
Read more about the award ceremony on the Sabancı University website.
