Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for the Colombian ethnologist and ethnolinguist Juan A. Echeverri
Press release from 01/29/2015
Guest of Freie Universität Berlin and the Ibero-American Institute researches knowledge transfer in the Amazon region in Berlin. The Colombian ethnologist and ethnolinguist Prof Dr Juan A. Echeverri receives the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, endowed with 45,000 euros. The academic from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Campus Amazonia, was nominated jointly by the literary scholar Prof Dr Susanne Klengel, Institute for Latin American Studies at the Free University of Berlin, and Dr Barbara Göbel, Director of the Ibero-American Institute of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The honour is linked to the funding of a research project at both institutions in 2015. Starting in March, Juan A. Echeverri will spend nine months in Berlin working on the topic of "Trans-Amazonian knowledge transfer between local and global: the materiality of ethnography, indigenous literatures and memory".
According to the selection committee, Juan Echeverri has combined different perspectives such as ethnolinguistics, literature and ecology and thus decisively developed transcultural Amazonian research. His interdisciplinary focus and his extensive empirical experience as an ethnologist and ethnolinguist complement his close collaboration with indigenous authors. He promotes their presence in public debates on the history, present and future of Amazonia.
Juan Echeverri is involved in international research projects, such as the Volkswagen Foundation-funded DOBES project to document endangered languages in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. As an internationally recognised expert on indigenous languages, such as Witoto, he has made key contributions to the translation and recognition of indigenous languages and literatures. His research on indigenous genocide during the rubber boom at the beginning of the 20th century is groundbreaking for memoria research in Amazonia. During his stay in Berlin, the renowned scholar will be participating in the Latin American Institute's long-standing interdisciplinary research on the Amazon and in the scientific cataloguing of the Ibero-American Institute's unique collections of text, image and sound sources on this cultural region.
The interdisciplinary Latin American Institute at Freie Universität Berlin is the largest university institute for Latin American research in the German-speaking world. The Ibero-American Institute of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is a non-university research institution that houses one of the world's largest libraries on Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal. There is a strategic partnership between the two institutions, which includes close co-operation on third-party funded projects, publications and events.
Further information
Prof. Dr Susanne Klengel, Institute for Latin American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, telephone: 030 / 838-55575, e-mail
Dr Barbara Göbel, Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, telephone: 030 / 266-451300, e-mail