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Sunday, December 06, 2009

David Bloch awarded Nils Klim Prize

David Bloch, associate professor at University of Copenhagen, has been awarded the Nils Klim Prize for Nordic researchers below 35 years old in the fields of social sciences, humanities, law and theology. The prize is worth 31 000 euros.



Professor Bloch's research focuses on ancient and medieval philosophy. He wrote his doctoral dissertation in 2006 on Artistotle´s De Memoria et Reminiscentia, includes new critical edition of Aristotle’s text, based on a rereading of all the eighteen Greek manuscripts from before 1400 and of the two medieval Latin paraphrases. His thesis also comprised an original interpretation of Aristotle‘s theory on memory and an analysis of the reception of this theory by Muslim and Christian authors in the Middle Ages. His doctoral dissertation was in 2007 published as a book entitled Aristotle on Memory and Recollection

Since he defended his thesis, Dr. Bloch has been engaged in various philosophical and philological studies that have resulted in a great number of publications in English and Danish. Aristotle and the immense medieval Aristotelian tradition form a central part of his scholarly work, but he has also published on Kierkegaard, Peter of Auvergne, Seneca and Racine.

Dr. Bloch is also part of the project: History of Philosophy in Reverse. Reading Aristotle through the lenses of scholars from the Middle Ages and the 16th-17th centuries, with other scholars in the Centre for Aristotelian Tradition at the University of Copenhagen.

The Nils Klim Prize award committee said, "The broad scope of David Kristian Bloch’s competence makes his work of great interest to all who want to obtain a better understanding of the origin of the theoretical ideas which have shaped the modern world."

The Nils Klim Prize is awarded every year by the Board of the Ludvig Holberg Memorial Fund. This fund was established by the Norwegian Parliament in 2003 to raise the status of the academic fields of the arts and humanities, social sciences, law and theology.