This year's Helsinki Science Award was presented to Professor Henrik Meinander on Helsinki Day, 12 June. Henrik Meinander works as a professor at the University of Helsinki Faculty of Arts. The value of the science award is EUR 10,000.
Henrik Meinander (born 1960), Ph.D, is a Professor of History at the University of Helsinki. His extensive research output has focused particularly on the 19th and 20th century history of Finland and the Nordic countries, in the areas of which his range of publications has been exceptionally broad.
Henrik Meinander received his doctorate from the University of Helsinki in 1994. Three years later, he became an adjunct professor at both the University of Helsinki and Åbo Akademi. Since 2001, he has worked as a Professor of History in Swedish-speaking subject at the University of Helsinki. Meinander also served as intendant at the Mannerheim Museum in 1991-1997 and director of Finlandsinstitutet in Stockholm in 2001-2002. He has been a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences since 2002 and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters since 2003, and served as chair of the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland in 2017-2023. In 2007, Meinander was awarded the Swedish Academy's Finland Prize.
Since the beginning of his career as a researcher, Professor Meinander has emphasised Nordic perspectives in his research. One of his first specialisation areas was Nordic sports history, and since then he has also expanded his research themes particularly to military, political and social history.
Meinander's research output is very extensive, encompassing dozens of peer-reviewed articles and more than 50 other articles. Through these studies, Meinander's varied output and extensive expertise have been reaching researchers in Finland and around the world for more than thirty years. That being said, Meinander is first and foremost a writer of extensive and in-depth monographs: he has written over a dozen books and edited several anthologies.
Meinander is also an active populariser of scientific research and contributes to public debate with reasoned arguments. Meinander has participated in numerous radio and television productions as an expert in history and thus contributed to the impact of history as a field of research in contemporary society.
The purpose of the award is to strengthen Helsinki as a city of science and research
The purpose of the Helsinki Science Award, which has been given out since 1996, is to strengthen and increase the recognition of Helsinki as a city of science and research. The award is awarded in recognition of significant scientific work conducted by Helsinki residents or carried out in Helsinki.
Helsinki awarded research grants for urban research
On Helsinki Day, the City of Helsinki also awarded research grants to eleven research projects totalling EUR 73,000. The grants are intended for researchers with master's degrees, especially those working on licentiate research and doctoral dissertations. The grants also support new postdoctoral researchers.
The criteria for awarding the grant have been the scientific quality of research plans, feasibility and significance of the research area to the City of Helsinki.
