In order to promote young academics in the field of future-oriented research, the Netzwerk Zukunftsforschung awards outstanding master’s theses once a year.

Conditions of participation for 2022

Master’s theses from all disciplines, especially futurology, will be considered, provided they deal with a question or problem explicitly related to the future and address it scientifically. The theses must have already been reviewed and evaluated with an overall grade of 1.7 or better. The peer review must not have taken place more than 2 years ago. Papers may be submitted on an ongoing basis. Deadline for the current contest was May 16, 2022.

The master’s thesis should be written in German and assessed at a university in a German-speaking country. Exceptions are possible in justified cases, e.g. if a thesis was submitted to a university in a German-speaking country but in English language.

The evaluation and selection of the winner will be carried out by several members of the Netzwerk Zukunftsforschung. Only master theses submitted to the Netzwerk Zukunftsforschung for this purpose can be considered.

The postal mail must contain:

  • an abstract of the work and justification for the submission;
  • a brief curriculum vitae of the author;
  • a copy of the transcript showing the grade of the master’s thesis;
  • one printed copy (simple stapling or binding is sufficient) to the postal address (see below);
  • the aforementioned documents stored in electronic form on an appropriate data carrier, i.e. CD/DVD/USB stick…

The call for entries for the 2022 Young Talent Award can be downloaded as a pdf document here.

Award winner for 2021 awarded!

Matthias Koning, a graduate of the master’s program in Futures Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, prevailed with his work against several other, also very good, competition entries. The award will be presented at the upcoming annual conference of the Netzwerk Zukunftsforschung, which will take place virtually due to corona. His thesis is entitled “Queer Trails in Futures of the City – Heteronormative Traces and Queer-Inclusive Thinking in Future Images of Urban Life”. It was published in the Berlin Institut Futur publication series and can be downloaded here. We congratulate Matthias Koning on the award!