Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - The Central Women's Representative

Ceremony February 2018

On 23 February 2018, Professor Dr Ilse Helbrecht, geographer and urban researcher , was awarded the sixth Caroline von Humboldt Professorship. Keynote speaker of the award ceremony was Professor Dr Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla, president of the Technische Universität Braunschweig. Professor Dr Gesine Schwan, former president of the European University Viadrina and holder of the German Federal Cross of Merit, hold the laudatory speech.

This year’s awardee, Professor Dr Ilse Helbrecht, is an outstanding researcher with a high national and international reputation in the field of human geography and urban studies. At the same time, she is strongly involved in the academic self-administration of the university and well-known for her innovative and committed teaching. The jury acknowledged her as being an “allrounder” who leaves a footprint even beyond her field of expertise.

Ilse Helbrecht holds the professorship for Social and Cultural Geography at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and is the executive director of the Georg-Simmel Centre for Metropolitan Studies. After her studies in Geography, Sociology and Public Law at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, she did her PhD and postdoctoral studies at the Technische Universität München (title of the Habilitation thesis: “Die kreative Metropolis”). During her academic career Ilse Helbrecht spend two years as a post-doc at the University of British Columbia in Canada and one semester as a guest professor at the Amsterdam Study Center for the Metropolitan Environment, before she was appointed full professor of human geography at the Universität Bremen in 2002.