On March 28 2025, our colleague, a member of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Kateřina Čapková, received the Reimar Lüst Award in Bamberg from the hands of the president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Prof. Robert Schlögl. According to the laudation, Kateřina Čapková is a „leading international scholar in the field of modern Jewish history in East Central Europe in the 19th and 20th century… she has developed new insights in the field of migration, flight, segregation and citizenship studies.“ The award will enable her to undertake a research stay at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow in Leipzig.

Kateřina Čapková, Ph.D., is a leading expert on the modern history of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe, the history of the Sinti and Roma, and the history of refugees and migration in the 20th century. In her academic work, she focuses primarily on the experiences of Jewish communities in former Czechoslovakia during and after World War II. She also researches the history of Roma and Sinti and the history of migration. In 2016, she initiated the founding of the Prague Forum for Romani Histories at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, which she has led ever since. As of January 2025, the Prague Forum for Romani Histories has become one of the research centers at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. One of the projects Kateřina Čapková leads is also www.romatestimonies.com, the world’s first systematic database of testimonies by Roma and Sinti about World War II.

The Reimar Lüst Award is granted to humanities and social science scholars from abroad who have significantly contributed to the development of academic and cultural relations between Germany and their home countries. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, in collaboration with the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, annually awards up to two of these prestigious prizes.