Amartya Sen awarded the 2017 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science

The Johan Skytte Prize annually recognises the most valuable contribution to the field of Political Science. This year’s prize is awarded to Amartya Sen, Thomas W. Lamont Professor at Harvard University.

Professor Sen receives the prize for his many-sided scholarship “combining insights on the vulnerabilities of humankind with knowledge on the unique capacities of democratic political power to mitigate and diminish this exposure”. Professor Sen is of Indian origin, since decades working at the University of Cambridge, Harvard University and affiliated with Delhi University. In 1998, Professor Sen was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel and he has used the award to start the Pratichi Trust in India and Bangladesh that works to improve women’s access to education and health care.

Professor Sen is the 23rd recipient of the Johan Skytte Prize. The prize ceremony will take place in Uppsala on September 30, 2017.

About the Johan Skytte Prize:
In 1622, Johan Skytte, then Vice-Chancellor of the University, established the Johan Skytte chair in Eloquence and Government, which is probably the world’s oldest active professorship in political science. The lands included in the original donation continue to finance research and the Johan Skytte Prize. The prize sum of SEK 500,000 is awarded each year by The Skytte Foundation at Uppsala University to the person who has made the “most valuable contribution to political science”.

Read more about the prize and this year's prize winner on the Skytte Foundation's website.

For more information, please contact: Michal Smrek, Information Officer at the Skytte Foundation, tel.: +46 70 0664926, email: Michal@skytteprize.com