Erwin Kräutler Prize for Contextual Theology, Interreligious Dialogue and Liberation Theological Research
Organization of the Erwin Kräutler Prize for Contextual Theology, Interreligious Dialogue, and Liberation Theological Research
The Erwin Kräutler Prize for Contextual Theology, Interreligious Dialogue and Liberation Theological Research, which is awarded every two years by the Center for Intercultural Theology and the Study of Religions, aims to support young scholars who deal with the questions and topics for which Bishop Erwin Kräutler is committed:
- Political Theology, Liberation Theology
- Peace, Justice and Integrity of Creation
- intercultural and interreligious dialogue
- Gender / Intersectionality
- social justice / solidarity / open society
- Globalization Theories, Migration, Critical Development Studies
Priority will be given to dissertations from theology or a similar field of research that have been completed in the last two years before the submission deadline.
The prize money is € 3,000,-. In addition, there will be the opportunity to publish the award-winning work in the series “Salzburg Theological Studies – Intercultural”.
The award of the Erwin Kräutler Prize is decided by a jury, which currently consists of five people:
- Univ.-Prof. Dr. Margit Eckholt (University of Osnabrück)
- Dr. Catalina Cerda-Planas (Institute for World Church and Mission, University of Philosophy and Theology Sankt Georgen, Frankfurt am Main / Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez, Santiago de Chile)
- P. Christian Tauchner SVD (Steyl Institute of Missiology, Sankt Augustin near Bonn)
- Dr. Sebastian Pittl (University of Tübingen)
- Univ.-Prof. DDr. Franz Gmainer-Pranzl (University of Salzburg, coordination of the Erwin Kräutler Prize)
An international advisory board is available for consultations.The advisory board consists of the following members:
- Dr. Arnd Bünker, Swiss Institute of Pastoral Sociology, St. Gallen
- Univ.-Prof. DDr. Mariano Delgado, University of Fribourg
- Prof. DDr. Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, RWTH Aachen
- Dr.in Magdalena Holztrattner, KSÖ, Vienna
- Dr. Martin Maier SJ, Adveniat, Essen
- Dr. Josef Mautner, Salzburg
- Prof. Dr. Stefan Silber, University of Vechta
- em. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Franz Weber MCCJ, University of Innsbruck
- Emer. Rector Univ.-Prof. Dr. Heinrich Schmidinger, University of Salzburg
- Univ.-Prof.in Dr.in Martha Zechmeister CJ, UCA, San Salvador
ERWIN-KRÄUTLER PRIZE 2025
The Center for Intercultural Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Salzburg is awarding the “Erwin Kräutler Prize for Contextual Theology, Interreligious Dialogue, and Liberation Theology Research” for the eighth time to Dr. Jan Niklas Collet for his dissertation “Continuing the Theology of Liberation: Ignacio Ellacuría in Conversation with Decolonial and Postcolonial Feminism.” This work was submitted in 2022 at the University of Tübingen and was published as a book in the “ratio fidei” series in 2024.
Jan Niklas Collet grew up in Dortmund and studied Catholic Theology at the University of Münster and at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City starting in October 2010. He completed his studies with a Master of Theology (Magister Theologiae) in April 2017. Afterward, he worked as a Research Assistant at the M.-Dominique Chenu Institute in Berlin (Prof. Dr. Ulrich Engel and Prof. Dr. Thomas Eggensperger), at the Chair of Systematic Theology (Prof. Dr. Saskia Wendel) at the Institute for Catholic Theology at the University of Cologne, and in the DFG project “The Theological Relevance of Michael Tomasello’s ‘Evolutionary Anthropology'” at the Chair of Systematic Theology at the Institute for Catholic Theology at TU Dortmund (Prof. Dr. Dr. Martin Breul). He was also a PhD scholarship holder of the Cusanuswerk. In 2024, he received his doctorate from the Catholic-Theological Faculty at the University of Tübingen with his dissertation titled “Writing on the Theology of Liberation. Ignacio Ellacuría in Dialogue with Decolonial and Postcolonial Feminism.”
Currently, Collet is the Managing Director of the Ecumenical Network for Asylum in the Church NRW e.V. In addition, he works as a freelance theologian and as a social worker with the Diaconal Work in Cologne and the surrounding region. His research focuses on political and liberation theologies, as well as issues such as right-wing normalization, climate justice, migration, and church asylum. He has published several books on these topics.
In his dissertation, Collet engages with the Salvadoran liberation theologian Ignacio Ellacuría SJ (1930–1989), the decolonial feminist María Lugones (1944–2020), and the postcolonial thinker Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1955). On this basis, he formulates a liberation theology that is both anti-fundamentalist and decolonial, aimed at the European context. This theology analyzes different forms of domination—such as economic, gendered, and racialized—within their structural interconnections. To this end, he develops the concept of a decentralized materialism as a social-scientific framework for theological analysis and advocates for a stronger connection between academic liberation-theological reflection and the engagement of Christians in social movements.
The official award ceremony for the Erwin Kräutler Prize will take place on October 1, 2025, at 6:00 PM at the Catholic-Theological Faculty of the University of Salzburg in Lecture Hall 103. All interested parties are warmly invited!
About Erwin Kräutler as a person
Foto: © unbekannt
Erwin Kräutler was born on July 12, 1939 in Koblach (Vorarlberg) and entered the Order of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood (CCPS) in 1958. After studying theology and philosophy at the University of Salzburg, Kräutler was ordained a priest on July 3, 1965. In the same year, he went as a missionary to the area of the Xingu, one of the great tributaries of the Amazon in northeastern Brazil. On September 2, 1981, Kräutler took over the leadership of the Prelature of Xingu, the largest diocese in Brazil (354,000 km²) in terms of area, with its seat in Altamira (state of Pará).
Erwin Kräutler’s work as a bishop is characterized by a tireless commitment to the rights of the Indians and the marginalized and oppressed people in the Amazon region. Neither an arrest by military police in which he was beaten up (1983), nor an assassination attempt in which Kräutler was seriously injured in a “car accident” (1987), nor multiple death threats due to his opposition to the Belo Monte dam project and his accusations against influential people in connection with sexual abuse and prostitution of children and adolescents could prevent him from his lived option for the poor.The episcopal motto Erwin Kräutler’s Servus Christi Iesu (Servant of Jesus Christ) is an expression of his attitude to life and a hallmark of a liberation theological orientation that has opened up a real perspective of hope for many people. In addition to numerous international awards (including the Right Livelihood Award 2010), Erwin Kräutler was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Salzburg on October 7, 2009.
Seventh awarding of the Erwin Kräutler Prize
On Thursday, October 5, 2023, at 6 p.m., the “Erwin Kräutler Prize for Contextual Theology, Interreligious Dialogue and Liberation Theological Research” was awarded to Ivoneide Viana de Queiroz.
The award winner was born in 1965 in the state of Pernambuco (Brazil) and studied business administration and education. At the age of 20, she entered the Franciscan Sisters of Maria Stern and studied philosophy and theology in Olinda and Recife. In 2015 she graduated from the Institute of Advanced Studies in São Paulo with a Master’s degree in Missiology and in 2023 she received her doctorate in Theology from the Pontifical University of Paraná (Curitiba, Brazil) with the dissertation “Vida religiosa feminina na Amazônia entre 1970 e 2020: contribuições para uma igreja com rosto amazônica e uma ecologia integral”. In this study, she links questions of missionary and pastoral theology with feminist and decolonial research, as well as with the great challenge of the ecological crisis.
After the welcome address by the Dean of the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Salzburg, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dietmar Winkler, and the head of the Center for Intercultural Theology and the Study of Religions, Univ.-Prof. DDr. Franz Gmainer-Pranzl, Fr. Christian Tauchner SVD (Director of the Steyl Institute of Missiology in Sankt Augustin near Bonn and member of the jury) gave a laudatory speech, in which he linked the work of Sr. Ivoneide with the developments of Latin American liberation theology as a whole. The certificate of the Erwin Kräutler Prize was finally presented to the laureate by Nikola Götzl (research assistant of the Latin America-Germany Scholarship Association ICALA, Osnabrück). Afterwards, she presented the scholarship organization she represents (which is headed by Prof.in Dr. Margit Eckholt from Osnabrück, member of the jury). The celebration, which was impressively accompanied by Isabella Bravo (vocals) and Matthias Schallaböck (vocals and guitar), concluded with the words of thanks of Ivoneide Viana de Queiroz, in which she once again referred to the commitment of many (religious) women in the Amazon region.
- Pictures © Johanna Voithofer, Zentrum Theologie Interkulturell und Studium der Religionen
