Kira Fastner Receives the Hermann Eiselen Science Prize

The fiat panis Foundation awards the Hermann Eiselen Science Prize every two years for outstanding scientific work that contributes to improving the food situation and food security. This year, the prize—which carries a total endowment of 30,000 euros—honored three outstanding researchers and their respective work. All three recipients received prize money of 10,000 euros. Kira Fastner’s work “identifies a series of key measures for sustainable food systems and socio-ecological change processes along urban-rural gradients in West Africa” and “provides a guide for how such processes can be studied in other regions,” according to the jury’s laudatory statement.

Kira Fastner (34) is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Faculty of Ecological Agricultural Sciences (FB11) at the University of Kassel. Starting in January 2027, she will continue her research for two years at Yale University in the United States. For this, she is receiving funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Walter Benjamin Program.