Ottawa, April 26, 2005 - A prominent German scholar is coming to Canada to further her research on the European Union. Dr. Ingeborg Tömmel, professor of political science at the University of Osnabrück, has been awarded this year’s John G. Diefenbaker Award by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Under the terms of the award, Dr. Tömmel will spend one year at the University of Victoria to work on a research project dealing with governance, policy-making and system-building of the European Union. While in Victoria, she will work closely with Dr. Amy Verdun, one of Canada’s leading scholars in the area of European studies. Dr. Tömmel has also been invited to speak at other Canadian universities during her stay in Canada.

"Dr. Tömmel’s scholarship will offer an excellent contribution to the research on European Studies undertaken at the University of Victoria," wrote Peter Keller, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, in his letter of support for Dr. Tömmel’s nomination. "She is a leading European scholar in Germany with expertise in the area of European policy-making."

Established in 1991, the John G. Diefenbaker Award is an annual award honouring the memory of former Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker. It enables a German scholar to spend up to 12 months in Canada to pursue research in the social sciences and humanities. Candidates must be nominated by a university department or research institute in Canada. The value of the award is up to $75,000 provided by the Canada Council for the Arts, plus a travel allowance of up to $20,000 provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Funded by an endowment of approximately $2 million from the Government of Canada, the award is administered by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Ingeborg Tömmel

Dr. Ingeborg Tömmel has been Professor and Chair in International Politics in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Osnabrück, Germany, since 1993. Since 1996, she has also held a Jean Monnet Chair in European Politics and Policies, an honour bestowed by the European Commission. Her major fields of interest are European integration studies, international relations and comparative politics.

Between 1989 and 1993, Dr. Tömmel was a senior lecturer in European politics at the University of Nijmegen in The Netherlands; prior to that, she was a lecturer and senior advisory in that university’s geography department. She received a Diploma in geography, a Ph.D. in political science, and a Habilitation (post-doctoral) degree at the Free University of Berlin, where she was also a lecturer in Human Geography.

Dr. Tömmel is the author of six books, five edited volumes, more than a dozen articles in academic journals and more than 35 book chapters.

General information

The Canada Council for the Arts, in addition to its principal role of promoting and fostering the arts in Canada, administers and awards prizes and fellowships to over 100 artists and scholars annually in the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, health sciences and engineering. Among these are the Killam Prizes, the Killam Research Fellowships, the Molson Prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts and the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts.