BIGSSS Faculty member honored for outstanding teaching › view all

This year, the University of Bremen once again awarded the Berninghausen Prize Excellence in Teaching together with the unifreunde association. The competition this year was very strong: 127 proposals were submitted in the Excellence in Teaching category and 95 in the Student Prize category. The selection committee, consisting of lecturers, university staff and students, decided to award Jennifer Reiske and Lars Viellechner each with the student prize and Cornelius Torp together with Andrew Torget with the prize for good teaching. 

Excellent Team Teaching: Cornelius Torp and Andrew Torget

Professor Cornelius Torp and Professor Andrew Torget received an award as a team in the Excellence in Teaching category for their English-language “American History since 1865” seminar. The seminar not only provided students with a comprehensive knowledge of the history of the United States since the American Civil War, students also worked independently on specific subject areas, reviewed the current state of research, and presented their findings. The students praised the excellent teaching and the fact that the special cooperation with a professor who lives and researches in the USA allowed them to gain an insight into the inner workings of American history and to broaden their knowledge horizons in terms of both content and historical methodology. The two teaching staff members always supported their students with further literature, sources, and assistance.

Cornelius Torp has been a faculty member at BIGSSS since 2022. He is involved in supervising PhD students and teaching at BIGSSS. His research interests include European and global history from 1800 to the present, the history of the welfare state, the relationship between social policy and protectionism, and globalisation processes in modern history.

The Award

Since 1991, the University of Bremen and the unifreunde (association of “Friends of the University of Bremen and the Constructor University Bremen”) have awarded the prize donated by the Berninghausen family annually to honor outstanding performance and creativity in university teaching. The award is endowed with a total of 6,000 euros and can be split among several categories.

For further information, see UB press release “Berninghausen Prize for Excellence in Teaching Awarded“ from 29 November 2023.