As part of the 20th anniversary celebrations for the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine (JEET), the journal Editor-in-Chief, BMC, and the Board Members have decided it was time to launch a new initiative aimed to reward and foster excellence in the field. Starting from 2025, the JEET Emerging Scientist Award in Ethnobiology will be awarded annually to three colleagues who have made outstanding contributions to the field of Ethnobiology and Ethnosciences and are in the early stages of their career.
Ethnobiological sciences explore the inextricable links between human societies and nature, food, and health. The relationship between humans and nature is a topic that is as ancient as human civilisation itself, and it has come back to the attention of the global scientific community as ethnobiology over the past decades. Ethnobiology brings together so many crucial topics nowadays, including sustainability, the ecological transition, biodiversity and conservation, indigenous knowledge, public health and environmental protection. Advances have been made in all the relevant fields in this subject, such as ethnobotany, ethnomycology, ethnozoology, ethnoecology (including ethnopedology), ethnogastronomy, ethnomedicine, ethnoveterinary, as well as all related areas in environmental, nutritional, and medical anthropology.
The JEET Emerging Scientist Award in Ethnobiology is a unique prize and it aims to reward and celebrate particularly scholars who have worked together with local communities and Indigenous Peoples to foster their wellbeing, create inclusion, and mitigate marginalization and stigmatization.
Nominations are open from 1 May to 31 May 2025. Prize criteria, including the process for nomination, eligibility and selection, and the Prize Committee, can be found on the prize page.
The winners will receive:
- A cash prize of 1,000 EUR for the most outstanding
- 2 cash prizes of 500 EUR for 2 runner-ups
The cash prize is provided by Springer Nature.
The Award recognizes exceptional scientific efforts in documenting, culturally analysing, and interpreting local communities' nature knowledge and folk medical practices heritage, especially those of neglected groups. By awarding and encouraging high quality research in this field, the Prize Committee, the JEET and BMC hope that more can be done to revitalize local ecological and medical knowledge systems and turn it into concrete future projects.