Calling for nominations for JEET Emerging Scientist Award in Ethnobiology
Published in Social Sciences, Ecology & Evolution, and Microbiology
In 2025, the Editor-in-Chief, BMC, and the Board Members of Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine (JEET) launched the JEET Emerging Scientist Award in Ethnobiology. This annual award is given to three colleagues – one winner and two runners-up – who 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 civilization itself, and it has come back to the attention of the global scientific community over the past decades. Ethnobiology brings together many crucial topics of the present, 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, and ethnoveterinary, as well as all related areas in environmental, nutritional, and medical anthropology.
The JEET Emerging Scientist Award in Ethnobiology is a unique prize, aiming to reward and celebrate scholars who worked together with local communities and Indigenous Peoples to foster their wellbeing, create inclusion, and mitigate marginalization and stigmatization.
Nominations are open from 1 April to 31 April 2026. Prize criteria, including the process for nomination, eligibility and selection, and the Prize Committee, can be found on the prize page.
The criteria and rules of this award have been updated and improved for the 2026 selection. “Documented research work” has been redefined to ensure alignment and transparency, now referring to verifiable scholarly or research outputs that demonstrate active engagement in Ethnobiology and/or Ethnomedicine and that are publicly accessible or independently confirmable. To make the prize more inclusive, the early-career researcher window is defined as those who have begun publishing and/or conducting documented research in the fields of Ethnobiology and/or Ethnomedicine on or after 1 January 2016. A new assessment criterion designed to recognize and reward exceptional research achievements accomplished in contexts with particularly limited resources or funding. This should give more opportunities to disadvantaged researchers to display their work. Research work published in languages other than English will be allowed for the 2026 selection.
The winners will receive:
- A cash prize of 1,000 EUR for the most outstanding
- 2 cash prizes of 500 EUR for two runners-up
The cash prize is provided by Springer Nature.
This award recognizes exceptional scientific efforts in documenting, culturally analyzing, 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, JEET, and BMC hope that more can be done to revitalize local ecological and medical knowledge systems and turn it into concrete future projects.
In recognition that some scholars —especially women, Indigenous and non‑binary researchers, and LGBTQIA+ individuals — face more structural obstacles to conducting research (including unequal domestic and care responsibilities, discrimination or exclusion within academic and fieldwork contexts, limited access to education or research opportunities, and other systemic barriers), the committee will give positive consideration to nominations that demonstrate exceptional achievement in the face of such challenges.
2025 JEET Emerging Scientist Award in Ethnobiology Winners
Winner: Naji Sulaiman, University of Gastronomic Sciences, Italy
Runner-up: Cheng Zhuo, Minzu University of China
Runner-up: Emiel De Meyer, Ghent University, Belgium
Read about the awardees here.
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Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine
This journal publishes original research focusing on cultural perceptions of nature and of human and animal health. It invites research articles, reviews and commentaries concerning the investigations of the inextricable links between human societies and nature, food, and health.
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