The board's motivation for the recipient of the Einar Hansen Research Prize 2025: "Sunnqvist is professor of legal history at the Faculty of Law at Lund University. He defended his thesis in 2014 on Constitutional Critical Judging. The Change in the Attitudes of Nordic Judges over Two Centuries. He has a very extensive body of writing in the field of legal history, with publications on the administration of justice, the judicial profession and, not least, heraldry, as something of a specialist area. In his research, he has investigated, among other things, foundation law, oaths of judges, and the complicated legal conditions that govern public law corporations such as the Swedish Academy. Sunnqvist's special knowledge in heraldry was utilized in connection with the reintroduction of the Swedish orders of knighthood, where he was responsible for the historical research used in preparation for the parliamentary decision. This has earned him the position of Historiographer of the Royal Orders of Knighthood. As an expert reviewer of proposals for new and renewed municipal coats of arms and in other heraldic issues, he has a decisive influence on the correct use of historical symbols and their continued use in the future.”
The prize will be awarded at a ceremony in Copenhagen on 13 November, in connection with Einar Hansen's birthday. The prize consists of 200,000 Danish kroner, making it one of the largest research prizes awarded to researchers in the humanities.
More about Martin Sunnqvist in the Research Portal.
The Danish recipient of this year's research prize is literary scholar Stefanie Heine at the University of Copenhagen.
More about Stefanie Heine here:
About the Einar Hansen Research Fund
The publishing director and shipowner Einar Hansen (1902–1994) established the research fund in 1970, with the aim of supporting and developing contacts between humanists at the universities of Copenhagen and Lund. Each year, a Danish and a Swedish recipient of the fund's major research prize is selected.
More about the Einar Hansen Research Fund