Manon Garcia (Freie Universität in Berlin) has been awarded one of the 2025 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz prizes, “Germany’s most prestigious award for researchers in the early stages of their academic career.”

Awarded by the Joint Committee of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, the German Research Foundation), the prize includes a €200,000n (approximately $218,000) fund to support research over the next three years.

Dr. Garcia was recognized for her work in political philosophy, feminist philosophy, and moral philosophy. She is the author of The Joy of Consent: A Philosophy of Good Sex (2021) and We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy Shapes Women’s Lives (2018), among other works. She is currently a principal investigator on the project “Sexual Agency and the Ethics of Erotic Experience,” funded by the DFG. You can learn more about her research here.

180 researchers from various fields were nominated for the prize this year, and ten were selected as winners.

Professor Garcia is the first philosopher to win a Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize since 1988. (At the time, different disciplines took turns each year and 1988 was philosophy’s year. Since 1997, the prizes have been open to nominees from all fields each year, but no philosopher has won one until now.)

The award ceremony will take place in Berlin in June.

You can learn more about the prize and its other winners here.