Raül Garrigasait, winner of the 5th Cum Laude Award
Today, 20 January, the Paranymph of the Historic Building of the University of Barcelona (UB) hosted the award ceremony of the fifth edition of the Cum Laude Award, conferred by the Institut Món Juïc with the support provided by the Government of Catalonia and the Vives Network. The winner is Raül Garrigasait, who studied a doctoral programme at the UB, for his thesis Lʼhàbit de la dificultat. Wilhelm von Humboldt i Carles Riba davant lʼAgamèmnon dʼÈsquil.
Today, 20 January, the Paranymph of the Historic Building of the University of Barcelona (UB) hosted the award ceremony of the fifth edition of the Cum Laude Award, conferred by the Institut Món Juïc with the support provided by the Government of Catalonia and the Vives Network. The winner is Raül Garrigasait, who studied a doctoral programme at the UB, for his thesis Lʼhàbit de la dificultat. Wilhelm von Humboldt i Carles Riba davant lʼAgamèmnon dʼÈsquil.
The personalities who participated in the ceremony were the rector of the UB, Dídac Ramírez; the vice-president of the Vives Network, Joan Viñas; the director general for Language Policy of the Government of Catalonia, Ester Franquesa; the president of the Institut Món Juïc, Tessa Calders, and the supervisor of the award-winning thesis, Ernest Marcos, professor in the Department of Greek of the UB.
Raül Garrigasait Colomés (Solsona, 1979) holds a degree in Classics and a PhD in the programme Cultures and Languages of the Ancient World and their Lasting Presence. He also holds a masterʼs of arts in Literary Translation from the Swansea University (2008), where he worked as tenure-track lecturer of Catalan from September 2004 to June 2006. Moreover, he was visiting lecturer at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Since October 2008, he has been the director of the publishing house Editorial Alpha/Fundació Bernat Metge and he coordinates the collection Bernat Metge of Greek and Latin authors. He is the author of the essay Els gos cosmopolita i dos espècimens més. Històries i assajos ( 2012), and the book of poems La tendra mà de cada arrel (2005). In addition, he has published translations from Ancient Greek (Platoʼs Letters), Modern Greek (Alexandros Papadiamandis, Stratis Myrivilis and Nikos Karuzos), German (Johann W. Goethe, Rainer M. Rilke, Joseph Roth, Peter Sloterdijk, Rüdiger Safranski) and English (Zygmunt Bauman).
This year, nineteen candidates from seven Vives Network universities participated in this 6,000 euros award. The prize also includes the publication and distribution of his work. The main objective of the Cum Laude Award call is to recognise the academic excellence and use of Catalan in PhD theses qualified with the grade Excellent Cum Laude.
The Institut dʼEstudis Món Juïc (IeMJ) was created in 2005 in order to promote research and communication on Catalan Judaism, a long researching tradition that was stopped by Francoʼs dictatorship. The Institute, together with the Vives Network, organises the Cum Laude Award to honour excellent studies in the field of humanities written in Catalan.