Dr. Margarete-Blank Publication Prize – Awarded to ESR Kimberley Anderson

In September, ESR Kimberley Anderson was awarded the Dr. Margarete-Blank Publication Prize by the Research Commission of the Medical Faculty at the University of Leipzig.

Dr. Margarete-Blank was one of very few women to study medicine at the University of Leipzig in the early 1920’s, and went on to graduate from her PhD ‘summa cum laude’. She spent many years as a country doctor in Panitzch, just outside Leipzig, until her arrest by the Gestapo as a ‘Bolshevik spy and agent’ in 1944. She was later sentenced to death and executed by National Socialists in July 1945. Like most sentences of the Nazi era, Dr. Margarete-Blank’s death sentence was overturned in 1998.

In her memory, since 2012 the University of Leipzig has awarded the Dr. Margarete-Blank Publication Prize to young academics in the Faculty of Medicine for a pioneering publication in the field of gender medicine, which makes a contribution to gender-specific findings in medical-clinical research.

Kimberley was awarded this prize for her publication: “Predictors of Posttraumatic Growth Among Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Survivors from Bosnia & Herzegovina” published in Conflict & Health in 2019. The article is open access and can be found here. It is part of her 2020 PhD thesis entitled: Psychological Outcomes of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Against Women: Being a Mother, Being a Survivor.

The CHIBOW team would like to extend their warmest congratulations to Kimberley on this achievement!