Two Cornell professors have been awarded the prestigious Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin: Alexandra Kleeman; associate professor of literatures in English, and Sabrina Karim, associate professor of government, both in the College of Arts & Sciences. 

The highly competitive Berlin Prize is awarded annually to U.S.-based scholars, writers, composers and artists from the United States who represent the highest standards of excellence in their fields.

Kleeman, a novelist, will be part of the Berlin Class of Fall 2025. Her project, “The Taxon Cycle,” is a quasi-utopian novel about the rise and fall of money. Each part of Kleeman’s new novel explores a distinct site at which the utility and valuation of money is in flux and could be uprooted. The novel also considers the island as a site where nature sets into motion “evolutionary experiments” and asks what other types of relationships between life and necessity could exist in the absence of capitalism. 

Karim will join the Berlin Class of Spring 2026. Her project, “Pockets of Restraint in Violent Security Forces, will look globally for pockets of restraint that emerge among different security forces around the world based on research from her NSF CAREER award (that was recently terminated). She explores variation in individual police officers, military soldiers and various security force units’ use and preferences around the use of violence. She has found that security force autonomy, exposure to peacekeeping and international norms, and individual level characteristics contribute to differing policies on the use of force, preferences regarding excessive violence and their everyday responses to unfolding events. 

Read the full story on the College of Arts and Sciences website.