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Marie Heim-Vögtlin prize for outstanding young women researchers

Cristina Murer wins the 2024 MHV Prize

Especially in times of upheaval and crisis, resources must be conserved through creativity, recycling and a circular economy. This is the case today – and it was no different in late antiquity, as Cristina Murer's research has shown. However, in those days, people even helped themselves to funerary décor.

As an SNSF Ambizione fellow at the University of Bern, Murer researched such grave recycling. She was able to show that this was not simply a form of plundering, rather it was a creative process from which something new was generated.

As of spring 2023, she is a professor of classical archeology at the University of Tübingen.

About the Marie Heim-Vögtlin Prize

The SNSF awards the Marie Heim-Vögtlin (MHV) Prize each year to an outstanding woman researcher. Prizewinners are inspiring role models whose careers progressed significantly thanks to a grant from the SNSF. The prize is worth 25,000 Swiss francs. For ten years, the prize was awarded to former recipients of the MHV funding scheme. Now that this scheme has been discontinued, the prize is being awarded to former female grantees of the MHV, Doc.CH, Postdoc.Mobility, Ambizione and PRIMA funding schemes.

Named after a pioneering woman

The MHV Prize was named after Marie Heim-Vögtlin, who became the first Swiss woman to study medicine when she was admitted to the University of Zurich’s medical faculty in 1868. On completing her studies, she opened a gynaecological practice, where she continued practising after giving birth to two children. She is regarded as one of the pioneers in the struggle to give women access to higher education.