Prize recipient 2023 | Jens-Christian Svenning

Professor Jens-Christian Svenning’s specialist fields are biology and ecology, and his impressive scientific contributions to the emerging disciplines of macroecology and global change ecology in particular have won international recognition.

Svenning’s scholarship has broken new ground in our understanding of vegetation dynamics in terms of the diversity of trees in Europe, especially when it comes to the long-term effects of climate change. He has greatly advanced our understanding of humankind’s impact on nature, including both the acute challenges we face from climate change and its lasting consequences. He has also helped develop evolutionary models to estimate the millions of years it will take to reverse the loss of mammalian diversity caused by climate change.

Svenning operates across multiple disciplines, drawing on his background in biology to collaborate with a number of other subject areas, including areas of evolution, geography and anthropology. His research fields also offer solutions to major global social challenges presented by climate change. Together with a number of European colleagues, he has presented methods for the design and implementation of rewilding. He has also explored the direct effects of environmental and climate change on humankind, finding that more than 3 billion people will be seriously affected by heat in 2070 unless greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced.

Throughout his career, Svenning has focused on laying the scientific foundations needed to understand and respond to climate change and the biodiversity crisis. In academia, he is a magnet for students and young researchers globally. A renowned and popular educator, he has supervised countless students, from undergraduates through to postdoctoral researchers. The inspiring and dynamic research environment he has established is internationally renowned and attracts postdocs from all around the world. Later this year, this will bear fruit in the form of his new centre for basic research, ECONOVO.

Svenning has played an impressive role in the public debate on climate and climate change. He appears in the media, takes part in public meetings and debates, gives speeches, and participates in a number of expert groups and panels working on climate change and the environment. His contribution is particularly noteworthy when his research results can help solve major social challenges.

Svenning has had an impressive 490 peer-reviewed articles in recognised journals, including three in Nature and four in Science. He has received international awards and prizes for his outstanding scientific contributions and for communicating important knowledge, insights and solutions when it comes to the climate crisis. Svenning is in every respect a scientific powerhouse with a deep commitment to science, education and society.

Members of the Prize Committee

Chair:

• Marie Louise Nosch, President of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Professor at the SAXO Institute at the University of Copenhagen 

International members in the humanities and social sciences:

• Joanna Story, Professor of Early Mediaeval History at the University of Leicester
• Karin Lisbeth Sanders, Professor of Scandinavian Literature at the University of California, Berkeley

International members in the natural sciences:

• Janne Blichert-Toft, Research Director at CNRS at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon
• Susanne Renner, Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis

Members who have previously won the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prizes:

• Andreas Roepstorff (2015), Professor, Director of the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University
• Mette Birkedal Bruun (2017), Professor of Church History at the University of Copenhagen
• Karl Anker Jørgensen (2017), Professor of Chemistry at Aarhus University
• Poul Nissen (2018), Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Aarhus University