The prestigious 2024 Frobenius Research Promotion Prize, nicknamed the “Pulitzer” of anthropology in the German-speaking countries, was awarded to Dr Joseba Estevez on  October 18^th during the annual reception at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The Frobenius Society and the Hahn-Hissink’sche Frobenius Foundation annually award the Frobenius Research Promotion Prize to promising researchers. The prize is doted upon with 3.000 Euros and the publication of the work under the series “Monographs in Cultural Studies” (Studien zur Kulturkunde), funded by Leo Frobenius himself in 1933.

The Frobenius Society is one of the oldest anthropological associations in Europe. This society was established in 1924 in Munich, Germany, to support the Research Institute for Cultural Morphology ̶ ̶ nowadays renamed after its founder, Leo Frobenius (1873 - 1938) as the Frobenius Institute for Cultural Anthropological Research, The Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main.

The quality of the ethnography, the originality of the topic, the clarity of argumentation and structure, and the linguistic artistry of the work are assessed during the selection process. The researchers should show through their past and present activities and publications that they have outstanding scientific potential. This was the case of Dr Joseba Estevez’s “Conquering Mountains, Taming Demons: The Ritual Roles of the Lanten Yao priests and masters”, which had already earned him a summa cum laude at the University of Münster, Germany, last year.

Dr Estevez has conducted fieldwork in Laos for over a decade (from 2010 to 2020 and since 2023). He combined his research with various international academic projects he has led there. Among these stand out the digitisation of 2,120 Daoist manuscripts dated between 1750 and 1999 under the aegis of the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme; the audio-visual documentation of over a hundred Lanten Yao oral stories, some of which were translated into a series of illustrated books for children that have been used since 2022 in literacy campaigns in Lao language organised by the National Library of Laos; and the production of various documentaries in collaboration with the British director Peter Livermore, funded by the European Union Embassy to Laos.

Since 2019, Dr Estevez has been based at the Institute where he co-directs with Prof. David A. Palmer and Martin Tse YAODAO.HKU.HK, a project on Lanten Yao Daoism in Laos, Vietnam, and China, and conducts research in Laos and Thailand on various BRI-related projects and their impact on local communities within the academic frameworks Global China Local Cultures and ASIAR (Asian Religious Connections).