Australian legal scholar and international refugee law expert Jane McAdam has been awarded the prestigious Gerda Henkel Prize 2026, worth €100,000 ($114,096), in recognition of her pioneering work on climate-driven forced migration, the Gerda Henkel Foundation said on Thursday.
The jury, led by historian Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, said McAdam was among the first to draw attention to the challenge that climate change-induced forced migration poses to international law.
McAdam, 51, had through her research fundamentally changed the understanding of one of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century and made a decisive contribution to the further development of international refugee and human rights protection, the jury said.
Her books had become standard works and had established displacement in the context of climate change and natural disasters as a new field of research in international law, it said.
UN adviser
McAdam is a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. She is also an adviser to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as well as numerous national and international bodies, the foundation said.
The prize will be presented on November 23 in the German city of Dusseldorf.
The Gerda Henkel Prize is awarded every two years for research in the field of historical humanities. The 2024 prize went to renowned Eastern European historian Karl Schlögel.
The Gerda Henkel Foundation, which this year marks its 50th anniversary, also supports research projects on flight and displacement worldwide through a special programme.