Recipients of the 2025 Grawemeyer Awards will be in Louisville the week of April 7 to discuss their winning works.
The University of Louisville presents the annual prizes for outstanding works in education, music composition, psychology, ideas improving world order, and gives a religion prize jointly with Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. The honorees each receive $100,000.
The schedule for the 2025 Grawemeyer Awards Lecture Series, which is free and open to the public, is as follows:
- World Order – John M. Owen IV, a University of Virginia politics professor will present Tuesday, April 8, 1 p.m., Chao Auditorium, Ekstrom Library. He’s recognized for researching and writing “The Ecology of Nations: American Democracy in a Fragile World Order,” an innovative book about the way the international ecosystem constrains and influences democracies.
- Religion – Rabbi Julia Watts Belser, Georgetown University professor of Jewish studies, will speak on Tuesday, April 8, 5 p.m., Gardencourt, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, about reconsidering the relationship between disability and spirituality. “Loving Our Own Bones,” won a National Jewish Book Award.
- Education – Mark R. Warren, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston will give a talk on Wednesday, April 9, 10:30 a.m., Chao Auditorium, Ekstrom Library, on “Willful Defiance: The Movement to Dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline.” This book describes and analyzes the building of the grassroots movement to end racially disproportionate school discipline policy and policing practices in schools across the United States.
- Psychology – Stanford University psychology professor James Gross will present on Thursday, April 10, 1 p.m., Room 101, Strickler Hall. The Ernest R. Hilgard Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences theorized that managing one’s feelings before they are fully formed offers a healthier approach than trying to manage them after they’re in full swing.
- Music Composition – Christian Mason, a London-based composer will give a lecture on Thursday, April 10, 3 p.m., Bird Hall, School of Music. Mason receives a Grawemeyer Award for creating a work that changes how music is usually experienced by employing a spatially shifting ensemble of 12 musicians and encouraging its audience to roam the performance space.
UofL graduate and philanthropist H. Charles Grawemeyer created the awards program in 1984 to pay tribute to the power of creative thought and emphasize the impact a single idea can have on the world. He further distinguished the awards by requiring the selection process involve a lay committee to ensure the winning ideas are understandable to a broad audience.
