Asifa Majid is the 2024 Vigdís Prize Laureate

Asifa Majid, psychologist, linguist and cognitive scientist, is the 2024 recipient of the international Vigdís Prize, an award conferred for outstanding contributions to world languages and cultures. The award ceremony will take place in Reykjavík, Iceland, on October 22, 2024.

The Vigdís Prize is awarded annually by the Icelandic government, the University of Iceland, and the Vigdís International Centre for Multilingualism and Intercultural Understanding ‒ UNESCO Cat. 2 Centre, in honor of Her Excellency Ms. Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, former President of Iceland (1980–1996) and current UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Languages. The Prize spotlights exceptional achievements in the promotion of cultural and linguistic diversity, multilingualism, and translation. 

Majid receives the 2024 Vigdís Prize for breaking ground in research on the relationship between language, culture, and cognition. Which aspects of cognition are universal, and which are language or culture specific? How does language influence thought? Majid’s research addresses these questions through innovative laboratory experiments, in-depth linguistic studies and field work in diverse cultures. She has made important contributions to research on how people conceptualize and talk about domains such as space and the sense of smell, highlighting commonalities and differences in how thoughts are mapped into words. Majid has championed linguistic diversity and cautioned against over-reliance on English in research on the human mind. She has also stressed the value of diverse perspectives and inclusion in science.

A native speaker of Punjabi and English, Majid obtained her undergraduate degree and a PhD in Psychology from University of Glasgow and a Masters from the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. She held academic appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Radboud University in the Netherlands, the Radcliffe Insititute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and at the University of York and University of Oxford, where she is currently Professor of Cognitive Science. Majid was elected Fellow of the British Academy in July 2024 and has received several other awards, including the Jeffrey L. Elman Prize for Scientific Achievement and Community Building, awarded by the Cognitive Science Society. Her research has been published in prestigious academic journals and featured by the BBC, Time magazine and other international media. 

Previous awardees of the Vigdís Prize are Anne Carson (2023), Canadian poet and classicist, Juergen Boos (2022), the President and CEO of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Katti Frederiksen (2021), a Greenlandic linguist, writer and politician, and Jonhard Mikkelsen (2020), a Faroese linguist, teacher and publisher. 

More information about the international Vigdís Prize