The award recognises outstanding research on military professionalism and the relationship between military and society.
2024
Lieutenant general (retd) Dennis Gyllensporre is the recipient of the 2024 Bengt Abrahamsson Award. Dennis Gyllensporre is a pioneer Swedish soldier-scholar, seamlessly blending military expertise with scholarly insight throughout an extraordinary career.
In a military career system decoupled from the Swedish University system, it has been a remarkable accomplishment that Dennis Gyllensporre has succeeded admirably as a military officer as well as a scholar. He thus embodies the soldier-scholar, a military professional category that was central in Bengt Abrahamsson’s work on military professionalism.
2022
Christopher Dandeker is the recipient of the 2022 Bengt Abrahamsson Award for his contributions to military sociology, military health and the analysis of civil-military relations. Christopher Dandeker has received the Morris Janowitz Career Achievement Award from IUS, is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of the United Kingdom as well as a Fellow of King’s College London.
Christopher Dandeker has remained policy relevant and he has advised the British Army, the UK Parliament as well as the Swedish Armed Forces on various personnel issues. From the mid-1990s, Christopher Dandeker has continually provided valuable advice to the Swedish Defence, during what has turned out to be, as he correctly predicted already in 1999, a quite turbulent era - not least in defence matters.
2018
Annika Nordgren Christensen is awarded with the 2018 Bengt Abrahamsson Award for her significant contributions to the field of defence. Annika has long established herself as a knowledgeable and natural voice in the Swedish defence debate. The combination of being able to make sharp analyses in current defence issues and demonstrate skill in a range of demanding trust and expert assignments is a sign of courage and commitment beyond the ordinary.
2017
Don M Snider is the recipient of the 2017 Bengt Abrahamsson Award. In an age when serious questions are too often treated in a superficial and hasty manner, the Swedish Centre for Studies of Armed Forces and Society recognizes Don M Snider’s long and valuable work in thinking critically about the Army profession and its ethics.
2015
Anthony King is the recipient of the 2015 Bengt Abrahamsson Award for his important and innovative analyses of the transformations of Europe's armed forces and the changed dynamics of cohesion among combat soldiers. A graduate from Cambridge, Anthony King has developed a rare and exquisite dual vision in his research, combining historical importance and sociological imagination with close reading of core military practices. Anthony King's work owes as much to anthropology and ethnography as to sociology and history, making him a powerful academic analyst.
2013
Ulf Henricsson is awarded with the 2013 prize for his courage and persistence in taking responsibility for his knowledge and sharing his experiences of military professional practice. Ulf describes both successes and setbacks in a personal and credible way, with a desire to develop military professionalism. Ulf's experiences from military practice make an important contribution to research and education about the Swedish Armed Forces and its conditions.
2012
Bengt Abrahamsson is awarded with the 2012 prize for his in-depth analyses of the historical development of military professionalisation and the conditions for civil-military control. Bengt's contributions are fundamental cornerstones for the analysis of the military as a professional group and the role of the military in contemporary democratic society.
