Heidelberg Center for American Studies Dissertation Award for Heidelberg Historian
17 April 2026
HCA honors Dr Nicole Colaianni for her work on U.S. companies and sexual harassment in the workplace
Heidelberg Historian Dr Nicole Colaianni is being awarded the Rolf Kentner Dissertation Prize for her doctoral thesis, which she wrote at Heidelberg University, on the role of American companies in shaping the understanding of sexual harassment in the workplace. This award, which comes with prize money of 1,000 euros, is presented annually by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) of Heidelberg University. The award ceremony for the dissertation prize, featuring a talk in English by the prize winner, is set to take place on 23 April 2026 at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies.
Based on extensive archival research, Nicole Colaianni’s dissertation shows that private employers in the USA have increasingly developed their own concepts and measures for tackling sexual harassment in the workplace since the 1980s, and that these were shaped more by economic interests than political or social discourse. At the heart of this is an internal corporate framing that views sexual harassment primarily as a financial and legal risk. Dr Colaianni argues that this has shifted core responsibilities from state institutions to the private sector. Companies are increasingly defining, regulating, and sanctioning misconduct themselves. This development has far-reaching consequences for how those affected are treated, for the protection of employees’ privacy, and for questions of transparency, justice and accountability in the workplace. In her keynote lecture, “Bad for Business. Sexual Harassment in the American Workplace, 1975–2017”, the prize winner will present the central findings of her work.
Nicole Colaianni studied history and English studies at Heidelberg University. After completing her state examination in 2020, she was a doctoral candidate in the Research Training Group “Authority and Trust in American Culture, Society, History, and Politics”, which is based at the HCA. She completed her dissertation, titled “Obviously Bad for Business. The Role of the U.S. Private Sector in Conceptualizing Sexual Harassment in the Workplace, 1975–2017”, in 2024. It has already been awarded with the Ruprecht Karl Prize of the Heidelberg University Foundation. Dr Colaianni is currently conducting research at Heidelberg University’s Department of History into how healthcare in the United States has been financed and organized since the late eighteenth century. Her habilitation project is being funded through the university's Olympia Morata Programme.
Since 2010, the HCA has honored outstanding work in the field of American Studies with the Rolf Kentner Dissertation Prize. The award is named after Rolf Kentner (1947-2020). The promoter of German-American relations and American studies in Heidelberg had close ties with the HCA – and with Heidelberg University as an Honorary Senator. The award ceremony at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies, Hauptstrasse 120, starts at 6.15 pm.