In her thesis Anne-Sophie Weißenhorn addresses the primarily informal interactions between traditional and religious healing methods with biomedical methods in a psychiatric hospital in Senegal. She shows that hierarchies established between different medical systems at the global and national levels are infiltrated at the micro level and points out the significance of social and family relationships in the local treatment of mental disorders. Elisabeth Anna Krüger's thesis focuses on the issues of whether and to what extent archaeology in Poland has been instrumentalized for political purposes and whether archaeological artefacts and objects are subjected to an ethnic interpretation.

The Rudolf Virchow Award of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Prehistory is presented annually by the Board of the society. The award is given in recognition of outstanding master's degree theses in these subject areas.