The jury of the Ramon Llull International Prize has unanimously decided to bestow this award in the category of Catalan Studies and Cultural Diversity to Dominic Keown, emeritus professor of Catalan Studies at Fitzwilliam College of the University of Cambridge of the United Kingdom, where he was teaching from 1996.

The jury has emphasised the wide range of the professor’s contributions to Catalan studies: the teaching of the Catalan Language, academic research in the field of culture, literature, and cinema, the translation and dissemination of the Language in the universities he has worked, and through the Anglo-Catalan Society. His task to integrate Catalan into the university curricula in Cambridge and promote Catalan studies, leading to an exponential increase in the number of students and the exchange of Catalan and British researchers among universities, is also outstanding.

It is also remarkable the innovative spirit of Professor Keown’s input. At the end of the last century, in collaboration with the UOC, he organized the first online conferences dedicated to Catalan culture. In 1998, also with the UOC, he founded The Journal of Catalan Studies, the first electronic journal dedicated to the promotion of the Catalan Language and Culture, currently published by The Anglo-Catalan Society, being its editor until his retirement in 2021. Over the last five years of his professional career, in collaboration with the Xarxa Vives d’Universitats, he directed five International Conferences to promote Catalan in secondary schools. Each conference included the participation of over 500 students from about twenty secondary schools in Catalan-speaking areas.

The prize is endowed with 6,000 euros and is announced annually and jointly by the Ramon Llull Foundation and the Congress of Catalan Culture Foundation. It aims to recognize the entire work of a person outside the linguistic domain, written in any language, and which has meant a remarkable knowledge of Catalan historical and cultural reality, or the theoretical contribution or practice of an individual from any country that has meant a significant contribution to the acknowledgement, recognition, promotion or defence of one or more cultures and nations without a state, or of cultural diversity as a universal value.

The jury of this Edition was composed of Agustí Alcoberro, Teresa Fèrriz, and Jaume Subirana, on behalf of the Congress of Catalan Culture; and Teresa Colom, Jordi Ginebra, Maria Josep Cuenca, and Joan Sans representing the Ramon Llull Foundation.

The prize was awarded for the first time in 1986 to the Anglo-Catalan Society. The latest winners were Mary Ann Newman (2022), Joseph Lo Bianco (2021), Ko Tazawa (2019), Christer Laurén (2018), Jon Landaburu (2017), Kathryn Woolard (2016) and Philip D. Rasico (2015).