The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation selects internationally renowned scientists and scholars from all disciplines for the award, “whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline; recipients are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future.” Professor Wagoner is especially recognised for his research in cultural psychology, memory studies and the history of psychology. 

Wagoner has made major contributions to theories of culture, mind and memory as unfolding processes and developed novel dynamic methodologies to study them as such.  He has over 150 peer-reviewed publications, including 19 books.  His most important works include The Constructive Mind: Bartlett’s Psychology in Reconstruction (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Handbook of Culture and Memory (Oxford University Press, 2018), Remembering as Cultural Process with Ignacio Bresco and S.H. Awad (Springer, 2019). He has previously won several other important awards, Sigmund Koch Award (2018) and Early Career Award (2017), both from the American Psychological Association, as well as held competitive international research fellowships. 

Humboldt Award winners are invited to carry out research projects of their own choice in cooperation with specialist colleagues in Germany, and to join the Humboldt network of leading researchers from around the world. Prof. Wagoner is hosted by Thomas Stodulka, Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin. Together they aim to develop novel synergies between cultural psychology and psychological anthropology, particularly in connection with emotion, affect, and methodology. In collaboration with Prof. Meike Watzlawik at Sigmund Freud Universität Berlin, they will also analyze data on people’s collective symbolic coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, including vaccination decision-making and conspiracy theories.