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The Boulding Award

Background

The Boulding Award honors Kenneth E. Boulding, a pioneer in interdisciplinary studies and early supporter of the Association for Integrative Studies. Recipients of the award have distinguished themselves by their contributions to interdisciplinary studies, whether by clarifying and deepening the concept of interdisciplinarity or by promoting the scholarly or public understanding of interdisciplinary studies through a combination of teaching, scholarship, and integrative community involvement. AIS bestows the award on individuals whose writings or professional performance have made major, long-term contributions to the conception or enactment of interdisciplinarity. Because the Boulding Award celebrates outstanding records of accomplishment, it is presented only occasionally.

Kenneth Boulding rose to the top of his field of economics, expanded the profession of interdisciplinary studies and is remembered fondly as a maverick economist, philosopher, poet, professor and activist. A Nobel Prize nominee (in peace as well as economics), Boulding was the recipient of a John Bates Clark Award and served as president of the American Economics Association. In 1979, Boulding gave the keynote address at what was then a national conference on interdisciplinary social science. It was at this gathering that the Association for Integrative Studies was born, an act assisted and supported by Professor Boulding in his life-long pursuit of developing new interdisciplinary fields and new techniques for studying them. In 1990, AIS established The Boulding Award in his honor, presenting the first to the award’s namesake in celebration of his commitment to AIS and the interdisciplinary profession.