The prize is awarded every two years by the alternative economic policy research group, Attac Deutschland, EuroMemo Group, and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in memory of the Bremen economist Jörg Huffschmid.  In her ethnographic dissertation, Marie Cornelia Grasmeier investigated the occupational culture and identities of seafarers in the global merchant fleet. Her degree in nautical studies, which she competed prior to her degree in cultural and gender studies, and her experience at sea, helped her in this regard. Her work shows that despite the extreme segmentation of the global occupational market and the social isolation of seafarers, who rarely work in the same group for a long period of time, that there is a very marked transnational maritime occupational culture. However, said culture is strongly characterized by symbolic and social demarcation processes, especially along ethical lines and the Global North and South relations.