Professor Dr. Jürgen Deller Receives the SIOP Humanitarian Award
2026-05-18 The prestigious Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) recognizes sustained, high-impact contributions to the promotion of human well-being through industrial and organizational psychology. SIOP is part of the American Psychological Association, the world’s largest organization of psychologists with 157,000 members. In 2026, the award will go to a researcher outside the United States for the first time.
The award also honors Jürgen Deller’s life’s work. Over several decades, the professor of business psychology has built an internationally influential research and practice program that focuses in particular on designing age-inclusive, dignified workplaces and on the successful labor market integration of refugees and other displaced persons.
“In an outstanding way,” Jürgen Deller’s work embodies the spirit of the award: the scientifically grounded and at the same time courageous promotion of human dignity, social justice, and “decent work for all,” emphasizes jury member Deniz S. Ones (University of Minnesota). Fred Oswald (Rice University) highlights the “profound and impactful contributions,” which are not only scientifically excellent but also practically effective and politically relevant.
Jürgen Deller’s pioneering research in the field of “aging and work” has led to the development of concrete and scalable tools that are used internationally and have contributed significantly to the formulation of global guidelines for age-inclusive workplace design. His Later Life Workplace Index is now being used in projects in more than 40 countries.
In parallel, his research on the integration of refugees combines evidence-based analyses with insights into social capital and organization. This work has been directly translated into practical measures for employers aimed at preventing exploitation and enabling sustainable integration and career advancement.
Jürgen Deller is currently working closely with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and is driving forward joint initiatives—for example, on issues of work design in the context of artificial intelligence and demographic change. The goal is to bring scientific findings more strongly into political decision-making processes and international organizations.
Jürgen Deller’s academic work has always been closely linked to practical application. Before his academic career, he spent several years in leadership roles in human resources at Daimler-Benz AG. There, he worked in strategic HR and held executive positions with responsibility for top-management development. In 1999, he was appointed to the former University of Applied Sciences of Northeast Lower Saxony, where he helped shape the development of business psychology.
For the scholar, the award is not only a great honor but also an “incentive to keep going.”