She was awarded for her master's thesis entitled "High Priest of the Goods to Come and Mediator of the New Covenant. Cultic Conceptions and Traditions in Heb 9:11-28." In the laudatory speech, Heberling's ability to work in an interdisciplinary way was particularly emphasized. In her work, she had combined biblical exegesis and the current state of historical research in a particularly interesting way, and her work thus represented a new perspective for the exegesis of the Letter to the Hebrews.
The traditional patronal festival, which each November commemorates the faculty's patron saint, the church scholar Albertus Magnus, began with a festive service in Erfurt Cathedral. At the academic celebration that followed, Julia Knop, Professor of Dogmatics at the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Erfurt, gave a keynote lecture on discrimination in the name of religion as a challenge for theology. In it, she criticized in particular the discrimination against women and queer people in the Catholic Church.