Aron Ouwerkerk wins Thijssen-Schoute Thesis Award

Aron Ouwerkerk has won the Thijssen-Schoute Thesis Award for his master’s thesis ‘“Decus reipublicae litterariae”. Elisabeth Koolaart Hoofman and Her Engagement in the Republic of Letters (1695-1705). With an Edition of Her Correspondence’, on the correspondence of the early eighteenth-century poet Elisabeth Koolaart-Hoofman.

Original, innovative, and inspiring

Ouwerkerk is an alumnus of the Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Studies research master's programme and wrote his thesis under the supervision of Dirk van Miert. The jury was impressed by his analysis, characterising it as original, innovative, and inspiring for future researchers: “The thesis is a wonderful study of the position of women in the early modern Republic of Letters.”

Thijssen-Schoute Thesis Award

The Dr. C. Louise Thijssen-Schoute Foundation aims to encourage research in the history of ideas of the early modern Netherlands, with special attention to the emergence and dissemination of new philosophical ideas, as well as the intersections of literature and science in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century.

The Foundation awards the bi-annual prize for the best MA thesis within the aims of her statutes. The award recognises original and distinguished research for a final thesis at a (research)master’s level, either submitted to a university in the Netherlands or abroad. The award consists of a prize of 2000 euros and a certificate of appreciation.