2022 proved to be a bumper year for awards and prizes in Dutch studies. The Association for Low Countries Studies (ALCS) awards an annual essay and a dissertation prize open to all students of Dutch in the UK. The ALCS is the learned society that supports the research and teaching of Dutch language and cultures in the UK and Ireland and we are proud to present two Sheffield winners.
For the eleventh year running the Anglo Netherlands Society (ANS) awarded their essay and a podcast prize for students of Dutch studies in their second year. Only Sheffield and UCL are recipients of these generous prizes.
The Royal Netherlands Embassy Book Prize is the oldest academic prize in Dutch Studies and is awarded annually to the student with the best overall result in Dutch language and culture modules.
Graduation is a festive day on which we celebrate our students' hard work and commitment over the past four years. We offer our new graduates our warmest hurrays. We also take the opportunity to share the prizes and awards won by our students, both finalists and second years.
Netherlands Embassy and ALCS Awards
For over thirty years, the Netherlands Embassy recognises the achievements of Dutch Studies students at Sheffield. This year is was Jordi Britton who received Embassy Prize for achieving the best overall result in both Dutch language and culture courses over the full four year period. In a personal letter, the Dutch Ambassador, Karel van Oosterom, praised Britton for his excellent academic record and thanked him for his "involvement in promoting the Dutch language and culture".
Lydia Cope wrote an excellent essay on 'How the sense of belonging to a nation is shaped and mediated through family ties in Johan Fretz’s Onder de Paramariboom'. She wrote the essay as part of her final year Dutch culture course. The ALCS considered her work "well-written, well-argued, and offered an interesting and balanced discussion of Johan Fretz’s novel".
Gemma Blacker is the deserved winner of the ALCS Dissertation Award for her work on "Toon Tellegen’s Transnational Transfer: How a Dutch Author Crossed International, Linguistic, and Gender Boundaries". The ALCS readers were impressed with her investigation into the reasons for the Dutch children's author Tellegen’s successful transnational transfer to Russia. "The dissertation reveals the challenges faced by translators when linguistic and cultural differences force a deviation from the original text," according to the ALCS readers.
Anglo-Netherlands Society Award 2022
On 30 June 2022 we gathered online to celebrate the 11th edition of the ANS awards. A panel of readers put together by the ANS, award an essay and a podcast prize for students at the end of their second year of Dutch Studies at Sheffield. We entered the podcast series Many Lenses, in which students choose artefacts from Dutch/British for Belgium museums with a connection to colonial heritage.
The winners are Emma Halliburton, Elizabeth Speakman, Natalia Rowe and Alice Willett for their programme Picturing the Past: Visual Representations of Dutch Colonialism. The jury admitted to be “entirely drawn in” and they praised the podcasters for showing awareness of their audience by explaining concepts without being patronising.
"From my experience in business, the things that work best are always the result of team work. This was example of that."
Dick van den Broek
President Anglo-Netherlands Society
The winner of the Essay Prize is Poppy Mainwaring with her essay ‘From Fortuyn to Wilders: The Far-Right of the Tolerant Netherlands’. “The essay held our interest all the way through”, according to the jury and they described the essay as a brave attempt to tackle a topic that can "invite facile comparisons which Mainwaring avoided". Mainwaring’s essay will be published in the ANS magazine with a readership of over 700 members.
A special mention during the award session was for Theo Taylor for his essay “From Paper to Screen” in which he discusses the film adaptation of Hella Haasse’s classic novel Oeroeg (The Black Lake):.“I hope you will consider a career as a film critic” remarked one of the judges.
"The module associated with the ANS Awards was one of my academic highlights of the year as it really encouraged me to view the history, culture and politics of the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK through a well-informed critical lens. Working in a team was really valuable too and made the creative process a lot more enjoyable. Thank you Anglo-Netherlands Society!"
Emma Halliburton
Winner of the ANS Podcast Award