For over a decade, the ANS has awarded a generous prize for a podcast or an essay produced by 2nd year students of Dutch Studies at Sheffield. The ANS puts together their own panel of judges who, carefully, critically, and impartially evaluate the entries of the Sheffield undergraduates.
This year's ANS prize went to Beth Tasker and Sophie Moss for their podcast “How do I put…”. The podcast was part of the “Storying History” Project.
Podcasts
Three Sheffield teams submitted their podcast to the judges. Their given topic was to discuss three texts of Dutch colonial history aimed at young readers: Dolf Veroen's Hoe mooi wit ik ben; Als slavin geboren by Marian Hoefnagel, and Quaco. Leven in Slavernij, written and researched by Ineke Mok with illustrations by Eric Heuvel.
Tasker and Moss focus their discussion on how to engage in 'tricky' conversations about colonial history and they evaluate the significance of the texts for teaching and understanding.
The ANS judges commented:
- "the podcast convincingly invites you to do more research in general"
- "good choice of language with a stimulating description of the issues around the word 'slavin'"
- "confident, natural, professional"
- "no overuse of complicated academic language".
Making a podcast was a really interesting way to combine all the theories we covered over the year and see how they could be apply to different texts.
Sophie Moss, Beth Tasker
Winners of the ANS Podcast Prize 2023
Open mind
"Although we found the texts uncomfortable to read, we felt it was necessary to acknowledge this discomfort and put it to use when forming our analysis as slavery and colonialism are not topics we should feel comfortable with", Beth and Sophie write.
"Making the podcast, although somewhat daunting as we had never made one before, was a really interesting way to combine all the theories we covered over the year and see how they could be apply to different texts. Moreover, this was also an opportunity to put into practice one of the main conclusions that we came to over the course: that we should not shy away from talking about difficult topics and instead encourage people to engage with them open-mindedly."
Congratulations to Sophie and Beth and a warm and appreciative thank you to the ANS and the ANS' judges for their continued support!