PhD candidate Igo Dobbe and alumna Evie Mertens win the Jan Brouwer Scriptieprijs

Igo Dobbe and Evie Mertens received the Jan Brouwer Scriptieprijs on Friday evening. The EUR alumni win 3,000 euros in prize money with their master’s thesis.

Since 2015, the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (KHMW) has awarded the Jan Brouwer Scriptieprijs each year for the humanities and social sciences. This year there are ten prizes, which were awarded, among others, to EUR PhD candidate Igo Dobbe and alumna Evie Mertens.

The prize money amounts to 3,000 euros. The official award ceremony took place on 6 February at the KHMW in Haarlem. During the ceremony, the winners briefly presented their thesis.

A slight suspicion

Igo Dobbe did not expect to win the prize beforehand, he says on the phone. Still, he began to have a slight suspicion when he was asked the day before the announcement whether he could provide his phone number. “I more or less knew it then already”, he says with a laugh, “but I’m really very happy that I have won.”

Dobbe is now a PhD candidate at the Erasmus School of Economics. His master’s thesis, Optimal Taxation of Risk-taking under Heterogeneous Risk Preferences, was submitted by his thesis supervisor Aart Gerritsen. The thesis examines the possible desirability of distinguishing between different forms of wealth in the tax system, based on their risk profile.

Original and socially relevant contribution

Evie Mertens received her prize in the field of language and communication sciences. According to supervisor Ofra Klein, Mertens’ thesis makes an original and socially relevant contribution to the field.

Mertens’ thesis, When you know you know, focuses on the experiences of queer women with the subculture Camp, which emphasises irony, exaggeration and resistance. Camp is often associated with homosexual men, but Mertens’ research shows that queer women also identify with this culture.