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Best master thesis and dissertation prizes awarded to TLS

Published: 16th June 2022 Last updated: 16th June 2022

The Executive Board of Tilburg University has awarded the annual prizes for the best master and research thesis and defended dissertation each worth €4,000. Two of the awards went to law research: Master student Abdelhamid Azarkan wrote the best master thesis and Eva van Vugt PhD the best dissertation.

The award ceremony is normally held by the Rector Magnificus during the Dies Natalis, the celebration of the university's birthday. In 2021, Covid postponed the ceremony and it then took place on campus on June 8, in a ceremony to which the candidates, their supervisors and the vice deans concerned were invited.

Uitreiking scriptie- en dissertatieprijzen

The first prize for the master's thesis went to Abdelhamid Azarkan of Tilburg Law School for his research entitled: 'Civil disobedience: a face for the faceless and a voice for the unheard'. The jury judged that he developed a "careful and critical analysis in dialogue with an impressive amount of theoretical literature on the subject.  Thus, not only is the content of the work outstanding, but the form equally so.'

The first prize for best dissertation went to Eva van Vugt, of Tilburg Law School for her research on which she obtained her doctorate cum laude: 'De Staten-Generaal vertegenwoordigen het geheele Nederlandsche volk - Een onderzoek naar de veranderingen in de betekenis van artikel 50 Grondwet tussen 1813-1983'. The jury thought, among other things: 'Through the supple style of writing the author opens up a discussion that is constituent to Dutch society to a wider audience. That too is an achievement of stature.'

The research master's prize was for Marloes van Wezel, of the Tilburg School for Humanities and Digital Sciences, for her work: 'A Social Chatbot as a Potential Counselor at the University: Investigating the Impact of Perceived Anonymity and Fear of Judgement when Disclosing about a Hypothetical Cyberbullying Incident'. About her thesis the jury wrote: 'Her research questions and hypotheses are original and ambitious, but also clearly delineated and derived from the current state of the field. The method section of the thesis shows that Marloes has strong methodological skills.'

Second prizes

The second prize for best master's thesis was awarded to Christa van der Sman for her research on how caregivers in elderly care deal with questions of life in people with dementia. And the second prize for best dissertation was awarded to Sara van Erp, for her research on Bayesian Structural Equation Modeling: The Power of the Prior. They each received €2000.