AVT/Anéla Dissertation Award

The AVT and the Dutch Society for Applied Linguistics (Anéla) annually give out an award for a dissertation in the area of linguistics.

AVT/Anéla PhD Dissertation Award 2025 Call

Annually, the General Association for Linguistics (AVT) and the Dutch Association for Applied Linguistics (Anéla) award a prize for the best PhD dissertation in the field of linguistics. For the AVT/Anéla PhD dissertation award 2025, all PhD dissertations defended at a Dutch University between July 16th 2024 and July 15th 2025 are eligible.

We invite you to make (motivated) nominations for candidates. Nominations must be submitted no later than August 15th 2025 by using the online form at https://anela.nl/prijzen/dissertatieprijs/.

These websites also contain the PhD dissertation prize regulations.

The jury secretaries are Dr. Marco Bril (on behalf of the AVT board) and Dr. Gudrun Reijnierse (on behalf of the Anéla board). For more information about the 2025 AVT/Anéla dissertation award please contact Marco (m.bril@uu.nl) or Gudrun (w.g.reijnierse@vu.nl).

Call for nominations 2024

This year too, the AVT/Anéla dissertation award will be given out, and all dissertations defended between July 16th 2023 and July 15th 2024 are eligible. 

The three nominees are, in alphabetical order:

• Marie Barking: A Usage-Based Account of Language Transfer – a case study of German speakers in the Netherlands
• Kristel Doreleijers: Styling the Local: Hyperdialectisms and the Enregisterment of the Gender Suffix in the 'New' Dialect of North Brabant
• Gosse Minnema: Perspectives Matter: Event Framing in Language and Society

The jury secretaries are Dr. Sterre Leufkens (on behalf of the AVT board) and Dr. Gudrun Reijnierse (on behalf of the Anéla board). For more information about the 2024 AVT/Anéla dissertation award please contact Sterre (s.c.leufkens@uu.nl) or Gudrun (w.g.reijnierse@vu.nl).

Dissertation award 2023

The winner of the AVT/Anéla dissertation award 2023 is... Suzanne Bogaerds-Hazenberg! In her PhD dissertation 'Text structure instruction in Dutch primary education: Building bridges between research and practice', she shows that explicit instruction about the structure of texts can have a positieve influence on reading comprehension in primary school pupils. She does this based on various types of analyses and in addition developed a teaching method that can help teachers increase their pupils' reading and writing skills. The jury was impressed by this combination of studies and found the research both innovative and timely. Many congratulations, Suzanne!

This year's jury consisted of Pia Sommerauer, Marijke de Belder, Jan Berenst, Crit Cremers and Ulrika Klomp, and their jury report can be found here.

LOT Popularisation prize

Each year, the LOT popularisation prize goes to a project that makes linguistic expertise accessible to a wide audience. In even-numbered years, the prize goes to a project that has already been realised or published. This year the prize is awarded for a teaching package (by Maarten Mous, Hilde Gunnink, Iris Kruijsdijk and Hanny Gijsman) and an escape game (by Laura Minderaa, Jenneke van der Wal and Anders Lind) within the website Stemmen van Afrika. The aim of this website is to introduce children and adults to the languages spoken in Africa. With the addition of the teaching package and the escape game, children can now also puzzle with language structures and thus learn about linguistics in a playful way. The jury praises the scope of the project and considers it a positive boost for language education. The jury also called the escape game an "original and stimulating way to popularize linguistics".