Bas van Rijn wins the Cornelis Tiele MA Thesis Award 2018
The Dutch Association for the Study of Religion (NGG) has decided to award the Cornelis Tiele MA Thesis Award 2018 to LUCSoR alumnus Bas van Rijn for his thesis “The Mind Behind the Cards: Searching for the Source of Tarot Divination’s Popularity through a Cognitive Analysis” (supervised by dr. Markus Altena Davidsen).
The award is offered to the MA Thesis, written at a Dutch university during the academic year 2016-2017, that is judged to offer the most important contribution to the Study of Religion. In its motivation, the award committee writes: “Van Rijn's thesis, titled “The Mind Behind the Cards: Searching for the Source of Tarot Divination’s Popularity through a Cognitive Analysis”, was selected based on the original choice of topic, the careful execution, and the ambitious way in which he does not just apply cognitive models but also seeks to develop them.” With the honour, the award consists of €200 and a free one year membership of the NGG. Bas van Rijn will formally receive the award during the Spring Meeting of the NGG, on Friday 18 May 2018.
Bas van Rijn completed his MA Theology and Religious Studies (cum laude) in 2017. During his MA, he worked as a research trainee on the project ‘Religious Narratives as Plausibility Structures’, for which he researched contemporary Dutch angel belief. At the upcoming symposium Stories of the Supernatural: Encounters with the Other Side in Literary and Everyday Narratives, to be held in Leiden on Monday 30 April 2018, he will deliver a lecture based on his angel research, titled “Divine Help from Above: Narratives of Angelic Signs and Interventions“. Van Rijn is currently preparing an application for a PhD scholarship aimed at mapping the field of divinatory practices such as astrology, tarot, and mediumship in the Netherlands
Bas van Rijn’s MA thesis can be read here.
See the announcement from the NGG here.