Leiden Jewish Studies Network awards second 'Best Thesis in Jewish Studies'
This November, Leiden Jewish Studies Network has presented the Best Thesis in Jewish Studies award to a highly talented Leiden graduate, Lotte-Sofie Groenendijk, and awarded an honorable mention to Nasreen Javanjoo. The two theses stood out with their insightfulness and academic rigor among others written between November 2023 and November 2025 at Leiden University.
During the ceremony, Dr. Lital Abazon gave a laudation and introduced the winners and their excellent academic work.
The winning thesis was written by Lotte-Sofie Groenendijk and is titled 'The Holocaust in Popular Film: A Comparison between the Remembrance Politics of Poland and the Netherlands'. Her exceptional work stands out for its remarkable academic quality, its impressive command of sources in three languages, and its clear, nuanced engagement with an important and complex research question. Ms. Groenendijk analyzed the cinematic representations of the Holocaust within both Polish and Dutch contexts, drawing on both mainstream films and lesser-known works, proving her exceptional ability to weave multiple examples into a coherent and deeply informed analysis. This thesis sheds light on and explores the role of visual representation in forming the ways we understand, interpret, and transmit the memory of the Shoah.
Nasreen Javanjoo, who was awarded an honorable mention by the committee, titled her thesis 'Baking Cakes in the Name of God: Tradwives and the Construction of Christian Tradition Online'. In this outstanding work, she examines the contemporary 'tradwife' phenomenon through an innovative interdisciplinary lens that bridges religious studies, Jewish studies, Gender Studies, and Digital Humanities. To trace how online tradwife communities affect and construct ideas of 'tradition', ethics, and religious behavior, she drew on data mining and close reading of biblical texts. Ms. Javanjoo’s research stands out for its originality, methodological richness, great readability, and intellectual ambition.
Leiden Jewish Studies Network once again congratulates the winners of the prize and looks forward to the next edition of 'Best Thesis in Jewish Studies' award.