Wierenga-Rengerink PhD Prize

The Wierenga-Rengerink PhD Prize is awarded to the PhD candidate who has written the best RUG dissertation in the previous year of the award ceremony. Each faculty nominates a maximum of one candidate. The final winner is selected from this group by the jury, which consists of the current rector magnificus and a number of former rectors magnifici. Only exceptionally good dissertations are eligible (at least cum laude).

The prize is awarded annually during the Summer Ceremony. The Wierenga-Rengerink family makes the prize money available through the Ubbo Emmius fund. The winner will receive €7,500 for further academic development, for example for participation in symposia abroad.

Wierenga-Rengerink Dissertation Prize 2023 for Derek van Zoonen

Derek van Zoonen received the Wierenga-Rengerink PhD Award for his thesis Plato on Pleasure and Illusion. In his thesis he discusses a highly counterintuitive notion in the work of Plato: the idea that pleasure can be ‘true’ or ‘untrue’. Many commentators consider Plato’s ideas on the subject unclear or even confused. Van Zoonen surprisingly shows that there is more to say about this idea than previously thought. In his interpretation, Plato does not consider pleasure an emotion, but rather something that resembles a factual conception: a mental state that represents the world in a certain way and therefore can be either more or less accurate. The dissertation is of great value to our understanding of Plato, and for that reason it has been awarded the distinction cum laude by a leading international committee consisting of members from New York University, Cambridge, Columbia, University of Oslo, and the Catholic University of Leuven. Read more>

Previous winners

2022 - Fardo Eringa (awarded in 2023)

Fardo Eringa is the winner of the Wierenga-Rengerink PhD Award. She received this award for her dissertation on Michael Jackson’s superfans. Eringa described how these fans derive their worldviews from their status as fans. Commemorations are still paid to the late pop star, such as a virtual monthly prayer and an annual pilgrimage. Read more>>

2021 - Isti Hidayati (awarded in 2022)

The Wierenga-Rengerink Prize for the UG PhD student with the best dissertation of 2020 has been awarded to Isti Hidayati for her thesis, entitled ‘Understanding mobility inequality: A socio-spatial approach to analyse transport and land use in Southeast Asian metropolitan cities’. Read more>>

2020 - Arpi Karapetian (awarded in 2021)

The Wierenga-Rengerink Dissertation Prize for the best PhD thesis of the year 2019 has been awarded to Dr Arpi Karapetian. Her thesis is entitled 'Bestuurdersaansprakelijkheid uit onrechtmatige daad: Civielrechtelijke en strafrechtelijke normen voor bestuurders van noodlijdende ondernemingen'. [Directors’ liability based on tort law: civil law and criminal law norms for directors of ailing companies] Read more>>

2019 - Michael Lerch (awarded in 2020)

The Wierenga-Rengerink Prize for the PhD student with the best dissertation in 2018 has been awarded to Dr Michael Lerch for his thesis ‘Donor-Acceptor Stenhouse Adducts’. Read more>

2018 - Alain Dekker (awarded 2019)

The Wierenga-Rengerink Prize for the PhD student with the best dissertation in 2017 has been awarded to Dr Alain Dekker for his thesis ‘ Down & Alzheimer : Behavioural biomarkers of a forced marriage’. Thesis Dr. Alain Dekker

2017 - Nigel Hamilton and Jordi van Gestel (awarded 2018)

The jury of the Wierenga-Rengerink PhD Award has , as an exception, granted the award to two PhD graduates: Dr Nigel Hamilton and Dr Jordi van Gestel. Read more>

2016 - Hanna van Loo (awarded 2017)

The Wieringa-Rengerink PhD prize was awarded to Hanna van Loo for the best University of Groningen dissertation of this year. Hanna's thesis concerns the intersection of psychiatry and philosophy of science. Faculty member Jan-Willem Romeijn was one of her supervisors. Her dissertation Data-driven subtypes of major depressive disorder was supervised by Robert Schoevers, Peter de Jonge and Jan-Willem Romeijn.

2015 - Namkje Koudenburg (awarded 2016)

Dr. Namkje Koudenburg, of the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, has the honour of being the first Wierenga-Rengerink PhD prize winner in 2015. She won the award with her thesis: Conversational Flow: The Emergence and Regulation of Solidarity through Social Interaction.