Eerder berichtten wij dat de AVT/Anéla-dissertatieprijs 2025 op 27 februari 2026 op het Taalgala uitgereikt werd aan Gijs Leenders. Dit is het juryrapport.

Each year, AVT and Anéla award the Dissertatieprijs (‘PhD dissertation prize’) to the best linguistics dissertation defended at a Dutch university. This year’s jury members were Jacomine Nortier, Marije Michel, Joyce Lamerichs, Gert-Jan Schoenmakers, and Constantijn Kaland. Coordination and support were provided by Marco Bril on behalf of AVT and Gudrun Reijnierse on behalf of Anéla.

Six dissertations were submitted for the prize. In a first evaluation round, all jury members read the first and final chapter of each of the dissertations, as well as their summary. All submitted dissertations were of high quality and covered the breadth and depth of the field of (applied) linguistics. The jury would particularly like to emphasize that the PhDs’ enthusiasm and passion for their respective research topics was very evident throughout all dissertations. This, in turn, made it even more enjoyable for the jury to read their work.

Shortlist

After the first evaluation round, three dissertations shortlisted for the prize. These are, in alphabetical order:

• Gijs Leenders: Bewuste taalvaardigheid ontleed. Onderzoek naar contextrijk, taalcontrastief en procesgericht grammaticaonderwijs in de vakken Nederlands, Engels en Duits
• Robert Prettner: Shots at stake. Facilitating interactions between professionals and parents about childhood vaccination
• Giulio Severijnen: A blessing in disguise: How prosodic variability challenges but also aids successful speech perception

All jury members read these three dissertations in full and then met for a second time to determine this year’s winner. Before announcing the winner, I would first like to say a few words to each of the nominees.

Gijs Leenders’ dissertation about language awareness in Dutch, English and German in secondary education is a very well-executed study. The jury was impressed by the diversity of research methods employed and the excellent coherence of the different parts of the thesis. We also appreciated the fact that all insights have also been published in popular science teacher outlets and that classroom materials are openly accessible for reuse. We would like to compliment you on your very engaging, highly accessible style of writing.

Robert Prettner’s dissertation about interactions between professionals and parents about childhood vaccination is concerned with a highly societally relevant topic. It is based on real-world conversations that researchers do not typically have access to and provides a unique, meticulously performed analysis of how people ‘do’ these conversations. The jury not only highly values this very detailed analysis, but also the excellent list of recommendations and the communication trainings that have been developed for practitioners.

Giulio Severijnen’s dissertation examines the role of prosodic variability in successful speech perception. The jury was impressed by the incremental nature of the 8 (!) chapters of the dissertation, naturally moving from speech production to speech perception. The thesis is technically sound, and very strong in methodology and statistical analyses. By taking individual differences into account, this dissertation truly paves the way for further research into the role of individual differences at the level of speech acoustics.

The jury would like to stress that all three nominees master their research disciplines at exceptionally high level. They have conducted thorough, methodologically sound, critical research that not only helps to bring their own discipline forward, but that also has important implications for society.

Winnaar

However, en ik ga nu over naar het Nederlands. Er kan er maar één de winnaar zijn. Vanwege de unieke combinatie van een prachtig staaltje vakdidaktisch onderzoek dat bouwt op diepgaande taalkundige analyses waarmee de schoonheid van de linguïstiek verbonden wordt met maatschappelijke impact voor het onderwijs heeft de jury unaniem besloten de AVT-Anéla dissertatieprijs toe te kennen aan…. Gijs Leenders! Congratulations!