Herman van Renselaar Prize for Turkish social history.
Herman van Renselaar was for fifteen years the attaché for social affairs at the Dutch embassy in Ankara. During those years he played a key role in the building of the Turkish collection of the International Institute of Social History.
In recognition of his services, starting in 2009 a yearly prize named after him will be available for the best MA thesis written in the previous calendar year on the basis of the Turkish language materials available at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. The prize will be offered jointly by the Turkish Studies department of Leiden University and the IISH.
The prize will consist of a cash payment of 500 Euros. Those who want to take part in the competition will need to submit their thesis by the 1st of March 2009 in three hard copies. A jury consisting of senior members of the Turkish Studies dept and the research department of the IISH will award the prize by the 1st of June 2009.
For information on the unique Turkish collection of the IISH (22.000 published titles, over a thousand periodicals, several hundred meters of archives on modern Turkish history), see the collections of the Turkey Desk.
More information: Erik-Jan Zürcher, ezu@iisg.nl