Anglo-Netherlands Society Awards Bursary

The Anglo-Netherlands Society is proud to support the Dutch Studies Bursary in partnership with UCL. This five-year initiative, started in December 2023, and will provide financial support of up to £2500 for individual postgraduate students undertaking research involving the Netherlands. The Bursary is funded by ANS with Members generously providing match funding. The first award was made in 2025.

It is the Anglo-Netherlands Society’s objective to increase our relevance to the next generations. For over ten years our outreach has focused on supporting Dutch studies at University College London (UCL) and Sheffield through our annual essay and podcast competitions for undergraduates.

It is an unfortunate reality that the number of students applying for degrees in Dutch studies in the UK has dropped to a historical low. There are fewer universities where Dutch is taught and this in turn has led to a reduction in the offer and take-up of postgraduate programmes. We concluded that a form of financial support to postgraduate students moving on to undertake a master’s or other postgraduate research should be trialled. We have done this in close collaboration with the Faculty involved at the UCL School of European Languages, Culture and Society, to ensure that whatever we did would be seen as meaningful.

In 2023 we reached an agreement with UCL for a bursary in Dutch Studies there under which the Society has committed itself to donate for five years from 31 December 2023, to provide five successive Awards to five students undertaking postgraduate Dutch Studies at the School, or on another master’s programme that includes a substantive component of Dutch Studies.

The bursary has been named as the Dutch Studies Bursary, supported by the Anglo-Netherlands Society and its Members. UCL Associate Professor Christine Sas, who is the highly accomplished Chair of the Association of Low Countries Studies, leads on the award of the bursary.

Current Bursary Recipient

2025

Simone Edgar Holmes

Thanks to the generous support of the Anglo-Netherlands Society, I am now able to improve my ability to read modern and early modern Dutch texts, both of which are critical to the success of my postgraduate research. I am a PhD student in Early Modern Studies at University College London and a Wolfson Postgraduate Scholar in the Humanities, researching the environmental history of Dutch Suriname, from 1667 to 1795, through an art historical analysis of colonial maps. My aim is to uncover how maps can be used to uncover early modern relationships with and understandings of the natural environment, but to do so effectively, I need to read Dutch archival sources, travelogues and text in the maps themselves. With the help of the Dutch Studies Bursary, I will strengthen my existing language skills by enrolling in a one-on-one modern Dutch course at UCL. Additionally, I intend to participate in the Columbia Dutch Summer Course, a programme which offers intensive online instruction in modern Dutch, followed by a week-long trip to New York for training in seventeenth century Dutch paleography. Strengthening my language abilities will greatly enhance my project and enable me to contribute meaningfully to scholarship in Dutch history, art and culture, and I am grateful to the ANS for supporting this endeavor.

Previous Bursary Recipient

2024

Oppression and Ideology in Germania Inferior: Impact of patron-client systems and military ideologies on Roman-occupied frontier landscapes

This research investigates early imperial Rome’s economic and political systems to illuminate Roman policies of frontier formation in the southern Netherlands. A key element of this study is to locate military networks in Germania Inferior dating from the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, particularly emphasizing the archaeological assemblages of fortresses and colonies founded along the length of the Rhine. The primary research objective is to demonstrate ideology’s impact on the economic and military policies pursued by Rome’s ruling classes in founding colonies in the Rhine-Meuse Delta. Of particular interest is how archaeological material from settlements of various types can inform us about the penetration of patron-client systems of power which reflect specific ideological and political goals of the Roman elite. The result of this system of patrons and clients is the adaption of Late Iron Age Celto-German practices into the Roman imperial state. Current site and dredging reports from excavations by Dutch archaeologists stretching back to the 1970s provide crucial data to support the importance of ideology in determining the types of finds located at sites of Roman occupation. This project positions the ideology of patron-client power systems as integral to Roman frontier creation as it exists within the imperial-ideological framework informing Rome’s territorial expansion into Germania Inferior.

Mir Kameron Kashani

Institute of Archaeology, University College London

Get in touch

Get in touch for more information on the Anglo-Netherlands Society Awards Bursary.