WIS Thesis Prizes awarded to Sointu Cantell and Eric Boot

Former KNIR Scholarshipholder and student ambassador of our Institute, Sointu Cantell, has been awarded the biannual Thesis Prize of the Werkgroep Italiëstudies (WIS).

Sointu wrote her thesis, Merchants of Memory: Identity Formation and Memoria through the Patronage of Andrea della Costa and Agnes Adornes in Fifteenth-Century Bruges, in the Research Master Programme 'Renaissance Studies' at Utrecht University under the supervision of Dr Daantje Meuwissen and Professor Harald Hendrix.
In September 2026, she will continue her research as a PhD student at the European University Institute in Florence.

The WIS Thesis prize consists of a reward of 500 Euros, a one-month research stay at our Institute (offered by KNIR), and the opportunity to publish the research results in the group's journal, Incontri.

In honour of the 40th anniversary of the WIS, a special Jubilee Prize is awarded to Eric Boot for his thesis The Allure of Androgyny: Michelangelo’s teste divine and the Poetics of Ambiguous Art (University of Amsterdam).