Evie Mertens, alumna of the Master’s programme Media, Culture & Society (2024/2025), has been awarded the KHMW Jan Brouwer Scriptieprijs 2026 for her thesis “When you know you know: A queer, female perspective on Camp.”
Each year, the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) awards ten Jan Brouwer Scriptieprijzen of €3,000, recognizing the best master’s theses across different fields of research. Evie received the prize for the best thesis in Language and Communication Sciences. The award ceremony will take place on 6 February.
Evie’s thesis, titled "When you know you know", outlines the experiences of queer women with Camp. For the people that don't know: with Camp we don't mean tents or campfires, but drag queens, exaggerated fashion, musicals, Lady Gaga, and sometimes male birds. Camp is a queer subculture that emphasizes irony, exaggeration and defiance. It was defined as a solely gay male subculture in previous literature, but her interview-based research showed that queer women understand Camp as well, and interact with it through media, fashion and with other queer people.
The Jan Brouwer Scriptieprijs aims to stimulate multidisciplinary, socially oriented research that provides insight into societal issues and has the potential to contribute to their resolution. Supervisor Ofra Klein argued that Evie’s thesis makes an original and socially relevant contribution to language and communication studies by showing how Camp serves as a lively countercultural practice for queer women.
We are very proud to see this outstanding achievement recognised!
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More information about the prize can be found on the KHMW website.
