Yosha Wijngaarden has won the Boekman Dissertation Prize for her dissertation 'Spaces of co-working: situating innovation in the creative industries'. The prize was awarded during the conference 'Culture after Corona' on June 30th. The Boekman Dissertation Prize is an initiative of the Boekman Foundation and NWO and is awarded every three years to the best doctoral research on art, culture, and society at an Dutch or Flemish university.
The prize, consisting of € 10.000, is intended to publicise artistic and cultural research to a wide audience. To this end, the journal Boekman devotes one of its editions to the winning dissertation, the year following the presentation. Yosha Wijngaarden received the Boekman Dissertation Prize from State Secretary for Culture and Media Gunay Ulsu and NWO chair Marcel Levi.
‘Spaces of co-working: situating innovation in the creative industries’
In her dissertation, Yosha explores in an interdisciplinary way why creatives seek to work in the vicinity of their creative peers, as well as the effects of this vicinity. Based on interviews, surveys and ethnographic research, she concludes that co-working does not directly spark innovative collaborative work. Nevertheless, her research shows that co-working can be crucial for the professional development of especially early career creatives.
- Researcher