The British Association for Islamic Studies (BRAIS) and De Gruyter have announced the outcome of the fifth (2020) round of the BRAIS – De Gruyter Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World. The winning submission is Gowaart Van Den Bossche’s PhD thesis on "The Past, Panegyric, and the Performance of Penmanship: Sultanic Biography and Social Practice in Late Medieval Egypt and Syria", which he defended in 2019 at Ghent University, right before joining the
KITAB project as a postdoctoral fellow. In his own words:
“I’m very happy with this recognition of my PhD work. It’s especially nice to see this kind of historical research appreciated by an organisation that does not limit itself to my field of study (Mamluk studies, or even Islamic history) but tries to connect people across Islamic studies. In a way that resonates nicely with AKU-ISMC’s own mission.”
Gowaart will be turning his dissertation into a monograph and enrich it by including data from his ongoing work in the KITAB project.