During the last Rencontre’s general meeting, the winner of the De Gruyter Award has been announced. Although Tobias Scheucher’s dissertation was worth the first prize, Eva van Dassow mentioned in her speech that the evaluation committee was pleasantly surprised by the very high standard of dissertations that where handed in. There were others who had also written some excellent dissertations and we of course do not want to deprive anyone who was not present in Ghent from knowing about them, or these talents from being honoured. We therefore hereby give you the kind words Eva von Dassow spoke about the award and the dissertations handed in by Ilgi Gercek and Nicolas Vanderroost: