ASL Research Award for Human Sciences

1. With the ASL Award for Human Sciences, ASL honors a Dutch- or English-language doctoral dissertation in the field of human sciences and obtained at KU Leuven. The awarded work must excel by the originality of the subject, the scientific elaboration and/or the innovative conclusions.

2. The ASL Award for Human Sciences is awarded every 3 years. Only dissertations defended during the three calendar years preceding the year of the award are eligible. Theses must be submitted in pdf format only.

3. The ASL board of directors grants the award as proposed by a jury installed by it and chaired by a director of ASL vzw. Promoters and co-promoters of submitted dissertations cannot be part of the jury.

4. The Award amounts to €7,500 and will not be split. The ASL board of directors may decide not to grant the award.

5. There will be no correspondence about the procedure and the decision of the ASL board.

6. The result will be announced in writing to all participants at the latest one year after the ultimate submission date.

Click here to submit your candidacy.

Submit candidacy online starting December 01, 2026.

Year of next award: 2027 (dissertations defended in 2024, 2026 en 2026).

Deadline for submission: March 15, 2027

An admissible file consists of:

1. Your PhD dissertation (pdf format).
2. A short summarizing essay (approx. 10,000 characters, spaces included) in which the candidate, in Dutch or English, for a broad but interested lay audience (1) frames his/her research in the broader research domain; (2) explains the essence of his/her own research; (3) explains the importance of that research for the candidate's own and adjacent research domains, and possibly also its social relevance. Submission of a dossier implies that the author agrees that ASL may publish this essay on its website.
3. Your recent curriculum vitae including your publication list.