Ecology of the Past blog contributor Nina Witteveen was awarded the Hugo de Vries prize on 13 June 2025 at the Botanic Gardens in Nijmegen. The Hugo de Vries prize is awarded by the KNbv (Royal Dutch Botanical Society) and the Stichting Hugo de Vries fonds (Hugo de Vries foundation) for the best PhD thesis in Botany defended at a Dutch University. This years prize was awarded to Nina for her thesis “Long-term Forest Recovery in Amazonia: Insights from Phytolith Analysis” (University of Amsterdam) which was completed under the supervision of Crystal McMichael.
After much debate the jury decided to award two first prizes this year, with the other prize also going to a tropical PhD thesis. That of Tomonari Matsuo for his thesis “Drivers and mechanisms of tropical secondary forest succession” (Wageningen University & Research).
To find out more about the prize and how to submit a thesis for the award visit: https://www.knbv.eu/hugo-de-vries-prijs/
Follow Nina’s journey into tropical palaeoecology through her blog posts here: https://ecologyofthepast.info/?s=nina+witteveen
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