On Thursday 22 January, the Prof. Van Winterprijs 2025 was awarded to SHOC member Bob Pierik during the Award Day of the Koninklijk Nederlands Historisch Genootschap in Utrecht. This biennial prize for best book in the field of Dutch local and regional history is presented to monographs grounded in sound academic research that are written in Dutch and focus on a place or region within the current territories of the Netherlands, while also appealing to a broad readership.
In its report, the jury describes the book Zo veel leven voor de deur. Een geschiedenis van alledaags Amsterdam in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw as “a lively and convincing work that reveals the world of early modern Amsterdam to the reader in a fascinating way.” Furthermore: “The strength of this book lies in the way Pierik weaves everyday life in seventeenth- and eighteenth‑century Amsterdam together with the social and spatial stratification of the city in an accessible and vivid manner. The work reads smoothly and is extremely well written: with every page, the reader is drawn more deeply into the world of early modern Amsterdam. (…) The book combines thorough archival research with a lively and accessible style, transforming the results of an academic dissertation into a readable book for a general audience. In doing so, the author manages to bridge the gap between scholarship and society.”