Jakob Jung is the winner of the RICH Master's Thesis Award 2025. Jakob receives the award for his thesis Scratching Matter – The Social Communication of Violence in Graffiti from Roman Pompeii (c.1-79 CE).
The jury report states: “This is mature and exciting research that takes a very clear position in relation to existing sources and in which the theoretical and methodological framework is very well developed. (...) In its current form, it is immediately publishable.” The jury consisted of Senne van der Zijden (winner RICH Master’s Thesis Award 2024) and RICH coordinators Dries Raeymaekers and Marguérite Corporaal (jury chair).
The jury gives Thijs Kersten an honourable mention as runner-up, for “A beautiful and rich thesis well embedded in memory studies.”
Jakob Jung says: “It makes me very proud that the RICH thesis prize can be read as a successful outcome of my studies at Radboud University. Throughout my last five years in Nijmegen, I greatly enjoyed learning about and interacting with ancient societies and material culture. I am very grateful to my supervisors and all researchers at RICH who helped me develop my passion for this topic and conceive my thesis’ framework during my research master’s. I hope my approach combing methods from history, epigraphy, gender, and cultural studies could (at least partly) reflect the institute’s exciting interdisciplinary overlaps. My examination argued that violence embodied in Roman graffiti created an important heterogeneous and interactive space for discussions of status and gender throughout society. However, I also aimed to show that the violence often targeted those at society’s margins. The jury's decision encourages me to continue such research excavating such historical voices and intersections of matter, people, and power.”