Since 1990, the Executive Board of Radboud University has awarded the Christine Mohrmann Stipends (until 2015: Frye stipends) annually to promising women PhD candidates. The ten laureates of 2026 are: Judith Lefkes, Liana Barenbrug, Gijsje Maas, Josefine Schedlowski, Lisa Kampen, Eline Bovy, Puck Overhaart, Yvet Telgenkamp, Wieke Harmsen, Sophie van Dongen.
Christine Mohrmann Stipend for ten female PhD candidates
Ten female PhD candidates from Radboud University received a Christine Mohrmann Stipend on 24 February. The aim of the stipend is to encourage PhD candidates to continue their academic careers after the completion of their thesis. The stipend worth 6000 euros gives them the opportunity, for example, to spend a period at a university abroad or to deepen their research in another way.
Judith Lefkes – Faculty of Medical Sciences
Judith Lefkes investigates how artificial intelligence in the biomedical field can evolve from narrow algorithms that perform a single specific task to broader, more generally applicable models. These models are trained on large amounts of diverse data, such as pathology and radiology images and clinical reports. Within a collaborative project, she developed a transparent and reproducible benchmark platform, launched as an international challenge, where teams can test their algorithms on various clinically relevant tasks using real-world patient cohorts. In her current project, Judith develops and evaluates AI models for the automatic generation of pathology reports. She also designs clinically grounded evaluation metrics to assess the quality of AI-generated reports. With the stipend, she will conduct six months of research at Harvard Medical School.
Liana Barenbrug – Faculty of Medical Sciences
Liana Barenbrug investigates psoriasis, a chronic inflammatory skin condition, from a women’s health perspective, addressing sex differences, pregnancy and menopause. A major knowledge gap in this field is the safety of medications during pregnancy, while effective disease control is essential to reduce the risk of adverse pregnancy and neonatal outcomes. Evaluating drug safety in pregnancy requires specialized epidemiological methods. The Christine Mohrmann Stipend will support her in gaining this expertise through an international research visit and collaboration with experienced researchers.
Gijsje Maas – Faculty of Social Sciences
Gijsje Maas studies the sexual double standard (SDS). The SDS is the divergent set of stereotypical expectations and evaluations that condemn female sexuality and approve of male sexuality, which negatively impacts men’s and women’s wellbeing. The persistence of SDS may reside in perceptions about general norms instead of personal attitudes and beliefs. In my PhD project we explore the role of pluralistic ignorance in perpetuating SDS and investigate the relationship between media consumption and SDS.
Josefine Schedlowski – Faculty of Social Sciences
Josefine Schedlowski studies learning conditions that support people with mild or severe memory problems, including mild cognitive impairment and Korsakoff’s syndrome. She investigates how specific instructions and feedback can make it easier to learn and retain important information, such as remembering a familiar person’s name or taking medication. Her goal is to inform strategies for overcoming daily memory challenges. With the stipend, Josefine will advance her neuroimaging expertise through attending trainings and an international research visit to Canada.
Lisa Kampen – Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies
Lisa Kampen researches the thought of Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930) during the development of psychology as a modern science in the United States. Calkins was the first woman elected president of both the American Psychological Association and the American Philosophical Association, but has since fallen into obscurity. With the grant, Lisa will organize a workshop on the historiography of women in philosophy and science. She also hopes to return to Harvard, where she completed a visiting fellowship in 2025.
Eline Bovy – Faculty of Science
Eline Bovy investigates autonomous decision-making under uncertainty using mathematical models. Decision-making problems arise in disciplines such as autonomous control, medical decision-making, and finance. When deployed, autonomous decision-making systems need to deal with the uncertainty of the real world. Eline investigates how different types of uncertainty influence optimal decision-making and how to use this understanding to develop safer autonomous systems. Eline will use the stipend to visit research groups at TU Wien, ISTA, and ULB University working on decision-making under uncertainty.
Puck Overhaart – Nijmegen School of Management
Puck Overhaart studies the enforcement of European migration law by the European Commission. Specifically, she is interested from a constructivist perspective in the underlying interactions, ideas, and power dynamics that shape how the European Commission, as "guardian of the treaties," understands and puts into practice its role in a politicised context. Puck will use the grant to conduct fieldwork in various European member states, combined with research stays to initiate collaborations with other researchers in her field.
Yvet Telgenkamp – Faculty of Science
Yvet Telgenkamp’s research focuses on the role of plant functional groups in the carbon cycle of peatlands. Northern peatlands store approximately 30% of the world’s terrestrial carbon while covering only 3% of the land surface, making them the most carbon-dense ecosystems on the planet. By combining year-round field measurements in pristine peatlands with laboratory experiments focused on drought stress, I investigate the capacity of peatlands to store carbon and the vulnerability of this storage to climate extremes such as drought.
Wieke Harmsen – Faculty of Arts
Wieke Harmsen investigates how AI can be developed and optimized to automatically assess and improve the reading and spelling proficiency of children in primary school. Her PhD research includes the development of innovative technologies that can effectively analyze oral reading and written texts by children and extract diagnostic information on their reading and spelling proficiency. Wieke will use the stipend to start a collaboration with the KU Leuven to study the representativeness and inclusiveness of automatic assessments of reading proficiency.
Sophie van Dongen – Faculty of Law
Sophie van Dongen researches international criminal law and environmental harm. In particular, she focuses on the manner in which international criminal responsibility for environmental harm might be justified, as well as the different current possibilities regarding the international and domestic prosecution of serious environmental harm on the basis of international criminal law, and whether states might be held responsible for their failure to conduct such prosecutions. Sophie plans to use the stipend for a multiple-month research stay at an environmental law research institute abroad.
Contact information
- Organizational unit
- Faculty of Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Faculty of Law, Nijmegen School of Management, Faculty of Medical Sciences (Radboudumc), Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies, Centre for Language Studies, Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, Graduate School of Law, Research Centre for State and Law