Grants and Writing Resources for University of Amsterdam

In September the UvA Thesis Prize 2026 named seven master's graduates as winners, one from each UvA faculty, from a field limited to theses graded 9 or higher. One of the seven will take the €3,000 grand prize. Earlier that year, two student projects from the Department of Psychology were among six UvA projects honoured at the 2026 Amsterdam Open Science Awards, one of them a preregistered review of 118 studies on suppressing unwanted memories.

Awards for Student Research

The UvA Thesis Prize is open to master's graduates whose thesis earned a 9 or higher. Students submit their own work. A jury made up of the deans of all faculties chooses one winner per faculty, each receiving €1,000, and then picks a grand prize winner from that group for €3,000.

Some faculties and institutes add their own. Amsterdam Business School runs the ASF-George Molenkamp Thesis Award for the best master's thesis in sustainability, worth €1,500 and backed by KPMG and the A Sustainable Future initiative; supervisors make the nominations. The Informatics Institute reports on the Amsterdam AI Thesis Award, given to bachelor's and master's students for work in AI and data science.

Funding for Conferences and Projects

Research master's students in International Development Studies, Social Sciences and Urban Studies can draw once on the Conference Fund for Research Master's Social Sciences. It pays up to €150 toward travel and conference fees, provided a staff member in the programme confirms the meeting is relevant. In the Faculty of Humanities, PhD candidates employed by the faculty can apply to the Faculty Research Fund for up to €1,500 for conference attendance, research trips or publication costs, as set out on the ACLC research funds page.

Student groups have two more sources, both listed under grants for student activities. The Amsterdam University Fund contributes up to €5,000, normally no more than half the budget, to projects, events and trips run by study or student associations. The Student Project Fund favours new or one-off initiatives.

Where Theses and Articles Appear

UvA Scripties gives worldwide digital access to bachelor's and master's theses, according to the library's guide to UvA research and theses, though dentistry theses are excluded and some faculties include only certain programmes. Every doctoral thesis goes into the university's academic archive. Where copyright allows, the library also makes it open access on UvA-DARE, where theses rank among the most downloaded items, as the Publishing a Doctoral Thesis page explains.

UvA has no general fund for article fees. Its open access support works through national Read & Publish agreements and separate publisher deals, which make publishing free or discounted in about 11,000 journals when the corresponding author is affiliated with the UvA. For a wider readership on campus, the university magazine Folia takes opinion pieces from students on science, higher education and student life in Amsterdam, as noted on the student and faculty magazines page.

Writing Support

The Writing Centre at the Institute for Dutch Language Education (INTT) offers free workshops, courses and one-on-one tutoring to all UvA students. Its tutors are students with proven writing skill, and the help with academic writing page makes clear they don't proofread. Its support is for academic writing in English. The Crash Course in University Writing covers the essentials in three interactive modules of three hours each.

Bachelor's and master's students who are stuck can join the Thesis Week, where a small group meets a writing tutor twice a day to plan and review progress. A €50 deposit holds a place and comes back if you attend at least eight of the ten sessions. The library also runs guided thesis sessions on Mondays with student hosts, online or at Roeterseiland and LAB42 on Science Park.

Our editors work with UvA writers at the final-draft stage, from seminar papers to dissertations. See our University of Amsterdam dissertation and thesis editing page, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.