Holly Patch has received the Bielefeld Equality Award 2023 in the category of gender research/gender topics in qualification theses for her dissertation. Bielefeld University has been awarding the Bielefeld Gender Equality Award since 2013. It is divided into three categories of personnel, content, and sustainable accents in the promotion of gender equality and is awarded annually in one of these categories.

Holly Patch successfully defended her dissertation "Claim Your Voice: An Ethnographic Study of Trans* Vocality" at the Faculty of Sociology of Bielefeld University on Jan. 24, 2023 (overall grade: summa cum laude). In her ethnographic study of the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles, which focuses on the practice of singing and traces processes of the gendering of voices, Patch shows how the "voice" functions as a technology for gendered existence. Theoretically, she develops the concept of "vocality" to capture the interconnectedness of social vocal practices, material vocal bodies, and sociopolitical norms and values in the constitution of vocal becoming. Her doctoral dissertation was supervised by Prof. Dr. Diana Lengersdorf (Bielefeld University) and Prof. Dr. Nina Sun Eidsheim (University of California, Los Angeles).