newcombe doctoral dissertation fellowship

Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

• Divinity School
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The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships are designed to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner. In addition to topics in religious studies or in ethics (philosophical or religious), dissertations appropriate to the Newcombe Fellowship competition might explore the ethical implications of foreign policy, the values influencing political decisions, the moral codes of other cultures, and religious or ethical issues reflected in history or literature.

Newcombe Fellows receive $30,000 for 12 months of full-time dissertation writing. (No half-year or partial awards are allowed.)

• 20 non-renewable fellowships of $30,000 will be awarded in the spring of 2023.
• Fellows’ graduate schools will be asked to waive tuition and fees while maintaining health insurance for Newcombe Fellows.
• Fellows become part of a network of more than 1,300 Newcombe Fellows leading the way in their various fields.

Eligible applicants for the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship must:

• be candidates for Ph.D. degrees in any field of study in the humanities and social sciences at accredited graduate schools in the United States. Candidates working on D.Min., law, Psy.D., Ed.D. and other professional degrees are not eligible.
• have completed all pre-dissertation requirements fulfilled by the application deadline.
• be in the writing stage of the dissertation. Usually, this means that fieldwork or other research is complete and writing has begun by the time of the award.
• have never held a similar national award for the final year of dissertation writing.
• be in a humanities or social science department, writing on topics where ethical or religious values are a central concern.

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The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

Religion & ethics.

The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships are designed to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner. In addition to topics in religious studies or in ethics (philosophical or religious), dissertations appropriate to the Newcombe Fellowship competition might explore the ethical implications of foreign policy, the values influencing political decisions, the moral codes of other cultures, and religious or ethical issues reflected in history or literature. +Learn more (desktop version)

ABOUT THE FELLOWSHIP

The Newcombe Fellowships are provided to Ph.D. candidates at American institutions located in the United States who will complete their dissertations during the fellowship year. The fellowship year for applications accepted by the deadline in 2018 will be for the academic year 2019-2020. In the current Newcombe competition, at least 20 non-renewable Fellowships of $25,000 will be awarded for 12 months of full-time dissertation writing; in addition, Fellows’ graduate schools will be asked to waive tuition and/or remit some portion of their fees.

• Application Information
• Eligibility Requirements
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If you have further questions, after reviewing information on the Web site , including application information, eligibility requirements, and FAQ, please contact [email protected] .

Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships

Religious commitments and ethical ideals can be found in every time and place. Newcombe Fellows are late-stage Ph.D. students in the humanities and social sciences whose research in some way attends to those commitments and ideals and seeks to understand the communities, social practices, and political arrangements that embody them.

The Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation  created this Fellowship in 1981. Now in its fifth decade, the Newcombe Fellowship has become a nationally noted award that distinguishes recipients within their fields. Fellows receive a $31,000 stipend to complete the writing stage of their dissertation.

Deadline: Nov. 15, 2023

Eligible applicants for the 2024 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship must:

• be candidates for Ph.D. degrees in any field of study in the humanities and social sciences at accredited graduate schools in the United States. Candidates working on D.Min., law, Psy.D., Ed.D. and other professional degrees are not eligible.
• be ABD, and have completed all pre-dissertation requirements fulfilled by the application deadline November 15, 2023, including approval of the dissertation proposal.
• be in the writing stage of the dissertation. Usually, this means that fieldwork or other research is complete and writing has begun by the time of the award.
• expect to complete the dissertation between April 1, 2025 and August 31, 2026.
• have never held a similar national award for the final year of dissertation writing. Applicants who have won such awards as the AAUW, Ford, NAEd/Spencer, Mellon/ACLS, or Mellon-CES fellowship are not eligible.
• be in a humanities or social science department, writing on topics where ethical or religious values are a central concern.
• Prior applicants who did not receive the award when they first applied may reapply if their revised timeline meets Newcombe Fellowship guidelines for completion and defense.

2021:  Nathaniel Berndt  • Duke University, history Descendants of Zabarkan, Citizens of the World: A History of Cosmopolitan Imagination in Decolonizing Niger, 1958-1974

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Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships are designed to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner. In addition to topics in religious studies or in ethics (philosophical or religious), dissertations appropriate to the Newcombe Fellowship competition might explore the ethical implications of foreign policy, the values influencing political decisions, the moral codes of other cultures, and religious or ethical issues reflected in history or literature.

Deadline:  November

Value:  $30,000

Eligibility:  Be candidates for Ph.D. or Th.D. degrees in an American doctoral program at a graduate school located in the United States. Be in the writing stage of the dissertation. Usually, this means that fieldwork or other research is complete and writing has begun by the time of the award. Have never held a similar national award for the final year of dissertation writing. Applicants who have won such awards as the ACLS, AAUW, Ford, MacArthur, Mellon, Pew, Spencer, or Whiting fellowship are not eligible. Plan to write on topics where ethical or religious values are a central concern.

Major:  Ethics/Religious values

Fellowship Type:  Graduate, Post-Graduate, International Students

Category:  Dissertation

Nomination:  no, but strongly suggested to work with the Fellowships Office

Website:   Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

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Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships — 11/16/2020

The Newcombe Fellowships are provided to Ph.D. candidates at American institutions located in the United States who will complete their dissertations during the academic year 2020–2021.

In the current Newcombe competition, at least 20 non-renewable Fellowships of $25,000 will be awarded for 12 months of full-time dissertation writing; in addition, Fellows’ graduate schools will be asked to waive tuition and/or remit some portion of their fees. Successful candidates will be notified, and the public announcement of new Fellows made, in spring 2020.

Applications and further information are available on the Newcombe fellowship website . Application and supporting documents must be received by  November 16, 2020 at 11:59 PM ET.

About the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation The Woodrow Wilson Foundation administers the Newcombe Fellowship competition at the request of and in consultation with the  Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation , a private foundation created under the will of Philadelphia philanthropist Mrs. Newcombe, who died in 1979. In addition to the Newcombe Dissertation Fellowships, the Newcombe Foundation funds three college scholarship programs: for students with disabilities, for returning women students, and by establishing and augmenting Special Scholarship Endowment funds at selected colleges and universities, helping students complete degrees in higher education.

For general program, application, and Fellowship questions: If you have further questions, after reviewing information on this website , including application information , eligibility requirements , and FAQ , please contact [email protected]

For questions when filling out the application or for technical difficulties: If you have registered and/or begun an application and have questions, or if you are experiencing technical difficulties, please contact technical support at  [email protected] , with a concise, specific question and a phone number where you can be reached.

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Charlotte W. Newcombe — Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

Note to PIs:   The following program summary is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It does not replace the sponsor’s actual funding opportunity announcement. Always review the most recent version of the sponsor’s full announcement to verify that the deadline has not changed and to identify the most current program requirements.

About the fellowship

The fellowship is designed to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner.  In addition to topics in religious studies or in ethics (philosophical or religious), dissertations appropriate to the fellowship competition might explore the ethical implications of foreign policy, the values influencing political decisions, the moral codes of other cultures, and religious or ethical issues reflected in history or literature.

Eligibility

Eligible applicants for the 2020 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship must:

• Be candidates for Ph.D. or Th.D. degrees in an American doctoral program at a graduate school located in the United States. Candidates working on D.Min., law, Psy.D., Ed.D. and other professional degrees are  not  eligible.
• Have all pre-dissertation requirements fulfilled by the application deadline  November 16,  2020 , including approval of the dissertation proposal.
• Be in the writing stage of the dissertation. Usually, this means that fieldwork or other research is complete and writing has begun by the time of the award.
• Must expect to complete the dissertation between  April 1, 2022 and August 31, 2022 .
• Have never held a similar national award for the final year of dissertation writing. Applicants who have won such awards as the ACLS, AAUW, Ford, Mellon, NAEd/Spencer, or Whiting fellowship are not eligible.
• Be in a humanities or social science department, writing on topics where ethical or religious values are a central concern.
• Have never applied for the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship before.  Previous  applicants may not apply.

Award amount

$27,500;  in addition, fellows’ graduate schools will be asked to waive tuition and/or remit some portion of their fees.

Award period

One (1) year.

Application deadline

November 16, 2020.

Visit  https://woodrow.org/fellowships/newcombe/ .

Last updated:   July 2021.

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The Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship

The Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowships are designed to help Ph.D. candidates complete their dissertation work in their study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences. Apply by November 16, 2020!

OVERVIEW The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships are designed to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner. In addition to topics in religious studies or in ethics (philosophical or religious), dissertations appropriate to the Newcombe Fellowship competition might explore the ethical implications of foreign policy, the values influencing political decisions, the moral codes of other cultures, and religious or ethical issues reflected in history or literature. The Newcombe Fellowships are provided to Ph.D. candidates at American institutions located in the United States who will complete their dissertations during the academic year 2020-2021.

DEADLINE November 16, 2020

AWARD $25,000

ELIGIBILITY -Students must be enrolled in a graduate program in the U.S. -U.S. Citizenship not required

DETAILS The Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship

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Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships

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Designed to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner.

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Two Penn Ph.D. candidates awarded 2024 Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

The school of arts & sciences awardees are arielle xena alterwaite, who is pursuing a ph.d. in history, and katherine scahill, who is pursuing a ph.d. in music..

Two University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. candidates in the School of Arts & Sciences have been named to the 2024 class of the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship , administered by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars .

The Newcombe Fellowship, funded by the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation , is the largest and most prestigious award for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences addressing questions of ethical and religious values in interesting, original, or significant ways. Fellows receive a 12-month award of $31,000 to support the final year of dissertation writing.

Arielle Xena Alterwaite , a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History , and Katherine Scahill , a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Music , were named as 2024 Fellows.

Alterwaite’s research explores Haiti’s sovereign debt in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution in her dissertation, “Empire of Debt: Haiti and France in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World.”

“With support from the Newcombe Foundation and its interdisciplinary focus, I look forward to deepening the ways in which I can bring my work to broad audiences,” Alterwaite says. “My hope is that this archivally grounded historical account of Haitian debt in a global context can speak to international activists, legislators, and policymakers who take the ethical ramifications of finance seriously.”

History department chair Sophia Rosenfeld says it’s no surprise that Alterwaite continues to win an extraordinary number of major external fellowships, including, now, the Newcombe.

“For her dissertation, she has taken on a crucial topic in 19th century Atlantic history—the massive debt that a newly independent Haiti owed to the French state—and she has managed both to find brand-new sources for understanding it and to generate new explanations that have real implications for thinking about sovereign debt and reparations for slavery today,” Rosenfeld says.

Scahill’s dissertation, “The gendered politics of religious authority in Thai Buddhism: Voice, embodiment, and sonic efficacy in the movement for female monastic ordination,” is based upon ethnographic fieldwork with three communities of female Buddhist monks (bhikkhunīs) in Thailand. Drawing on the fields of religious studies and music studies, her dissertation investigates the sonic practices bhikkhunīs employ to establish alternate channels of recognition, given that women’s ordination is not accepted at a national level.

“I am honored to have been selected as a 2024 Newcombe Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellow. The Fellowship will provide me with the resources and time I need to adequately engage with the stories and practices shared at bhikkhunī monasteries,” Scahill says. “I am truly grateful for this opportunity.”

Timothy Rommen, chair of the music department, says he’s unsurprised that Scahill’s “excellent” work continues to be recognized. 

“Katherine’s dissertation intervenes at the intersections of ethnomusicology, religious studies, and gender studies to explore what she calls efficacious chant. What makes her project so interesting and innovative is her recognition of a set of lacunae within the study of Buddhist chant,” he says. “While text, context, and religious labor have all been explored, very little has been written about the female monastics on which this dissertation is focused or on the role of ‘voice’ within their practice. Katherine zooms in on the ways that chant helps train monks to stabilize their own bodies while also making them aware of the body’s instability. We are all convinced that Katherine’s dissertation will make a signal contribution to several disciplines.”

Funding at the dissertation stage remains a vital way to support up-and-coming scholars. Since its creation in 1981, the Fellowship has supported more than 1,300 doctoral candidates with essential time and resources to complete their writing. Newcombe Fellows have gone on to be noted faculty at domestic and foreign institutions, leaders in their fields of study, Pulitzer Prize winners, MacArthur Fellows, and more.

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CS&E Announces 2024-25 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) Award Winners

Seven Ph.D. students working with CS&E professors have been named Doctoral Dissertation Fellows for the 2024-25 school year. The Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship is a highly competitive fellowship that gives the University’s most accomplished Ph.D. candidates an opportunity to devote full-time effort to an outstanding research project by providing time to finalize and write a dissertation during the fellowship year. The award includes a stipend of $25,000, tuition for up to 14 thesis credits each semester, and subsidized health insurance through the Graduate Assistant Health Plan.

CS&E congratulates the following students on this outstanding accomplishment:

• Athanasios Bacharis (Advisor: Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos )
• Karin de Langis (Advisor:  Dongyeop Kang )
• Arshia Zernab Hassan (Advisors: Chad Myers )
• Xinyue Hu (Advisors: Zhi-Li Zhang )
• Lucas Kramer (Advisors: Eric Van Wyk )
• Yijun Lin (Advisors: Yao-Yi Chiang )
• Mingzhou Yang (Advisors: Shashi Shekhar )

Athanasios Bacharis

Bacharis’ work centers around the robot-vision area, focusing on making autonomous robots act on visual information. His research includes active vision approaches, namely, view planning and next-best-view, to tackle the problem of 3D reconstruction via different optimization frameworks. The acquisition of 3D information is crucial for automating tasks, and active vision methods obtain it via optimal inference. Areas of impact include agriculture and healthcare, where 3D models can lead to reduced use of fertilizers via phenotype analysis of crops and effective management of cancer treatments. Bacharis has a strong publication record, with two peer-reviewed conference papers and one journal paper already published. He also has one conference paper under review and two journal papers in the submission process. His publications are featured in prestigious robotic and automation venues, further demonstrating his expertise and the relevance of his research in the field.

Karin de Langis

Karin's thesis works at the intersection of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and cognitive science. Her work uses eye-tracking and other cognitive signals to improve NLP systems in their performance and cognitive interpretability, and to create NLP systems that process language more similarly to humans. Her human-centric approach to NLP is motivated by the possibility of addressing the shortcomings of current statistics-based NLP systems, which often become stuck on explainability and interpretability, resulting in potential biases. This work has most recently been accepted and presented at SIGNLL Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL) conference which has a special focus on theoretically, cognitively and scientifically motivated approaches to computational linguistics.

Arshia Zernab Hassan

Hassan's thesis work delves into developing computational methods for interpreting data from genome wide CRISPR/Cas9 screens. CRISPR/Cas9 is a new approach for genome editing that enables precise, large-scale editing of genomes and construction of mutants in human cells. These are powerful data for inferring functional relationships among genes essential for cancer growth. Moreover, chemical-genetic CRISPR screens, where population of mutant cells are grown in the presence of chemical compounds, help us understand the effect the chemicals have on cancer cells and formulate precise drug solutions. Given the novelty of these experimental technologies, computational methods to process and interpret the resulting data and accurately quantify the various genetic interactions are still quite limited, and this is where Hassan’s dissertation is focused on. Her research extends to developing deep-learning based methods that leverage CRISPR chemical-genetic and other genomic datasets to predict cancer sensitivity to candidate drugs. Her methods on improving information content in CRISPR screens was published in the Molecular Systems Biology journal, a highly visible journal in the computational biology field. 

Hu's Ph.D. dissertation is concentrated on how to effectively leverage the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) – especially deep learning – to tackle challenging and important problems in the design and development of reliable, effective and secure (independent) physical infrastructure networks. More specifically, her research focuses on two critical infrastructures: power grids and communication networks, in particular, emerging 5G networks, both of which not only play a critical role in our daily life but are also vital to the nation’s economic well-being and security. Due to the enormous complexity, diversity, and scale of these two infrastructures, traditional approaches based on (simplified) theoretical models and heuristics-based optimization are no longer sufficient in overcoming many technical challenges in the design and operations of these infrastructures: data-driven machine learning approaches have become increasingly essential. The key question now is: how does one leverage the power of AI/ML without abandoning the rich theory and practical expertise that have accumulated over the years? Hu’s research has pioneered a new paradigm – (domain) knowledge-guided machine learning (KGML) – in tackling challenging and important problems in power grid and communications (e.g., 5G) network infrastructures.

Lucas Kramer

Kramer is now the driving force in designing tools and techniques for building extensible programming languages, with the Minnesota Extensible Language Tools (MELT) group. These are languages that start with a host language such as C or Java, but can then be extended with new syntax (notations) and new semantics (e.g. error-checking analyses or optimizations) over that new syntax and the original host language syntax. One extension that Kramer created was to embed the domain-specific language Halide in MELT's extensible specification of C, called ableC. This extension allows programmers to specify how code working on multi-dimensional matrices is transformed and optimized to make efficient use of hardware. Another embeds the logic-programming language Prolog into ableC; yet another provides a form of nondeterministic parallelism useful in some algorithms that search for a solution in a structured, but very large, search space. The goal of his research is to make building language extensions such as these more practical for non-expert developers.  To this end he has made many significant contributions to the MELT group's Silver meta-language, making it easier for extension developers to correctly specify complex language features with minimal boilerplate. Kramer is the lead author of one journal and four conference papers on his work at the University of Minnesota, winning the distinguished paper award for his 2020 paper at the Software Language Engineering conference, "Strategic Tree Rewriting in Attribute Grammars".

Lin’s doctoral dissertation focuses on a timely, important topic of spatiotemporal prediction and forecasting using multimodal and multiscale data. Spatiotemporal prediction and forecasting are important scientific problems applicable to diverse phenomena, such as air quality, ambient noise, traffic conditions, and meteorology. Her work also couples the resulting prediction and forecasting with multimodal (e.g., satellite imagery, street-view photos, census records, and human mobility data) and multiscale geographic information (e.g., census records focusing on small tracts vs. neighborhood surveys) to characterize the natural and built environment, facilitating our understanding of the interactions between and within human social systems and the ecosystem. Her work has a wide-reaching impact across multiple domains such as smart cities, urban planning, policymaking, and public health.

Mingzhou Yang

Yang is developing a thesis in the broad area of spatial data mining for problems in transportation. His thesis has both societal and theoretical significance. Societally, climate change is a grand challenge due to the increasing severity and frequency of climate-related disasters such as wildfires, floods, droughts, etc. Thus, many nations are aiming at carbon neutrality (also called net zero) by mid-century to avert the worst impacts of global warming. Improving energy efficiency and reducing toxic emissions in transportation is important because transportation accounts for the vast majority of U.S. petroleum consumption as well as over a third of GHG emissions and over a hundred thousand U.S. deaths annually via air pollution. To accurately quantify the expected environmental cost of vehicles during real-world driving, Yang's thesis explores ways to incorporate physics in the neural network architecture complementing other methods of integration: feature incorporation, and regularization. This approach imposes stringent physical constraints on the neural network model, guaranteeing that its outputs are consistently in accordance with established physical laws for vehicles. Extensive experiments including ablation studies demonstrated the efficacy of incorporating physics into the model. 

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2022 Newcombe Fellows

Charlotte w. newcombe doctoral dissertation fellows named for 2022.

May 4, 2022

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Program Supports Promising Scholars Completing Dissertations Related To Ethics And Religion

PRINCETON, NJ (Thursday, May 5, 2022)—The Institute for Citizens & Scholars has named 22 Fellows to the 2022 class of the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship .

The Newcombe Fellowship, funded by the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, is the largest and most prestigious award for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences addressing questions of ethical and religious values in interesting, original, or significant ways. Fellows receive a 12-month award of $30,000 to support the final year of dissertation writing.

Fellows in this year’s class are working in fields such as anthropology, history, government, sociology, and philosophy. They are exploring the role of ethical values in the justification of political institutions, examining how morality is constructed in digital health, and tracing the political, economic, social, and religious factors that shaped Black migration dreams in post-emancipation North Carolina, among other topics. (See the full list of Fellows, institutions, and dissertation titles below.)

Funding at the dissertation stage remains a vital way to support young scholars. Since its creation in 1981, the Fellowship has supported over 1,300 doctoral candidates with essential time and resources to complete their writing. Newcombe Fellows have gone on to be noted faculty at domestic and foreign institutions, leaders in their fields of study, Pulitzer Prize winners, MacArthur Fellows, and more.

The Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship is a crucial part of the Citizens & Scholars portfolio in higher education, helping promising scholars generate momentum, strengthening fields of study, and preparing new generations of citizens through their teaching and research. For more information on the Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship, please visit citizensandscholars.org/fellowships/newcombe/ .

About the Institute for Citizens and Scholars Formerly the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars is a 75-year-old organization that has played a significant role in shaping American higher education. Now, with an expanded mission, Citizens & Scholars prepares leaders and engages networks of people and organizations to meet urgent education challenges. The overarching goal is to shape an informed, productively engaged, and hopeful citizenry.

2022 Newcombe Fellows 

Thir Budhathoki  | University of Arizona, English, rhetoric, composition, and the teaching of English Linguistic Justice in Writing Studies: A Decolonial Perspective 

Henry Clements  | Yale University, history The Problem of History in an Age of Reform: Secularism, Orientalism, and the Syriac Christians of the Late Ottoman Empire

Mikey Elster  | CUNY Graduate Center, anthropology Coming of Age in the Clinic: Ethics and Politics of Care in Transgender Pediatrics in New York City

Magnus Ferguson  | Boston College, philosophy On Responsibility for Others’ Harms

Karlie Fox-Knudtsen  | Cornell University, anthropology Mud Spirits and Blood Power: Ethics as Materiality in Kondholand

Gabrielle Girard  | Princeton University, history Modeling Democracy: The Global History of an Argentine Human Rights Experiment

Sarah B. Greenberg  | Cornell University, government “The Law is not in Heaven”: Authority and Covenant in Jewish Political Thought

Laura Halcomb  | University of California, Santa Barbara, sociology Pricing Life: Money and Morality in Healthcare

Mu-Lung Hsu  | Arizona State University, religious studies Lay Buddhism and Embodied Virtues: Free Funeral Service Societies and Buddhist Social Welfare Movement in Contemporary Myanmar

Daniel Joslyn  | New York University, history, How Love Came of Age: God, Sex and Socialism in the Long Nineteenth Century

Eric Kesse  | Michigan State University, history Living with Water: Environment, Slavery, and Spirituality in a West African Stilt-House Community—Nzulezo, c. mid-1700–1870s

Linda Kinstler  | University of California, Berkeley, rhetoric The Afterlives of Oblivion

Natali Levin-Schwartz  | University of California, Santa Cruz, politics Testimony, Resistance, and Sexual Violence: Towards a Political Theory of Testimony as a Democratic Practice

Meghna Mukherjee  | University of California, Berkeley, sociology Immaculate Re-Conception: Redefining Health and Reproductive Risk Using Prenatal Genetic Testing

Arif Nairang  | University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, anthropology Halat chi kharab: Playful Existence in the Time of Political Violence

Emma Prendergast  | University of Wisconsin-Madison, philosophy The Moral Authority of Citizens

Faiza Rahman  | Emory University, Islamic civilizations studies Islamic Period: Menstruation and Muslims in Pakistan

Paloma Rodrigo Gonzales  | The Graduate Center, CUNY, anthropology From Stained Souls to Stained Skins: The Presence of Religious Epistemologies in the Typification of Peruvian Bodies

Rachel Smith  | University of California, Los Angeles, history The Jews of Yesteryear: Ethnography and the Politics of Representation in the Late Ottoman World

Jagat Sohail  | Princeton University, anthropology Paradoxes of Social Incorporation: Hospitality and Hostility in the Reception of Newcomers in Berlin, Germany

Joshua Strayhorn  | Duke University, history Somewhere to Lay My Head: Black Mobility and Migration in North Carolina, 1860–1890

Mira Vale  | University of Michigan, sociology Data Values: Moral Entrepreneurship in Digital Health

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