Prizes

Alma Wilson Teaching Lectureship
The Alma Wilson Fellowship Teaching Lectureship offers doctoral students and candidates in the Divinity School with an outstanding teaching record the opportunity to design and teach a course of their own in the University’s Undergraduate Program in Religious Studies.

2026- Anthony Beall, Danica Cao, (Pieter Hoekstra deferred from 2025-2026)
2025- Pieter Hoekstra, Lauren Beversluis, Michaela Podolny
2024- Hannah Ozmun, Zachary Taylor
2023- Kristi Del Vecchio, Ranana Dine
2022- Derek Buyan, Kirsten Collins, Marielle Harrison, Allison Kanner-Botan
2021- Caroline Anglim, Joel Brown, Menachem Kranz, Sara Jo Swiatek
2020- Matthew Creighton, Mark Lambert, Matthew Peterson, Paride Stortini

The Anthony C. Yu Doctoral Student Fellowship
Anthony C. Yu (1938-2015), was the Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and the Divinity School. He introduced a comparative approach to the study of religion and literature that drew on both Eastern and Western traditions. Read more.

The Fellowship offers doctoral students support in completing their dissertation research.

The 2026 awardees: Tommaso Bacci, Anthony Beall, Danica Cao, Jake Sirota

The 2025 awardee: Saman Fazeli

The 2024 awardees: Ranana Dine, Pieter Hoekstra, Kellen Klause, Tyler Neenan

The 2023 awardees: Aslan Cohen Mizrahi, Emily Thomassen, Matthew Vega, Colin Weaver

The 2022 awardees: Miriam Bilsker, Ryan S. Bingham, Kirsten Collins, Allison Kanner-Botan

The Divinity School Prize for Excellence in Service:

The 2023 awardees: Derek Buyan, Landon Wilcox, Hajra Zaid

The Buechner Writing Prize
This award honors an MDiv student who demonstrates the ability to communicate religious scholarship to a broad audience, as evidenced by the public essay component of the MDiv thesis project.

2026- Anna Zeisel

The Divinity School Prize for Excellence in Teaching
This award recognizes Ph.D students who demonstrate excellence in teaching and learning. Recent winners include:

2026- Lauren Beversluis
2025- Zachary Taylor
2024- William Underwood
2023- Allison Kanner-Botan, Matthew John Peterson, Colin Weaver
2022- Marielle Harrison and Mendel Kranz
2021- Caroline Anglim
2020- Seema Chauhan and Christine Trotter
2019- Cathleen Chopra-McGowen, Kelli Gardner, Elizabeth Sartell, and Yonatan Shemesh
2018- Emily Crews, Aaron Hollander, Russell Johnson
2017- Katherine Mershon and Michael LeChevallier
2015- Mary Emily Duba
2014- Rick Elgendy

The Tikva Frymer-Kensky Memorial Prize

Tikva Frymer-Kensky (1943-2006) was Professor of Hebrew Bible and History of Judaism. An expert on Assyriology, Sumerology, Biblical studies, and Jewish studies, she was perhaps best known for her work on women and religion. Read more here. This award is awarded to students who have written the most accomplished essay integrating the materials and insights of at least two of the fields to which Professor Frymer-Kensky’s own scholarship contributed: Hebrew Bible, Biblical law, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, and ritual and/or feminist theology. Recent winners include:

2026- Lucas Depierre
2025- Tommaso Bacci
2019- David Ridge
2018- Sun Bok Bae
2014- Liane Marquis
2013- Liane Marquis
2012- Jessica Andruss
2010- Matthijs Den Dulk

International Ministry Study Grants

2026: Margaret (Meg) Guzulescu, Joshua Wagner

2025: Ocean Li, Katarina Stanisavljevic

2024: Christopher Merkel, Kyungjin (Jin) Jun

2023: Lilia Ellis, Hayley Haruta, Buki Ogunseitan, Maeve Orlowski-Scherer, and Charlie Platt. These students will conduct research in England, Turkey, Nigeria, and Mexico on topics including monastic traditions, Byzantine liturgical vestments, and religious women leaders.

2022: Charlie Grant, Shradha Jain, Hayley Seagall, Emily King, Joanna Zabiega, John Jacob Burns. These students will conduct research in Nepal, India, France, Poland, and Ghana, on topics ranging from spiritual care for the natural world and art as trauma care in the Sikh community, to ministry with African Americans at the Middle Passage memorial sites.

Milo P. Jewett Prize
When available, this prize is awarded “to those members of the student body of the Divinity School who shall be pronounced by competent judges to have submitted the best-written paper translating, interpreting, or applying to a contemporary situation the Holy Scriptures, or a passage therefrom, regard being had to the most effective expression of the meaning and spirit of the sacred text.” In recent years, the money has also funded travel for research by advanced students in the Bible area. Recent winners include:

2026- Benjamin Porter
2025- Lilia Ellis
2024- Shashank Rao
2014- Steven Michael Grafton Philp
2013- Kelli Anne Gardner
2012- Jordan Skornik
2010- Aaron Curtis

Martin Marty Center Junior Fellowship
Martin Marty, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity, taught in the Divinity School, the Department of History, and the Committee on the History of Culture from 1963 to 1998. He was the founding director of what is now the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion. Read more about Dr. Marty. This fellowship provides a unique professionalization opportunity for doctoral candidates to support the completion of their dissertations and aid their transition to professional life as public intellectuals. Learn more about our Fellows.

2024- Ranana Dine, Mahala Rethlake, Zachary Taylor
2023- Miriam Bilsker, Marielle Harrison, Kelly Holob, Mendel Kranz, Loriane Lafont, Akshara Ravishankar Parmeswaran, Matt Peterson, Shaahin Pishbin, Tzvi Schoenberg, Colin Weaver
2022- Samuel Baudinette, Derek Buyan, Rachel Carbonara, Samuel Catlin, Alexandra Hoffman, Hannah Jones, Allison Kanner-Botan, Alexandra Matthews, Matthew Messerschmidt, Dhruv Nagar, Foster Pinkney, Doren Snoek, Raffaella Taylor-Seymour, Alice Yeh
2021- Caroline Anglim, Mariam Attia, Joel Brown, Seema Chauhan, Izzet Coban, Nathan Hardy, Lee Hoffer, Harini Kumar, Diane Picio, John Sianghio, Sara Jo Swiatek

Noyes-Cutter Prize
The Noyes-Cutter Prize was established to recognize an outstanding paper on some aspect of Koine Greek relating to the texts of the New Testament and/or other ambient sources.

2026- Trevor Gillis: “Word Order and Information Structure in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31: A Pragmatic Approach and Its Implications for Translation.”

Rashed and Elkhoraiby Islamic Studies Graduate Student Prize
This prize is awarded in recognition of the best-written paper in Islamic Studies. Papers may be submitted by a graduate student who is enrolled in any department at the University of Chicago, working on the Quran or other fields of Islamic Studies. This Fund has been established with a gift in memory of Ibrahim Rashed, Egyptian journalist and devoted student of the Qur'an, and ElEmam ElKhoraiby, Egyptian judge and expert in the Islamic legal tradition, to recognize, encourage, and foster outstanding contributions to the field of Islamic Studies by promising young scholars at the University of Chicago.

2026- Yousef Aly (MA from the Divinity School; PhD Student in Middle Eastern Studies)
2025- Mehmet Emin Gelecyuz
2022- Ahmed Arafat

The Ibrahim Rashed Summer Research Grant for Islamic Religious Sciences
Awarded periodically to MA and PhD students in the Divinity School, these are intended for the study of texts related to Islamic religious sciences.

2022- Alla Alaghbri, Mehmet Emin Gelecyuz, Mehdi Ali, Lien Fina, and Scott Doolin

Susan Colver-Rosenberger Educational Prize
This award is presented in rotation to a Ph.D. student in education, theology, and sociology. The object of the prize is to stimulate constructive study and original research and to develop practical ideas for the improvement of educational objectives and methods or the promotion of human welfare.

2025- Matthew Vega
2019- Russell Johnson

John Gray Rhind Award
This award is presented annually to an advanced student in the ministry program who, through excellence in academic and professional training, gives notable promise of a significant contribution to the life of the church. Recent winners include:

2026- Delaney Beh
2025- Marisa Ilnitzki
2024- Joseph Tomas-Lemna
2023- Shradha Jain and Shannon Page
2022- Brian Louis and Sister Hoa Nguyen
2021- Howard Ruan and Ariz Saleem
2020- Katherine Gerike and Victoria Wick
2019- Sarah Lusche and Sara Lytle
2018- Lucas Allgeyer
2017- Saeed Richardson
2016- Marcus Christian Lohrman
2015- Mary Ellen Jebbia and Kathryn Barnard Ray
2014- Leah Marie Boyd and Steven Michael Grafton Philp
2013- Krista Michelle Kutz and Celeste Grace Kennel-Shank Groff
2012- Jacqueline Ann Clark and Andrew Michael Packman
2011- Annette Leann Thornburg

J. Coert Rylaarsdam Prize
J. Coert Rylaarsdam (PhD'44) was a Hebrew Bible scholar and a member of the Divinity School faculty, which he joined in 1945 as Assistant Professor of Old Testament Studies. His interest in Judaism led him to develop connections between the Jewish and Christian traditions. He delivered numerous papers and lectures addressing the need for relationships between Jewish and Christian communities, and was the first advocate for a special chair in Jewish studies at the University. He was also one of the first scholars to argue for serious academic study of Islam, and incorporated this into his later work. In 1993, the J. Coert Rylaarsdam Prize was established to honor Rylaarsdam's legacy of promoting interfaith communication. This prize is awarded to a Divinity School student who has made special efforts to promote interfaith relations with particular reference to the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions. These efforts may be curricular or extracurricular. Recent winners include:

2026- Rachel Abdoler
2025- Ranana Dine
2019- Caroline Anglim
2018- Yitzhak Bronstein and Dahlia Herzog
2012- Rachel Graaf Leslie
2011- Devin O'Rourke

Textual Language Lectureship
The Textual Language Lectureship offers doctoral students and candidates with a record of outstanding language competency and teaching record, the opportunity to design and teach a textual language sequence in either Biblical Hebrew or Koine Greek.

2026: Tommaso Bacci (Biblical Hebrew)
2026: Bradley Hansen (Koine Greek)
2024- Emily Thomassen (Biblical Hebrew)

Undergraduate Religious Studies Awards

J.Z. Smith Award for Original Research
The Jonathan Z. Smith Memorial Prize for Original Research is named in honor of a beloved professor in this program who served as Dean of the College from 1977 to 1982 and whose writings continue to inform, inspire, and unsettle students of religion. This award is granted to a graduating student whose BA thesis project demonstrates a rigorous and creative engagement with the field of Religious Studies. Recent winners include:

2026- Eva Fajardo, “Ngir Yàlla, or For the Love of God: Islamic Discourse, Doctrine, and Interpretation Around 'Taalibé' Begging in Senegal.”
2025- Walton Yan, “The Byzantine Viewer and the Work of Memory: Rethinking Text-Image Relationship in the Leo Bible.”
2024- Freya Hayworth, “Sinful Beginnings: Exploring Origen and Augustine’s Theological Motivations in Defending Infant Baptism”
2023- Natalie Nitsch, “For whom this boke was made’: Evidence for a Lay Readership of The Myrrour of Simple Soulis"

The Anne Carr Memorial Award for Scholarship and Civic Engagement
The Anne Carr Memorial Award recognizes a Religious Studies major or minor who combines academic excellence with a dedication to community engagement and public service. This award honors Sister Anne Carr, the first woman to hold a permanent faculty position in the Divinity School and a passionate advocate for women’s leadership in religious spaces. Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Sr. Carr became a leading voice in the emerging field of feminist theology throughout her career. Recent winners include:

2026- Alyssa Manthi
2025- Elizabeth Fahy Rice, Anthony Menjivar Calixto
2024- Nicholas Korn
2023- Danna Burshtine