Congratulations to Liza Bernstein for the 2025–2026 Crown Fellowship by the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies!
Sherab Wangmo successfully defended her dissertation, "Revealing the Ḍākinī’s Word: Gender, Vision, and Literary Authority in the Tibetan Treasure Traditions of Khandro Dechen Wangmo." Congratulations to Dr. Wangmo! (May 7, 2025)
Amanda Gvozden successfully defended her dissertation, "The First Defilement: The Death Penalty, Scapegoating, and the Mystical Foundations of American Criminal Law." Congratulations to Dr. Gvozden! (April 25, 2025)
Congratulationsto Dhondup T. Rekjong for receiving a Khyentse Foundation PhD Scholarship for the project titled“Silence and Speech: Transmitting Tibetan Buddhism under Chinese Colonialism”, awarded a grant of $5,000!
Nisheeta Jagtiani successfully defended her dissertation, "Rimé: Impartiality in Tibetan Buddhism and Beyond." Congratulations Dr. Jagtiani! (July 3, 2024)
Congratulations to Joshua Brallier for being awarded the Presidential Fellowship! This highly competitive award is the most prestigious fellowship awarded by Northwestern.
Congratulations to Matthew Drew for being awarded "Buffett Summer Language Training Award" at Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal, and "Buffett Pre-Dissertation International Summer Research Grant" in Chengdu, China!!!
Rachel Levy successfully defended her dissertation, "Do Clothes Make the Man?: Sartorial Rhetoric in the writings of Thirteenth to Seventeenth Century Drukpa Kagyu Masters." Congratulations Dr. Levy! (February 8, 2024)
Congratulations to Nisheeta Jagtiani for earning Northwestern's South Asia Research Forumgrant!
Marlon Millner successfully defended his dissertation, “Without the Body, Within the Flesh – Blackness, Biopolitics, Spirit Baptism, and the Exilic Afterlife of Pentecostalism”. Congratulations Dr. Millner! (July 24, 2023)
Congratulations to Joshua Shelton for having a new article piece accepted at the Journal of Tibetan Literature
Edu Uca was named to the 2021-2022 Associated Student Government Faculty & Administrator Honor Roll. She was nominated for her teaching in REL 369: Religion in the Digital Age (Winter Quarter 2022)!
James Howard Hill, Jr. successfully defended his dissertation, "Religion, (Anti)blackness, and Michael Jackson". Congratulations Dr. Hill! (July 22, 2022)
Darcie Price-Wallace whosuccessfully defended her dissertation, “Telling Stories Differently: Changing Landscapes of Ordination for Buddhist Monastic Women in the Tibetan Tradition." Congratulations Dr. Price-Wallace! (July 18, 2022)
Darcie Price-Wallace won the George Bond Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching in Spring 2022.
Dhondup T. Rekjong has received a Conference Travel Award from the Northwestern Buffett Institute for his
Udita Das has received a graduate student fellowship from the South Asia Research Forum (SARF) to support her Sanskrit summer language program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in July 2022.
Marlon Millner has been awarded a Dissertation Fellowship from the Louisville Institute.
Ray Buckner received SPAN Conference Funding for Graduate Students, which funded a conference presentation at the UCR Conference for Queer and Transgender Studies of Religion. He also received a Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin-Madison for third-year Thai language study at SEASSI through the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a SEASSI Summer Tuition Grant.
Congratulations to Amanda Gvozden on receiving an Interdisciplinary Graduate Assistantship for Legal Studies for 2022-23.
2021-2022
Matthew Drew received a Mellon Cluster Fellowship in 2021 in Asian Studies and a 2022 Northwestern Summer Language Grant for travel and study in India.
Nisheeta Jagtiani received an International Dissertation Research Grant (IDRG) from the American Academy of Religion and a Dalai Lama Fellowship for Nalanda Studies from The Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Carlos Recarte received his M.A. in Religious Studies during the Fall Quarter. Congratulations, Carlos!
Eda Uca was the Lead Instructor on the course REL 369/HUM 325: Religion in the Digital Age in 2021-22.
We are excited to celebrate Lily Stewart's first article, "Leprosy, Chastity, and Desire in Medieval Hagiography." in the Summer 2021 issue of Magistra, a journal of women's spirituality in history.
Dhondup Rekjong has been awarded theDalai Lama Graduate Scholarship for 2021-22, for the second year in a row. Congratulations Rekjong!
Matt Smith successfully defended his dissertation, “The Age of Plastic(s): Race, Religion, Ecology, and the Biopolitics of Conversion”last month and will be starting as Visiting Assistant Professor of Race and Religion at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. Congratulations Dr. Smith!
Congratulations to Matthew Smith who has been appointed as Visiting Assistant Professor of Race and Religion at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts starting this Fall.
2020- 2021
Joshua Shelton won the George Bond Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching in Spring 2021.
Congratulations to James Howard Hill, Jr., who will be starting a position as Assistant Professor of Religion and Race at the University of Oklahoma in the Fall!
Congratulations to PhD Candidate James Howard Hill, Jr. for two wonderful earned opportunities. James has been named a fellow in the 2021 Sacred Writes cohort, a Public Scholarship on Religion. James also recently published the piece, "The Black Church and the Black Fantastic: Black Religious Experience in Popular Culture," which is a part of a larger forum on "The Black Church in American Public Life." Congratulations, James, on both of these accomplishments!
Congratulations to Somtsobum, Ray Buckner,Rekjong, Nisheeta Jagtiani and Darcie Price-Wallace on their 2020-21 grants and scholarships.
In Spring 2020, Marlon Millner received a graduate internship in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Arch Scholars program for the 2020-2021 academic year! As a member of the Arch Scholars team, he will supervise a team of motivated undergraduates who have volunteered to mentor small groups of first-year students from first-generation or low-income backgrounds.
Congratulations to Darcie Price-Wallace for receiving the 2020-21 Research Scholarship from Khyentse Foundation in support of her dissertation project.
Congratulations to Dhondup Rekjong for receiving the prestigious Dalai Lama Graduate Scholarship, this summer.
Congratulations to Jeffrey Wheatley who will be joining the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Iowa State University as a tenure-track Assistant Professor.
Congratulations to Nisheeta Jagtiani, who has received a GRG from the Graduate School to work on her research!
Congratulations to Courtney Rabada, who has accepted a Graduate Assistantship position in the Gender & Sexuality Studies Program for the 2019-20 school year! She will be teaching a course in the Fall titled, “Powerful & Dangerous: The Life, Times and Theory on Audre Lorde.”
Congratulations to Matthew J. Smith, who has won the 2019-2020 Louisville Institution Dissertation Fellowship!
Congratulations to Miranda Smith who has been elected as a Fulbright scholar for 2019-20. Miranda's research project will focus on how Tibetan laywomen use evocative literary forms to discuss religion and evoke religious affect. Through research in Qinghai, China from 2019-2020, she will also examine how Tibetan poet Wo Jik Jil, and the Tibetan women poets in the region, elicit religious emotion through creative adaptation of a variety of poetic and song traditions.
Congratulations to James Hill! He has been selected as a Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Program Participant for 2018-2019. See more about the program here: SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development Program
Marlon Millner, a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies, had an OpEd piece published in the daily newspaper in Memphis, TN about a large Pentecostal Christian denomination and its connection to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
