2025
Rajeshwari Majumdar (NYU) for Essays on Religious Nationalism and Partisan Cues in India
Honorable Mention: Mohammad Isaqzadeh (Princeton/Chapman University) for Coping with War through God: Reassessing the Relationship between Religiosity and Political Violence
2024
Anirvan Chowdhury (Harvard University) for Religiously Conservative Parties and Women’s Political Mobilization: Gender Norms, Party Activism, and Democratization in India
Honorable Mention: Radha Sarkar (Yale University) for Religion and the Politics of Gender
2023
Amy Lakeman, Harvard University. “When Theology Responds: How Politics Shapes Religious Belief.” Harvard University, 2022.
2022
Jessica Soedirgo, University of Amsterdam. “The Threat of Small Things: Patterns of Repression and Mobilization Against Micro-Sized Groups in Indonesia.” University of Toronto, 2020.
2021
Alexandra Blackman, Cornell University. “The Politicization of Faith: Settler Colonialism, Education, and Political Identity in Tunisia.”
(Honorable Mention) Alon Burstein, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “Terrorizing God’s Enemies: The Influence of Religion on Terror Group Activity.”
2020
Guadalupe Tunon, University of California, Berkeley. “Then the Church Votes Left: The Electoral Consequences of Progressive Religion.”
(Honorable Mention) Alexandre Paquin-Pelletier, University of Toronto. “Radical Leaders: Status, Competition, and Violent Islamic Mobilization in Indonesia.”
2019
Jason Klocek, University of California, Berkeley. “The Cult of Coercion: Religion and Strategic Culture in British Counterinsurgency.”
2018
Michael Hoffman, University of Notre Dame. “Communal Religion, Sectarian Interests, and Democracy.”
2017
Robert Braun, Northwestern University. “Religious Minorities and Resistance to Genocide: Christian Protection of Jews in the Low Countries during the Holocaust.”
2016
Shoaib A. Ghias, University of California, Berkeley. “Defining Shari’a: The Politics of Islamic Judicial Review.”
Honorable Mention: Alicia D. Forster, University of Florida. “American Political Behavior and the Role of Religious Context.”
Honorable Mention: Jonathan S. Blake, Columbia University. “Ritual Contention in Divided Societies: Participation in Loyalist Parades in Northern Ireland.”
2013
Michael D.H. Robbins, University of Michigan. “Bound by Brand: Opposition Party Support under Electoral Authoritarianism.”
Honorable Mention: Jeremy M. Menchik, Boston University. “Tolerance without Liberalism: Islamic Institutions and Political Violence in Twentieth Century Indonesia.”
2012
Toby Matthiesen, University of Cambridge. “The Shia of Saudi Arabia: Identity Politics, Sectarianism, and the Saudi State.”
2010
Karrie J. Koesel, University of Oregon. “Belief in Authoritarianism, Religious Revivals, and the Local State in Russia and China.”
2009
Tarek Masoud, Harvard University. “Why Islam Wins: Electoral Ecologies and Economies of Political Islam in Contemporary Egypt.”
2007
Ahmet Kuru, San Diego State University. “Dynamics of Secularism: State-Religion Relations in the United States, France, and Turkey.”
2006
Co-Recipient: Andrew F. March, University of Oxford. “Islamic Doctrines of Citizenship in Liberal Democracies: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus.”
Co-Recipient: Gregory Allen Smith, University of Virginia. “Political Parishes: The Influence of Priests on the Voting Behavior and Political Attitudes of American Catholics.”