Contact Information:
Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation
Susan Billmaier, PhD
Release Date:
May 11, 2026
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2026 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellows Named
PRINCETON, NJ—The Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation has named 20 outstanding PhD candidates as this year’s Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellows. The Doctoral work supported by this Fellowship demonstrates moral or ethical or theological/religious relevance with nuance, depth, and intellectual sophistication.
Started in 1981, the Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship has funded over 1,400 Fellows and is the nation’s largest and most prestigious award for PhD candidates in the humanities and social sciences addressing questions of religion, ethics, morals, or values.
This year’s Fellows are completing dissertations with such rigorous questions as:
- How can marginalized women ethically and creatively transform traditions that have historically limited their visibility, authority, and belonging?
- How do practices of ascetic detachment shape ethical relationships, boundaries, and forms of belonging within and beyond religious communities?
- Can science ever be truly apolitical, or are its claims to neutrality always shaped by underlying political and ethical commitments?
- To what extent should citizenship be understood as a fixed legal status versus a flexible, lived practice shaped by social relationships and institutions?
- Can ethical values remain authentic forms of life when they must be translated into—and potentially distorted by—market systems of consumption?
- Who gets to define a child’s best interest, and how have marginalized caregivers reshaped that standard through their struggles for recognition and rights?
See the full list of Fellows, institutions, and dissertation titles below.
2026 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellows
Abbottsmith, Jane
Yale University, Religious Studies / School of Medicine
Dissertation Title: The ethics of grief and despair in Theology and Medicine
Description: Grief isn’t just suffering—it can be a source of hope, care, and moral responsibility.
Alon, Leigh
Johns Hopkins University, History of Medicine
Dissertation Title: Jewish Healthcare Workers and the Rise of Jewish American Hereditarian Thought from the Late Nineteenth into the Twenty-First Century
Description: When identity is defined by biology, medicine can unintentionally reinforce the very prejudices it seeks to overcome.
Appleton, Kasha
Indiana University Bloomington, History
Dissertation Title: “Deserving of Having the Charge Care and Custody of Her Said Child”: Habeas Corpus and Black Maternal Authority and Best Interest of the Child Doctrine in the 19th Century
Description: The “best interest of the child” wasn’t just a legal idea—it was shaped by Black mothers fighting to keep their children.
Bentsman, Michelle
Harvard University, Committee on the Study of Religion
Dissertation Title: Singing the Soul Whole: Hindu, Jewish and Shipibo Song Traditions for Dying, Death, and Healing
Description: In moments of death and healing, song becomes a bridge between broken bodies and restored meaning.
Bernard-Herman, Benjamin
University of Illinois, Chicago, Anthropology
Dissertation Title: Beyond the Ethics of Ethical Consumption: Small-scale Biodynamic Farmers and the Paradoxes of Moral Markets in Wisconsin’s Driftless Region
Description: When ethics becomes a marketing label, farmers must decide whether to sell their values—or redefine them.
Diamond, Peter Emanuel
University of Pennsylvania, English
Dissertation Title: Separatists among Separatists: Protestant Dissent and the Exile Narrative in Early America
Description: Ideas of equality helped build colonial America—but they also exposed its deepest contradictions.
Edwards, Ross, Robert M. Adams – Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship in Philosophy
The New School, Philosophy
Dissertation Title: The Horror in Evil: Moral Philosophy in the Shadow of Holocaust Literature
Description: If philosophy cannot face horror, it cannot truly understand evil.
Ferguson, Zach
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Philosophy
Dissertation Title: Moral Character Across Species
Description: Animal ethics isn’t just about rules—it’s about the kind of moral character we cultivate, and recognize, in ourselves and other animals.
Flores, Stacy Delicia
University of California Riverside, History
Dissertation Title: Intermarriage and Citizenship in Ancient Athens: Reframing Normative Constructs and Exploring Lived Realities
Description: In ancient Athens, who counted as a citizen was far less fixed—and far more negotiable—than we thought.
Ganau, Roberto
New York University, History
Dissertation Title: Commerce, Morality, and the Law: An Intellectual History of Bankruptcy in Early Modern Europe
Description: In early modern Europe, financial failure didn’t just shape economies—it reshaped how people understood sin, grace, and salvation.
Han, Dongho
Princeton Theological Seminary, Practical Theology
Dissertation Title: The Transgressive Self: A Pastoral Theological Path to Healthy Narcissism among Young Korean Men
Description: The crisis of masculinity isn’t just about anger—it’s about wounded identity and the possibility of healing.
Jamkar, Vishal
University of Minnesota, Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs
Dissertation Title: Moral Stamina: Caste, Land, and State-making in Western India
Description: For Dalit communities, reclaiming land is not just economic—it is a moral act of justice and dignity.
Kim-Yu, Naomi
Washington University in St. Louis, English
Dissertation Title: Salvation By the Book: Race, Religion, and Reading Practices in Asian American Literature
Description: Christianity doesn’t just shape belief—it shapes how Korean American writers understand history, trauma, and community.
Luo, Anin
Princeton University, History
Dissertation Title: Immunity, Vulnerability, and the Right to Health in International Politics, 1952–1994
Description: The idea that science is “apolitical” didn’t just happen—it was built through Cold War struggles over politics, health, and knowledge.
mcwaid, bridge
University of California, Santa Barbara, History
Dissertation Title: The Sea and Its Fish: A History of Palestine
Description: In Palestine, even fishing becomes a struggle over survival, justice, and belonging.
Melas, Paul
University of California, Los Angeles, Anthropology
Dissertation Title: Exiled: Monastic Asceticism in Contemporary Greece
Description: Monastic life isn’t just about withdrawal—it’s a way of organizing relationships, boundaries, and meaning in everyday life.
Osejo-Varona, Alejandra
Rice University, Anthropology
Dissertation Title: Hippos in the Afterlives of the Drug Trafficking in Colombia: Enduring Marks on the Magdalena River
Description: Colombia’s hippos raise a difficult question: when animals don’t belong, who decides whether they should live or die?
Parkin, Justine
University of California, Santa Cruz, History of Consciousness
Dissertation Title: Oceanic Coordinations: Arts of Reading from an Island at the Bottom of the World
Description: Conservation isn’t neutral—it can protect ecosystems while displacing the people who have long cared for them.
Stom, Joshua
University of California, Irvine, Political Science
Dissertation Title: Realism and Defending Democracy in Times of Crisis
Description: Democracy can’t survive on conflict management alone—it needs moral ideals people can believe in.
Yepes-Rossel, Gabriela
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Interdisciplinary Theater Studies Program, English Department
Dissertation Title: Negotiating Tradition, Performing Disruption: Tensions and Strategies behind Women’s Participation in Andean Fiestas
Description: Through dance and ritual, Andean women are reshaping traditions that once excluded them.
