Harold N. Glassman Distinguished Dissertation Awards

The Harold N. Glassman Distinguished Dissertation Awards are intended to honor truly distinguished dissertations in the humanities, social sciences and sciences, with one award available in each of the three broad disciplinary areas.

Nomination Process and Deadline

Eligible dissertations for the 2026 awards are those written by students whose Ph.D. was conferred by the Graduate School between June 2024 and May 2025.

Nominations should be submitted by the director of graduate studies via this online form . The nomination packet should consist of one PDF document containing in the following order:

• a letter of nomination from the director of graduate studies, department chair, or program director
• a letter from the faculty mentor and readers that explain the dissertation’s contribution and level of scholarship
• a current vita from the nominee
• the dissertation abstract

Programs may nominate one graduate per category (humanities, sciences, and social sciences). For those dissertations that bridge two or more fields, the nomination letter should designate within which disciplinary area – humanities, social sciences, or sciences – the dissertation ought to be considered. Although not required, programs are encouraged to include external letters as part of their nomination.

Deadline: Friday, February 6, 2026

Review Process

Nominations in each area will be reviewed by members of the Graduate Research Steering Committee. Awards will be given for only truly distinguished scholarship and should be seen as significant honors; thus, there is no guarantee of award in any one disciplinary area in a given year.

Award Details

Recipients will be presented with a certificate at the Doctoral Hooding Ceremony and a cash prize of $2,500. More significant, though, is the respect given the dissertation by the author’s mentor, committee and the senior faculty who reviewed the dissertation.

2026 Award Recipients

Read more about the 2026 honorees at the Graduate Studies Newsroom.

Harold N. Glassman Distinguished Dissertation Award in the Humanities

Dr. Maude Havenne (Ph.D. in Spanish Literature and Cultural Studies, 2024): “From Bad Manners in Belgian and Spanish Sub-Saharan Colonies to a Postcolonial Aesthetic of Disgust,” which she defended in May 2024. (Citation)

Harold N. Glassman Distinguished Dissertation Award in the Sciences

Dr. Ellen Jacobs (Ph.D. in Biology, 2024): “Maternal Care and Tool Use in Wild Bottlenose Dolphins,” which she defended in October 2024. (Citation)

Harold N. Glassman Distinguished Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences

Dr. Natascha de Vasconcellos Otoya (Ph.D. in History, 2025): “Oil in Bahia: From the Early Cretaceous to the Anthropocene,” which she defended with distinction in May 2025. (Citation)

Past Recipients

• 2025 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Dr. Martina Thorne (Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese, 2023), “The First Ornithologist of the New World: Santiago de Cárdenas, the Writing of Science and the Emergence of Decolonial Thought,” which she defended with distinction in June 2023. (Citation)
• 2025 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Shared award between Dr. David Saxon (Ph.D. in Neuroscience, 2024), “Defining the Functional Identity of the Late-maturing Paralaminar Amygdala,” which he defended in January 2024 (Citation); and Dr. Vaughn Shirey (Ph.D. in Biology, 2023), “Detecting Signals of Recent Climate Change in North American Cold-Adapted Butterfly Communities,” which they defended with distinction in May 2023. (Citation)
• 2025 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Dr. Victoria Broadus (Ph.D. in History, 2023), “Vissungo: The Afro-Descended Culture of Miners and Maroons in Brazil’s Diamond District, 1850s-2020s,” which she defended in June 2023. (Citation)
• 2024 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Dr. Paula Chan (Ph.D. in History, 2023), “Eyes on the Ground: Soviet Investigations of the Nazi Occupation,” which she defended in March 2023. (Citation)
• 2024 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Dr. Andrew Speidell (Ph.D. in Neuroscience, 2024), “Investigation of the Role of the p75 Neurotrophin Receptor in HIV-1 Gp120-Associated Synaptic and Neural Injury,” which he defended in September 2022. (Citation)
• 2024 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Dr. Shawn Rhoads (Ph.D. in Psychology, 2024), “Understanding Others and Valuing Their Welfare: The Neural Basis of Interpersonal Accuracy, Social Learning, and Altruistic Choice,” which he defended in April 2022. (Citation)
• 2023 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Dr. Nohora Arrieta Fernández (Ph.D. in Spanish Literature & Culture, 2021), “Bittersweet Poetics: Politics and Aesthetics of the Sugar Plantation in Contemporary Brazilian and Caribbean Arts (1990-2018)” (Citation)
• 2023 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Dr. Casey Zipfel (Ph.D. in Biology, 2021), “The Interplay Between Human Behavior and Infectious Disease Dynamics” (Citation)
• 2023 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Dr. Katherine O’Connell (Ph.D. in Psychology, 2021), “From Perception to Social Connection: Assessing Deficits and Modulation of Empathic Processes to Study Human Social Behavior,” which she defended in December 2021. (Citation)
• 2022 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Dr. Jackson Perry (Ph.D. in History, 2021), “The Gospel of the Gum: Eucalyptus Enthusiasm and the Modern Mediterranean, CA. 1848-1900” (Citation)
• 2022 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Dr. Nahdia Jones (Ph.D. in Neuroscience, 2021), “The Effects of Diet Induced Obesity on CNS Function of APOE Mice” (Citation)
• 2022 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Dr. Trishula Patel (Ph.D. in History, 2021), “Becoming Zimbabwean: A History of Indians in Rhodesia, 1890-1980,” (Citation)
• 2021 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Dr. Simon Belokowsky (Ph.D. in History), “Youth is to Live in the City! Rural Out-Migration in the Black Earth Region under Khrushchev and Brezhnev” (Citation)
• 2021 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Dr. P. Lorenzo Bozzelli (Ph.D. in Neuroscience), “HIV-induced matrix metalloproteinases alter glial and neuronal function” (Citation)
• 2021 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Dr. Laura Goffman (Ph.D. in History, 2019), “Medical Frontiers: Health, Empire, and Society in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula, 1862-1959” (Citation)
• 2020 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Dr. Megan A. Dean (Ph.D. in Philosophy, 2019), “Eating as a Self-shaping Activity” (Citation)
• 2020 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Dr. Mackenzie Fama (Ph.D. in Neuroscience, 2018), “The Subjective Experience of Inner Speech in Aphasia” (Citation)
• 2020 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Dr. Christina Padilla (Ph.D. in Psychology, 2019), “Moving beyond the average effect: Quantifying and exploring variation in Head Start treatment effects on parenting behavior” (Citation)
• 2019 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Dr. Elena Abbott (Ph.D. in History, 2017), “Beacons of Liberty: Free-Soil Havens and the American Anti-Slavery Movement, 1813-1863” (Citation)
• 2019 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Dr. Celia Chomón Zamora (Ph.D. in Applied Spanish Linguistics, 2017), “The Secret is in the Processing: A Study of Levels of Explicit Computerized Feedback in Heritage and L2 Learners of Spanish” (Citation)
• 2019 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Dr. Arman Cohan (Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2018), “Text Summarization and Categorization for Scientific and Health-Related Data” (Citation)
• 2018 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Dr. Eric Gettig (Ph.D. in History, 2017), “Oil and Revolution in Cuba: Development, Nationalism, and the U.S. Energy Empire, 1902-1961” (Citation)
• 2018 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Drs. Kristin Brethel-Haurwitz (Ph.D. in Psychology, 2016) and Elise Cardinale (Ph.D. in Psychology, 2017), “Multidetermined Concern: Roles for Affective and Cognitive Processes in Empathy and Altruism” and “An Investigation of the Role and Specificity of Affective Deficits in the Development of Callous Unemotional Traits and Antisocial Behaviors” (Citation)
• 2018 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Dr. Kelly Chamberlain (Ph.D. in Neuroscience, 2017), “The Role of Creatinine in Promoting Oligodendrocyte Survival and Modulating Axonal Mitochondria in the CNS” (Citation)
• 2017 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Dr. Larisa Veloz (Ph.D. in History, 2015), “‘Even the Women Are Leaving,’ Gendered Migrations Between Mexico and the United States: Revolutionary Diasporas, Depression-Era Depatriations, and Wartime Bracero Controls, 1900-1950” (Citation)
• 2017 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Dr. Anna J. Markowitz (Ph.D. in Psychology, 2016), “The Role of School Engagement and Educational Policy in the Development of Socio-Emotional Skills” (Citation)
• 2017 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Dr. Keith Bentley (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 2015), “Design, Synthesis, and Applications of Stereodynamic Chirality Probes” (Citation)
• 2016 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Dr. Erin S. Mauldin (Ph.D. in History, 2014), “Unredeemed Land: The U.S. Civil War, Changing Land Use Practices, and the Environmental Limitations of Agriculture in the South, 1840-1880” (Citation)
• 2016 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Dr. Anne Calderón (Ph.D. in Spanish Linguistics, 2014), “Level of Intake, Depth of Processing, and Type of Linguistic Item in L2 Development” (Citation)
• 2016 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Dr. Bridget Queenan (Ph.D. in Neuroscience, 2014), “Synapse- and Cell-Specific Plasticity in the Mature Hippocampus” (Citation)
• 2015 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Joseph E. Hower (Ph.D. in History, 2013), “Jerry Wurf, The Rise of AFSCME, and the Fate of Labor Liberalism, 1947-1981” (Citation)
• 2015 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Yonatan L. Morse (Ph.D. in Government, 2013), “Party Matters: The Institutional Origins of Competitiveness and Hegemony in Post-Cold War Africa” (Citation)
• 2015 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Peng Zhang (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 2013), “Synthesis of Organofluroine Compounds and Chirality Sensing with Tropos Ligands” (Citation)
• 2014 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities:  Mercedes Lopez Rodriguez (Ph.D. in Spanish & Portuguese, 2013), “Racial Fictions: Representation of Race and Gender through Literature and Visual Arts in Colombia, 1830-1875”
• 2014 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Natalie H. Brito (Ph.D. in Psychology, 2013), “Influence of Early Environmental Variation on Memory Development: Examining Bilingualism During Infancy”
• 2014 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Sonya Dumanis (Ph.D. in Neuroscience, 2013), “Using APOE Genotypes to Identify New Biomarkers for Alzheimer’s Disease Risk”
• 2013 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Toshihiro Higuchi (Ph.D. in History, 2011), “Radioactive Fallout, the Politics of Risk, and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis, 1954-1963”
• 2013 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Steven Michael Ward (Ph.D. in Government, 2012), “Status Immobility and the Systematic Revisionism in Rising Great Powers”
• 2013 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Tao Yu (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 2011), “Transforming Triatomic Molecules into Complex Functional Materials”
• 2012 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Andrew R. Robarts (Ph.D. in History, 2011), “A Plague on Both Houses? Population Movement and the Spread of Disease Across the Ottoman-Russian Black Sea Frontier, 1768-1830s”
• 2012 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Luis Cerezo Ceballos (Ph.D. in Spanish Linguistics, 2010), “Talking to Avatars:  The Computer as Tutor and the Incidence of Learner’s Agency, Feedback, and Grammatical Form in SL”
• 2012 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Michael H. Helle (Ph.D. in Physics, 2010), “Radiative Signatures of Electron Acceleration in a Fully Cavitated Laser Plasma Wakefield”
• 2011 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Megan Brandow-Faller (Ph.D. in History, 2010), “An Art of Their Own: Reinventing Frauenkunst in the Female Academies and Artist Leagues of Late Imperial and First Republic Austria, 1900-1930”
• 2011 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Gregory Scott Weiner (Ph.D. in Government, 2010), “Madison’s Metronome: The Constitution and the Tempo of American Politics”
• 2011 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Ilana Jacqueline Bennett (Ph.D. in Psychology, 2009), “Aging, Implicit Learning, and White Matter Integrity”
• 2010 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Luis F. Granados (Ph.D. in History, 2008), “Cosmopolitan Indians and Mesoamerican Barrios in Bourbon Mexico City:  Tribute, Community, Family and Work in 1800”
• 2010 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Ariel I. Ahram (Ph.D. in Government, 2008), “Devolution from Above:  The Origins and Persistence of State-Sponsored Militias”
• 2010 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Yosra M. Badiei (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 2009), “Copper Carbenes and Nitrenes:  Capture of Elusive Intermediates and the Development of a Copper Catalyzed C-H Animation Reaction”
• 2009 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Humanities: Meredith Oyen (Ph.D. in History, 2007), “Allies, Enemies and Aliens: Migration in U.S.-Chinese Relations, 1940-1965”
• 2009 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Sciences: Leah Casabianca (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 2008), “Understanding the Mechanism of Action of Antimalarial Drugs: Insights from Solution NMR”
• 2009 Glassman Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences: Kara Morgan-Short (Ph.D. in Spanish, 2007), “A Neurolinguistic Investigation of Late-Learned Second Language Knowledge:  The Effects of Explicit and Implicit Conditions”
• 2008 Glassman Award in the Humanities: Sara Scalenghe (Ph.D. in History, 2007), “Being Different: Intersexuality, Blindness, Deafness, and Madness in Ottoman Syria”
• 2008 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences: Linda M. Merola (Ph.D. in Government, 2007), “A Culture of Crisis: Information and the Scope of American Civil Liberties in an Era of Terrorist Threat”
• 2008 Glassman Award in the Sciences: Jingsong Huang (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 2007), “Multicenter Covalent Pi-Pi Bonding Interaction and its Role in the Solid-State Properties of Phenalenyl-based Organic Radical Materials”
• 2007 Glassman Award in the Humanities: George Vrtis (Ph.D. in History, 2006),”The Front Range of the Rocky Mountains:  An Environmental History, 1700-1900″
• 2007 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences: Farah Godrej (Ph.D. in Government, 2006), “Toward a Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Non-Western Texts and the Methodology of Comparative Political Theory”
• 2007 Glassman Award in the Sciences: Christopher Drummond (Ph.D. in Biology, 2006), “Phylogenetic Relationship, Mating Systems and Population Structure in Lupinus (Leguminosae)”
• 2006 Glassman Award in the Humanities: Henriette de Bruyn Kops (Ph.D. in History, 2005), “Liquid Silver: The Wine and Brandy Trade Between Nantes and Rotterdam in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century”
• 2006 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences: Matthew M. Taylor (Ph.D. in Government, 2004), “Activating Judges: Courts, Institutional Structure, and the Judicialization of Policy Reform in Brazil, 1988-2002”
• 2006 Glassman Award in the Sciences: Jana Watson-Capps (Ph.D. in Biology, 2005), “Female mating behavior in the context of sexual coercion and female ranging behavior of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.) in Shark Bay, Western Australia”
• 2005 Glassman Award in the Sciences: Amorsolo Suguitan, Jr. (Ph.D. in Biology, 2004), “Identification of factors that increase the risk of pre-term delivery in women infected with Plasmodium falciparum”
• 2004 Glassman Award in the Sciences: Lyann Ursos (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 2003), “Acidification of the Digestive Vacuole of Plasmodium Falciparum Malarial Parasites Is Linked to Chloroquine Resistance”
• 2004 Glassman Award in the Humanities: Jeffrey T. Zalar (Ph.D. in History, 2003), “Knowledge and Nationalism in Imperial Germany: A Cultural History of the Association of Saint Charles Borromeo, 1890-1914”
• 2003 Glassman Award in the Humanities: Gillian McGillivray (Ph.D. in History, 2002), “Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Power, and Politics in Cuba, 1868-1948”
• 2002 Glassman Award in the Humanities: Anne Thiel (Ph.D. in German, 2001), “Verhinderte Traditionen: Maerchen deutscher Autorinnen vor den Bruedern Grimm”
• 2002 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences: Takae Tsujioka (Ph.D. in Linguistics, 2001), “The Syntax of Possession in Japanese”
• 2001 Glassman Award in the Sciences: David Abdallah (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 2000), “Anisotropic Assemblies in Neat and Lyotropic Phases of Alkanes.  Alkanes with One Hetero- Atom, and Ammonium and Phosphonium Salts with One to Four Long N-Alkyl Chains”
• 2001 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences: El Houcine Haichour (Ph.D. in Linguistics, 2000), “A Corpus Linguistics Analysis of English and Arabic Parallel Business Discourse Domains”
• 2000 Glassman Award in the Sciences: Franz Geiger (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 1998), “Ice Surface Chemistry Relevant to Stratospheric Ozone Depletion”
• 1999 Glassman Award in the Humanities: Steven E. Phillips (Ph.D. in History, 1998), “Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Elite Under Nationalist Chinese Rule, 1945-1950”
• 1999 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences: Donna Van Cott (Ph.D. in Government, 1998),”Constitution-making and Democratic Transformation: The Bolivian and Colombian Constitutional Reforms”
• 1997 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences: Haleh Vaziri (Ph.D. in Government, 1995), “The Islamic Republic and its Neighbors: Ideology and the National Interest in Iran’s Foreign Policy During the Khomeini Decade”
• 1997 Glassman Award in the Natural Sciences: Miroslav Rapta (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 1996), “Synthesis, Characterization, and X-Ray Structure of Iron and Copper Complexes With Ligands Containing Hisitdine-And Tyrosine-Like Residues as Models for Active Sites of Mononuclear and Dinuclear Centers of Metalloproteins”
• 1997 Glassman Award in the Social Sciences: Melanie Metzger (Ph.D. in Linguistics, 1995), “The Paradox of Neutrality: A Comparison of Interpreters’ Goals with the Reality of Interactive Discourse”