2026 WINNER

Winner:  Heath Rojas, “Written in the Heart: Sentimental Deism in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution”

Heath Rojas is completing his dissertation this spring 2026 and will use the Laurie M. Wood Research Travel Award this summer to consult archives in Grenoble, at the Musée de la Révolution française in Vizille, and especially the Claude Périer holdings in the Château de Vizelle collections in the Archives départementales de l’Isère.  He will be expanding on work explored in his dissertation, “Written in the Heart: Sentimental Deism in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution,” on the connections between affective religious experience and modern democratic life. His new research will center on the société d’amitié formed around the patronage of Claude Périer during the Directory, which attracted vibrant minds both locally and from abroad. Tied into wider networks of Theophilanthropy, this community’s experience of “collective piety” and “revolutionary fraternity” will exemplify Rojas’ overall and important argument about the power of deism to shape revolutionary lives.

Past Winners:

2025:
Jon Paul Heyne, “Pawns Moving Kings: Franciscans in the Holy Land c. 1291-1517”

2024:
Merve Fejzula, University of Missouri, “Negritude and the Afro-Black Public Sphere 1947-77”

2023:
Abigail Lewis, University of Notre Dame, “Double Exposure: French Photography and Everyday Choices from Nazi Occupation to Liberation”

2022:
Sarah Runcie, Muhlenberg College, “Doctors with Borders: Decolonization and International Health in Cameroon.”

2021:
Kelly Presutti, Cornell University, “‘Agglomerations’: Accretive History in New Caledonia.”

2020:
Megan Brown, Swarthmore College, “Racing Against Decolonization: The Rallye Méditerranée-Le Cap and the Infrastructures of Empire.”

2019:
Ian W. Merkel, Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Turin, “Terms of Exchange: Brazilian Intellectuals and the Rethinking of the French Social Sciences.”

2018:
Miranda Sachs, Yale University, "Child’s Work: Welfare, Family, and Work in Third Republic France."

2017:
Nimisha Barton, Princeton University, "Reproductive Citizens: Gender, Immigration, and the State in Modern France."

2016: 
Bronwen McShea, Columbia University, "Patroness of Empire: Duchesse Marie d’Aiguillon and French-Catholic Expansion in 17th-Century Asia, America, and Africa."

2015: 
Laurie M. Wood, Florida State University, "Archipelago of Justice: Law in France’s Early Modern Empire."

2014: 
Burleigh Hendrickson, Northeastern University, "Imperial Fragments and Transnational Activism: 1968(s) in Tunisia, France, and Senegal."

2013: 
Elena Napolitano, University of Toronto, "Prospects of Statecraft: Diplomacy, Territoriality, and the Vision of French Nationhood in Rome, 1660-1700."

2012: 
Alexia Yates, Harvard University, "Selling Paris: Real Estate and Commercial Culture in the Fin-de-siècle Metropolis."

2011:
Christina Firpo, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, "'Abandoned Children': The Crises of Racial Patriarchy and the Forcible Removal of Mixed-Race Children in Colonial Indochina, 1890-1956."

2010:
Jennifer Palmer, University of Chicago, "An Ocean between Them: Race, Gender and the Family in France and Its Colonies."

2009:
Jonathyne Briggs, Indiana University Northwest, "Anarchie en France: Hypermodernity and French Popular Music, 1958-1981."

2008:
Claire Salinas, Colorado College,"Settling Society in France and Algeria: Emigration, Colonization, and Liberal Politics, 1830-1870."

2007:
Junko Tankeda, Syracuse University, "Between France and the Mediterranean: Absolutism and Commercial Humanism in Marseille, 1660-1720."

2006:
Rebecca Pulju, Kent State University, "The Woman's Paradise: Gender and Consumer Culture in France, 1944-1965."

2005:
Sara Beam, University of Victoria, "The Body of the Criminal in Europe, 1500 - 1750."

2004:
Richard Keyser, Western Kentucky University, "From Gift to Contract: The Transformation of Medieval Property Dealings, Champagne 1100-1350."

2003:
Richard C. Keller, University of Wisconsin-Madison, "Developing Madness: The Psychiatrist's Civilizing Mission in French North Africa, 1900-1962."

2002:
Sean Kennedy, University of New Brunswick, "The Croix de Feu and the Parti Social Français in Algeria."

2001:
Nancy Locklin, Maryville College, "Women in Early Modern Brittany: Rethinking Work and Identity in a Traditional Economy."

2000:
Patrick R. Young, Fordham University, "The Consumer as National Subject: Bourgeois Tourism in the French Third Republic, 1880-1914."

1999:
Michael Lynn, Agnes Scott College, "Popular Science in the French Enlightenment: The Dissemination of Natural Philosophy and the Creation of an Urban Scientific Culture."

1998:
Nancy Edwards, Bowdoin College, "Regendering the Nation: the Role of the Housewife in French Indentity Formation from 1918 to Vichy."

1997:
Mathew S. Kuefler, Rice University, "A Study of the Manuscripts of the Vita Sancti Geraldi Aureliancensis."