Jennifer Binczewski has been awarded the 2016 John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award from the American Catholic Historical Association. Her dissertation is titled “Solitary Sparrows: Widowhood and the Catholic Community in Post-Reformation England, 1570–1620.”
Dr. Madga Teter, Chair of the American Catholic Historical Association’s Ellis Dissertation Award Committee writes:
“On behalf of the American Catholic Historical Association’s John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award Committee, I would like to congratulate you on being selected as the recipient of the 2016 Ellis prize. The Committee was impressed with your research project and the unique approach you have taken to explain the preservation of the Catholic faith following Sixteenth-century Elizabethan reforms. Your innovative methodology, paying attention to gender and space and the role widows played in preserving English Catholicism, provides new insight to the survival tactics employed by Catholics after the Church was formally banned in 1559. Fascinating!
We wish you well as you complete your dissertation, and we look forward to the day when we can call you Dr. Binczewski. If you would, please send us your mailing address as there is a $1500 stipend that comes with winning the Ellis prize. “