2023 Dean’s Distinguished Dissertation Award Recipients
Each year, The Graduate School recognizes four doctoral candidates or recent doctoral graduates for creating exceptional dissertations in each of the following fields: biological and life sciences; humanities and fine arts; mathematics, physical sciences and engineering; and social sciences.
This year’s humanities award went to our very own Jocelyn Burney. Jocelyn is one of the Center’s TEP Fellows and our inaugural Uhlman Fellow in Jewish Studies Public Humanities. Her advisor is Jodi Magness, department of religious studies.
Jocelyn Burney ’14
Department of Religious Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
“During the late Roman Period (2nd-6th centuries CE), large numbers of diasporic Jewish communities lived in the Mediterranean region. Unfortunately, their history, beliefs, and practices are difficult to reconstruct because virtually no written documents produced by these communities survive. My dissertation sheds new light on the religious lives of diaspora Jews in mainland Greece, the Aegean, and western Turkey by analyzing the archaeological remains they left behind, with specific focus on the funding, building, and maintaining of synagogues over multiple generations.”
Read more about Jocelyn. Read more about the TEP Fellowship. Read more about the Uhlman Fellowship.